When the Data Says No, but Your Creative Instincts Say Yes

In October 1989, NBC executives received the test results for a new sitcom—and they were bleak. The show was simultaneously “ordinary” and “unbelievable,” “familiar” and “disorienting.” As a result, "no segment of the audience was eager to watch the show again." Most networks passed on it, including NBC. Still, there were a handful of executives who saw potential in the program, enough to reverse course and scrape together funding for a four-episode initial run. And so, Seinfeld was born. Of course, in hindsight, it was a brilliant decision. Still, none of the executives who greenlit that “unlikeable” pilot could have known that—and today, many marketers face similar uncertainty. Some characterize the kind of risk NBC took as “following your gut.” But there’s more to following creative vision than merely trusting your instincts. With so much information at our fingertips, it would be irresponsible for marketers to ignore the data in favor of our personal preferences. More importantly, we owe our audiences an ad experience that doesn’t just fill time but engages, entertains and informs. Is it bad, or just different? I moved to America exactly 20 years after that first Seinfeld pilot test, expecting that marketers would approach advertising the same way those producers approached the show. And yet, unlike their European counterparts, who—thanks to employment laws that protect workers from unfair termination—could take big swings without fear of retribution, American advertisers were incredibly risk-averse largely because, as at-will employees, they believed failure could cost them their jobs. But in a crowded media market, sometimes the biggest risk is risk aversion. Countless marketers have found that, in taking the edge off the knife, they’ve created something duller. By trying to please everyone, they wind up connecting with no one. When doing creative pre-testing, listen to the negative voices in the room but don’t let them overpower the positive ones, those who will champion your ad because you chose to say something and create fandoms around your brand. Most importantly, follow up with those who believe, like Seinfeld’s first audiences, that your story is “unique,” “unfamiliar” even. Dig deeper: Is that spot unfamiliar because the product is new? Because they’re not used to seeing that kind of person on TV? Because the creative device breaks advertising conventions? What's the context? More than just parsing what audiences say, it’s critical to understand why they said it. Pay attention to how audiences are reading, watching and reacting because people rely on cues to make meaning out of advertisements. That includes the people they’re watching with, the screen they’re watching on and the context in which a given ad is viewed. In psychology, this phenomenon is referred to as priming. It’s the notion that exposure to a stimulus, such as a particular scene or ad, impacts how we respond to a later stimulus—in this case, the given spot you’re testing. Usually, we tend to think of this in terms of avoiding the negative: making sure audiences don’t have a bad experience leading up to an advertisement. But more than just ensuring brand safety, it’s important to look at brand suitability—i.e., does the content surrounding my ad match its tone, and our brand’s ethos? And does the content running before my brand set it up for success? If your pre-testing doesn’t account for this context, it’s on marketers to bring that additional perspective into the decision-making room. Who’s the who? Which brings us to the most crucial practice of all: truly understanding who we’re trying to influence. As marketers, we like to think of audiences as consumers. But if you are watching an ad for cereal, you’re behaving more like a person watching TV than someone eating breakfast. You’re a consumer, first and foremost, of video and not the product itself. It’s time we start treating audiences as audiences and ad campaigns like television shows. Rather than measuring test heuristics by how well a product sells, look at how well the ad itself engages, entertains and informs. More often than not, when an ad fails on the former, it’s because marketers have ignored the latter. By distinguishing between bad and different, searching for the context behind a reaction and redefining success, you can take a big swing and an informed one. You can do right by audiences and brands alike. And you can create advertisements as groundbreaking as the content they run alongside.

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When the Research Says No, but Your Instincts Say Yes

A guide to creative decision-making in risk-averse times

Yusuf Chuku

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Yusuf Chuku