Marketing Communications

308 CHAPTER 9 ADVERTISING RESEARCH

Isolating the effect of an advertising campaign is not always obvious. The following two examples illustrate this.^17

Example 1

A small bank advertised a savings account with an interest rate that was twice that of the major banks at the time.

The campaign results (campaign in Year 1 and Year 2) were the following:

BUSINESS INSIGHT

How can the effect of an advertising campaign be isolated?

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

Spontaneous brand awareness 7% 9% 10%

Aided brand awareness 45% 47% 66%

Correct attribution of account to bank 9% 36% 55%

The following chart indicates the evolution of the number of account holders, as well as the advertising periods.

On the basis of the communications effects, the communications campaign seems to have been successful.

Obviously, the number of clients increased substantially each time an advertising wave took place. The question is:

Is this increase attributable to the advertising effort or to the intrinsic attractiveness of the product, i.e. the high

interest rate, that is simply communicated to the target audience?

Example 2

A chain of do-it-yourself supermarkets launched a radio advertising campaign. The commercial results of the super-

markets look as follows (campaign in Year 2, Year 3 and Year 4):

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