• by July 16, 2001

If you're involved with consumer packaged goods (CPGs), you might find this latest release from Dynamic Logic interesting (and worth passing on to your creative team). The company recently studied the effects of creative elements on key branding metrics, and found that the CPG advertisers generally do a better job than non-CPG advertisers with message association and purchase intent.

According to the findings, CPGs lift message association by 19% on average, versus 12% for all campaigns Dynamic Logic tested. In the area of purchase intent, CPG campaigns beat the 1% normative lift with a 5% average lift.

"Traditional advertisers incorporate everything they have learned over years of experimentation," said Nick Nyhan, President of Dynamic Logic. "The tools of advertising may be new, but the rules of how people think are pretty much the same."

Notably, Dynamic Logic found some commonalities in the successful CPG campaigns. Specifically, online CPG ads were less cluttered (fewer than 16 elements), had a consistent logo (appearing 100% of the time), often incorporated a human face and used interactive qualities such as drop down menus or radio buttons (not just `click here' directions). In addition, the ads incorporating some type of informational value were more successful than ads with a direct sell.

Overall, message association showed the most dramatic improvement based on these ad elements. Message association was lifted an additional 35% on average with a less cluttered ad, that is 12% more than the 23% normative average. Similarly, a consistent logo helped to boost messaging by 37%, 20% higher than those with an inconsistent logo. Interactivity in ads and indirect sells showed the most improvement across all metrics.

A word of caution, though: as Molly Hislop, Director of Research and Product Development at Dynamic Logic, says that even armed with this data, "advertisers should test for themselves; there is no secret formula that works for everyone."