Tracking Advertising Recall

In the advertising industry, the media and creative departments work together to project brand values through advertising. There are many systems in use to forecast the potential effectiveness of either the creative input, through pre-testing or the media selected through judicious media planning. But since both approaches are applied before the launch of a campaign, they result in a promised not a realized performance.

We need to track the performance of the advertising effort to ensure that at least grosso modo it is performing for the client.

Currently, the only way to measure the effect of this effort is to commission a special study, with the attending professional problems of choosing an appropriate design, and incurring a cost penalty and response time delay. The best of the systems of post-testing is done once, after the campaign is finished, at which time it is too late to take any corrective action.

Brand values are subject to incremental increases through the diffusion of the effects of one’s own marketing communication, the negative effects (for our brand) due to the diffusion of competing brand values, and the negative effect of an interruption in advertising resulting in a complex process of forgetting, or of the degradation of the rank of the brand in top of mind, due to the rise of others.

What we are announcing today is the start of a new system of continuous, daily, shared cost, multi client survey to measure the awareness of advertising, promotional activities, and spontaneous brand awareness (top of mind), and changes thereof from month to month.

A. Objectives:

The proposed study will aim to measure the following main categories of information:

Product categories consumed, from a list of product categories, showing the 50 categories most frequently advertised
Products seen or heard advertised, spontaneous recall irrespective of media
Brands seen or heard advertised, spontaneous recall irrespective of media
Spontaneous brand awareness (top of mind and total) for a list of 50 top spending main products
Brands seen or heard advertised within list of product categories
Brands currently consumed within the same list of product categories
Spontaneous awareness of promotions, lotteries and give away gifts
Demographics

B. Research Design and Basic Parameters

The survey is a monthly survey conducted on a face to face basis, on a balanced daily basis. We shall interview about 50 respondents a day, using a questionnaire, in which questions cover the eight sets of variables listed in the "Objectives".

The interviews will be conducted in-home, with a represented sample of men and women, aged 18 - 65, in an extended definition of Greater Beirut: Nahr el Kalb to Khalde and up to 900 meters in the Mount Lebanon. This includes in addition to Beirut Municipal area, parts of Metn, Kesrouan, Baabda, and Aley.

Details of the sample, sampling, fieldwork management and other technical details are available to bona fide clients from the two companies.

C. Reports and their format

There are two standard report formats covered by every subscription:

a. stand-alone report, and
b. time series report.

At the end of every month (starting from delivery of the second report), we present two separate reports. In the first report, we present the results for that month, in the stand-alone report. The second report, available a week later, shall be the time series report. The stand-alone report is due on the tenth working day of the week following the end of the calendar month.

In every report, we feature results in numbers as percentages.

The stand-alone report consists of sets of tables as indicated in "report Outline" below, in addition to a statistical analysis of the sample in as many statistical tables as is necessary.

Interpretation of results is available as an option, at an additional cost.

Reports may be submitted in hard copy, or on diskette, or maybe sent by e-mail attachment, as requested by the client

All the components of reports will be prepared in a format compatible with MS Excel or other MS Office products-

Reports may be prepared in English, in Arabic or in French as indicated in the contract

Stand-alone as well as time series reports shall be delivered in Beirut, on the dates indicated.
Where clients require hard copy or reports on diskettes, to be delivered in other countries, an additional copy will be sent by e-mail on the appointed date, in order to reduce the impact of delays in transit.