What is Need?

Next to branding and emotion, customer need is crucial in any campaign. Customers choose your brand only when they have an unmet need: I’m craving something sweet, I need new shoes, I want a quick lunch, I want a fast car.

What should the customer recognize in the campaign?
Recognizing the right general situation (category) when being shown the creative is crucial. Me as a customer should recognize sweets, shoes, a quick lunch or car in the campaign. The reason is that the general situation (category) is the entry point for customers of your brand.

If your brand wants to be salient, it has to nurture a strong connection to the category first and foremost.This is especially important for small brands that have low awareness and are not associated with the category.

The second part is the specific message we want to convey to customers during the campaign: sweets for a trip, shoes at an affordable price, quick lunch with kids, a fast car. You can define up to 3 messages mostly based on the tactical goals of the campaign. Define the messages that you want customers to associate with your brand.

How do we measure Need?

As the key metric, we use category recall for Impact test and Video pre-test and category fit for Concept tests.

Additional metrics like message recalls and brandlinks help us undestand the whole picture about ad’s presentation of customer needs. That’s why we prioritized category over other communicated messages when we designed the KPI of Need chapter.

Category recall (used in Impact test, Video pre-test)

We play the whole video to the respondents. Then we present them with a list of associations including the product category or the category buying situation. We ask about what they associate with the ad. The respondents are free to select any number of associations. That means they can also skip without choosing anything, if nothing fits from their point of view. When testing is done, we look at the % of the sample, who associated the product category (buying situation) with the ad. We compare that score to benchmarks (learn more about benchmarks here).

Category fit (in Concept test)

The respondents are presented with the creative concept. Then we show a list of associations including the product category or the category buying situation. We ask about what they associate with the concept. The respondents are free to select any number of associations. They can also skip without choosing anything, if nothing fits from their point of view. When testing is done, we look at the % of the sample, who associated the product category (buying situation) with the ad. We compare that score to benchmarks (learn more about benchmarks here).

How to get Need right?

Choose only one or two messages
Focus less on quantity of messages, but rather on quality. Pick just one or two messages, present them clearly and let them play out in more frames.

Show message by various ways
Doing this has a positive impact on message recall. Use text cards, simple animation or voiceover. Use more options for higher impact.

Be Specific
Use specific brand assets to express the message. If you don't have any assets, express the message in a specific way. For example, don’t just say your brand stands for quality. That’s a general statement that any brand can make. How does your brand specifically address quality?