Is your campaign different enough?

I was listening to the radio the other day, when I heard an interesting interview with Lindsey Stirling of 'dubstep violin' fame. What caught my attention was what Stirling had to say about YouTube's role in her success. Without YouTube, she said, she would never have been successful, because everyone she contacted in the music industry thought her music was too different.

In the interview, Stirling talks about how YouTube gave her the opportunity to connect directly to her audience. She states: "The very reason people said I would never succeed is the very same reason that people travel to see the shows. It's the reason they subscribe to my YouTube channel. It's different."

Just Google "dubstep violin" and you will see how popular Stirling has become. Videos like 'Crystallize' have attracted 98 million views on YouTube.

That's nice, you might think, and it is a familiar story, even if the number of artists who make it big on YouTube is still pretty small in the scheme of things. However, I think there is a lesson here for anyone involved in advertising. We cannot easily judge what is different - too different or not different enough - because it is so easy to become blinkered by what we know about our brand, its competition, and what works today.

The only people who can judge whether a campaign is likely to resonate and differentiate your brand are your target audience. This fact might seem obvious, but then an awful lot of people in management and marketing seem to end up ignoring it. They make assumptions about what will work without checking out their understanding with consumers. They also make assumptions about what is too different to be successful, thus potentially missing out on a dubstep violin-scale success.

We know from our analysis, that campaigns which are perceived to be different from other brands' advertising in the category work harder (for more on this see Alex Hernandez-Brun's POV 'Dare to be Different' - awarded a Merit in the Atticus Awards). However, you can also be too different. As Alex notes, it is campaigns that are different and perceived to fit with what the brand stands for that work hardest. Go too far in the direction of being different for difference's sake and you risk undermining what your brand stands for in buyers' minds.

Live gigs or a platform like YouTube will soon give you a sense of whether music is different and resonates with the audience or not. It is more challenging to test an ad campaign that way, particularly if you do not want to tip off a competitor, or your online audience does not represent the majority of buyers. This is where pre-testing comes in. Pre-tests offer you the chance to show your potential ad campaign to its target audience and see how they respond. Do they like it? Will it differentiate your brand? What impression will it leave?

So now this is my chance to get some feedback. Why would you not pre-test your ad with the very people it is meant to affect?

The author is Nigel Hollis, executive VP and chief global analyst, Millward Brown. Reprinted with permission.
Link: http:// www.millwardbrown.com / global-navigation/blogs/post/mb-blog/ 2014/07/30/how-do-you-know-if-your-campaign-is-different-enough