Digital campaigns for FMCG brands with a relatively low share of consumer awareness (for example low market share brands or new product launches), on average tend to drive larger brand metric improvements than campaigns for better known brands.
In four of the five metrics tested, low awareness brands (defined as those with a spontaneous brand recall score of under 20%) outperform high awareness brands (those with a spontaneous brand recall of over 20%) in terms of brand effectiveness. While it seems intuitive that FMCG campaigns with lower baselines will find it easier to record significant metric improvements following campaign exposure, this difference is particularly pronounced for brand consideration where ads for low awareness brands drive uplifts of over four times that seen for high awareness brands. It also highlights how hard it is for established brands to move the needle.
As WARC recently reported, brand consideration tends to be a measure that reflects a consumer’s claims of likely future behaviour by combining what consumers want (attitudinal) and what their memories of past purchase experiences tell them they are likely to buy in reality (in-market reality). With relatively fewer past purchase experiences for consumers to draw on for lesser known brands, brand consideration may be primarily driven by attitudinal factors in these instances – factors digital is demonstrably good at shifting.
Ultimately, whatever the metric, the relative prominence of brands in the consumer mindset and subsequent control baseline for a brand metric are clearly important considerations when benchmarking campaign results and giving the most accurate read on campaign success. From March 2018, On Device Research will be benchmarking all digital campaign results by industry category and relative brand awareness where sample size allows.
For more information on the metrics that you should be using to measure and benchmark digital campaign impact, download the On Device Research Brand Advertisers’ Guide to Digital Effectiveness here.
