New Research Methods To Strengthen The Impact Of Advertising Creative
A White Paper from the ARF Creative Council
How can research help advertising move beyond what consumers say they feel to uncover the deeper emotional forces that actually shape response and choice?
This was one of the questions explored by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Creative Council in its white paper, New Research Methods to Strengthen the Impact of Advertising Creative. The research examined how the creative-development landscape is evolving—from extensions of traditional research methods to recently adopted approaches and newly emerging tools.
To identify innovative approaches, the ARF Creative Council Research Working Group drew on the experience of its members, commissioned additional research through the ARF Knowledge Center, canvassed the wider Creative Council community and contacted companies identified as bringing new thinking to creative research.
BRAND AVIATORS® was among the companies consulted in the preparation of the white paper and was included in the exploration of newly emerging tools.
The significance goes beyond finding new ways to test advertising. Creative effectiveness begins earlier. Before deciding how a brand should communicate, marketers need to understand what the brand should mean, which deeper human motives it can authentically activate, and how those motives can shape its positioning and creative strategy.
This is where THE WHEEL OF MOTIVES® adds a different layer to conventional consumer research. Drawing on biology, affective neuroscience and psychology, it provides a framework for moving beyond surface-level emotions and stated consumer responses to identify the deeper motivational systems underlying them. These insights can then be translated into brand strategy and positioning and, from there, into the language, narratives, concepts, sensory cues and other creative expressions through which the brand communicates.
In this way, emotion becomes more than something advertising research measures after creative ideas have been developed. It becomes an input into what the brand stands for and what the creative should be built to express.
The ARF white paper places this approach within a broader examination of how emerging research methods can give creative professionals new ways to understand consumers, brands and the emotional forces that connect them.
Read the original ARF white paper here: