Diving Deep on Creative Development

How an Advertising Agency Combined Qual Methods and Methodify to Improve Its Creative Decision-Making

The Challenge

John St. is one of the top advertising agencies in Canada, and it works with a wide variety of clients. Chasson Gracie, currently Group Planning Director for Omnicom/Dieste, played a key role at John St. to optimize brand messaging that resonated with each client’s audience.

When evaluating different possible campaign directions, the research team adds value by not only identifying which idea is the “winner”, but by providing insights on why and how best to optimize it. To do this, the researchers need qualitative research as much as quantitative – and they need it quickly and within budget.

The challenge of time is a constant for creative teams, and if the research can’t be completed quickly it is of little value. In this particular case, John St. was developing new brand positioning to rejuvenate an alcohol brand that had not seen any media against it for years. The team had developed four different territories and wanted to get feedback from category consumers about which one resonated most, and why. With this information, John St. could begin creative development with a solid strategy in place.

Our Solution

John St. has utilized Methodify, Sago’s automated quantitative research engine, for a long time. It provides the research team the ability to get the account teams the information needed to optimize creative quickly and efficiently. As John St. wanted to go deeper in this instance, it reached out to see if Sago could help incorporate a qualitative component to this research project.

The answer was simple – incorporate CRIS, an AI-enabled virtual moderator, with a quantitative study. This combination allowed John St. to employ an agile approach to testing the territories.

The process was simple:

1. John St. ran Methodify’s sequential monadic concept test with a qual component from CRIS. This provided quant findings and detailed qualitative feedback on each of the territoriesHere’s how it worked:
   • Targeted category users evaluated the territories, which were presented in rotated order as narrated PowerPoint slides. These were very early-stage ideas that included a description along with some images that represented the idea. Methodify’s Concept Test is very flexible and can accommodate concepts in a variety of different levels of finish
   • Immediately after respondents evaluated the territories quantitatively, a selection of them were chosen to participate in an AI-enabled text-based chat with CRIS. CRIS did a deep dive into the idea that each selected participant liked most to find out what about it resonated with them, how it made them feel about the brand, and what the reasons were that they liked it best
   • Three days later, as soon as field ended, the researchers at John St. got both a quantitative report and an automated qualitative report that included a sentiment analysis and an AI-derived text summarization of the findings on each idea
2. The research team presented the findings and recommendations to the account team and they immediately began work to incorporate the feedback and update the ideas
3. Two weeks later, John St. ran a quick quantitative test, which determined the idea it took to the next stage of creative development

Result

By using CRIS in conjunction with one of Methodify’s quant methods, John St. was able to quickly and cost-effectively gather all the information it needed. The research was easy to set up, and the results were displayed clearly in the reporting, making analysis simpler. Armed with this data, John St. could determine a clear direction to build creative on that both its team and the client brand had confidence in.

The team will now develop creative options against the winning territory. Once it is prepared John St. will once again utilize Methodify to test those ideas and make informed decisions on which to pursue based on robust and high-quality data.