Taking the devil out of the detail...

Part of the skill of ad research lies in getting respondents to look beyond the executional details of (often pretty ‘representative’!) stimulus to the underlying idea that will really make the finished ad. But as I’ve seen over the course of three weeks fieldwork in Ukraine, Croatia and Russia, seemingly innocent executional details can mean a lot more to a brand’s target audience than is sometimes realised… So in the particular ads we were researching for a well know global financial services provider (not Northern Rock!), the setting, the situation, the item purchased or the assumed relationship between characters could all have an effect on how they were understood. So what may have been a regular box of chocolates to a creative became a luxury item to a Russian consumer… an ad set in a Chinese restaurant sparked discussions as to what sort of person would go there and as such who the ad was aimed at… a fast paced as became a comment on the speed of a service… Not necessarily bad messages to be getting through but unintended and, more importantly, obscuring the actual intended communication. In this case, the search for meanings in the finer detail of an ad can be put down partly to lesser market maturity and product penetration - people are seeking reassurance about products and services that they are still getting used to. But we feel that there are also cultural forces at play… in our experience of research in Eastern Europe we have often come across this more rational interpretation of ads (we will leave the anthropological musings as to why for another post!). It is the core idea that is ultimately going to make or break an ad. With any luck (or some solid research in the early stages of ad development!) other details can help to explain that idea. But just as often they do exactly the opposite and actually obscure communication. And the more that is going on in an ad, the more room there is for misinterpretation. The devil really can be in the detail… if you want to avoid misunderstanding then it pays to focus on the core truth and beyond that try to keep things simple!