Here is the second post in our series of expert answers to your questions. This question was submitted to Ken Wong at the live event.
How do I use my value proposition to evaluate my advertising?
Ken’s response:
You can use a value proposition (VP) to evaluate anything from a single ad to an entire campaign. There are two things to remember:
First, we have to distinguish the “strategic” from the “creative” in advertising. Creative refers to the layout and tone of the ad. Strategic refers to the underlying message being conveyed and thinking behind the choice of that message and its supporting creative. Creative is largely, but not completely, evaluated in terms of the personal taste (of customers). Strategic content is evaluated against your VP. When someone says an ad (or anything else) is “on strategy”, it means it conveys or is aligned with the VP.
Second, and the reason we want things “on strategy” is that a VP is really a statement of how you create “value” for someone, or, more simply, why they do business with you. Advertising costs money and so there is little to be gained by spending money to advertise something that isn’t going to move your customer.
The starting point is to ask “Given my target customer…
- Am I placing this ad in media (print, coupons, TV, radio etc) this customer uses? At times they use it? (e.g. If your customer commutes to work, you advertise during their drive times and not during their work day)
- Is the language in the ad similar to something that customer would like or be drawn to?
- Is the ad going to be noticed by them?
Then move onto the message. Your value proposition is based on the customer buying the product to solve a “problem”. One of the goals is to ensure that when the buyer has that problem, they automatically think of you. Why will they do this? Because your advertising is constantly reminding them.
- Does the ad build an association between my product or service and a specific kind of need?
- Does it convey some information (whether via words, images, music etc) that lets them know how your product helps solve that problem?
Your VP also makes reference to the one or two things that makes you “special”: these are the differentiators that give the customer a reason to do business with you instead of someone else.
- Does the ad highlight my points of difference?
- Does it remind them of why those points of difference are important for them?
Finally, since your ad needs to be “believed”, the ad should also provide some evidence
- Does the advertising provide evidence using the measures the customer does (remember Buckley’s? They discovered the medicinal quality was often measured, by customers, on the basis of bad taste!)
- Alternatively, you can provide evidence not by showing the quality but rather by talking about what you do to create it (in the VP this is “what makes the difference possible?”)
Very few ads can answer “yes” to all of these questions because there is usually limited space or time (no one wants to look at 3pt type!) As long as some of these are covered AND the ad doesn’t contain anything that works against the other questions, it is still “on strategy”.
Now the only question is how much you should be willing to spend to create and show the ads.
