One extra word in the voice-over, a different company in people’s minds
- Segment
- Energy
- Topic
- Campaign evaluation before airing
- Method
- Qualitative pretest with online focus groups
The starting point
A large energy company was preparing an institutional campaign for a period of change. The campaign needed to talk about transformation, progress and the future, and build a new story about the company.
The ads were ready and the concepts looked strong. But in an institutional campaign, a single image, line or word in the voice-over can change the meaning of an entire ad. And once a campaign is on air, correcting an unintended interpretation costs far more than preventing it.
The company decided to test before airing.
A test designed not to lead responses
A pretest only works if people react to the ad, not to how it was presented. So the online focus groups were designed with three safeguards:
Participants weren’t told the topic in advance, so they arrived without a ready-made opinion about the company.
The ads were shown in a different order in each group, so the first ad people saw didn’t get an unfair advantage.
Before giving their opinion, each participant described what they had seen: the scenes they remembered, the message they took away and how they’d explain it to someone else.
- Group 1ABC
- Group 2BCA
- Group 3CAB
The goal wasn’t to find out whether people liked the films. It was to find out what the films made them think.
Separating the parts to understand the whole
Besides the full films, concepts and lines were shown on their own, without images or music. That revealed what each idea communicated by itself and helped catch interpretations the creative team hadn’t anticipated.
The study also evaluated the rest of the execution: the visuals, how images and voice-over worked together, the choice of voice, the link to the brand and the use of the company’s own employees in the films.
- Images
- Voice-over
- Voice
- Music
- Brand
- Company people
- Concepts and sentencespresented on their own
One word, two positionings
In one of the ads, two versions were practically identical. The only difference was a passage in the voice-over.
It looked like a copywriting detail. The research showed it wasn’t. Each version framed the company’s transformation from a different angle and created different perceptions of it.
Choosing between the two versions was therefore a positioning choice.
What changed for the customer
Instead of simply being told which film was better, the company got guidance to refine concepts, adjust messages, revisit creative choices and head off risks before the campaign went public.
In communication, the viewer has the final say. A pretest is the chance to hear it before the premiere.