Ads That Perform Well In TV Have Only 50% Chance Of Performing Well In Digital: Kantar Creative Effectiveness Report

After testing and analysing over 12,000 creatives for its clients across the globe, of which 11% (nearly 1400 creatives) were from India, Kantar has unveiled some of the ads and advertising trends that were most effective and creative in 2023. 

This development comes at a time when the marketing data and analytics company had launched the Blueprint for Brand Growth.

Here are some of key highlights from this year’s report:

1. Learnings from Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth indicate that great advertising is rocket-fuel for building predisposition- growing meaningfully different brands in a more effective and efficient way. Creative quality, second only to brand size, greatly influences campaign profitability, with double the impact that reach does on brand salience. 
2. Kantar research emphasizes that ads must persuade and convey messages that are novel, credible, relevant, and different to enhance short-term sales. But high-quality ads, which leave a lasting impression, generally perform well in both short-term sales and long-term brand-building (Kantar LINK database), thus reducing the need to spend money on performance marketing. 
3. Beyond brand recognition, generating a strong emotional response is key, because emotion helps build strong memory structures, and most advertising effects are not immediate. Emotion plays a critical role in effective creative- and not just in TV content.

Having tested and analysed over 1400 creatives in India, here are some of the ad learnings from 2023 as highlighted by Kantar in this year’s Creative Effectiveness report:

1. Make purpose personal: 

About 65% of Indians will buy brands that stand for something they can identify with. While purpose or value led creatives open possibilities for highly emotively engaging creatives, the effective ones execute it in a manner such that it becomes personal to the consumers. 

2. License to surprise: 

Consumers are open to original creative ideas- ones that are hyper creative or break existing category codes. The reward for the brand lies in the ability to integrate the persuasive and meaningful impressions into the creative idea. Pre-testing helps identify the possible risks of comprehension and resonance. 

3. Going Native

Only 28% Indians (vs Global average 75%) have watched any ‘foreign’ content. Over 25 years of Kantar Link ad evaluation reveal a striking truth- ad transference across Indian regions is just about a third. This challenges the assumption that a single pan-India creative approach, even with universal and validated consumer insight, will yield positive returns on objectives. Brands are now refreshingly taking on the challenge and opportunity of engaging the Southern consumers differently from Hindi-speaking markets. Investing in original creatives, by going native on multiple dimensions- insights, creative idea and treatment and execution ensures maximizing of reward for the brand. 

4. Go deep and wide

The most efficient route to optimize budgets for creating ads that effectively crossover the transference challenge across the many Indias is to create regional adaptations by playing with backdrop, celebrity, casting, product window visualization, slogan etc. Go deep and wide is about taking a campaign pan India by starting with a pan India insight, creative idea and treatment but executed with some nativity elements to amplify the resonance with the regional markets. Pre-testing helps to identify whether the mix of insight, story and elements work together as intended and identify opportunities for improvement. 

5. Embed the Brand

The value of creativity starts with the brand. While executional elements like distinctive brand assets and consistency in advertising style are undeniable aids in ensuring that the brand takes credit for the impressions left behind by the creative, its potential is amplified when the brand is integral to the story. In Kantar’s top quartile ads compared to the bottom quartile ads, the company observed more consistency (+49%), greater use of established branding devices (+14%), and the inclusion of related music (+26%). 

6. Weave in the product story

Executions that can creatively integrate the specific competitive reasons to consider the brand into the narrative tend to be impactful. The role of creativity is thus not just to entertain but also leave behind vivid impressions that make the brand more meaningful to the consumers.

7. Specific learnings for the digital landscape:

a. Precision targeting is officially giving way to mass media avatar of Digital and there’s an increasing recognition of the importance of brand marketing on digital platforms. Creative Quality getting increasingly critical for ensuring ROI for digital- could unlock 35%+ incremental sales per impression.  

b. Effective content on TV does not automatically mean success in digital – Ads that perform well in TV have only a ~50% chance of performing well in digital. 

c. Emotional resonance significantly enhances digital advertising’s impact on brand building. Ads that evoke stronger emotions are 3.3x more likely to drive long-term brand equity and 2.75x more likely to generate impact compared to those with weaker emotional connections.

Commenting on this year’s findings, Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director and Chief Client Officer- South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar, said, “Earlier this year, Kantar launched the Blueprint for Brand Growth– a breakthrough understanding of how businesses build strong and profitable brands. One of the growth accelerators for building strong brands is to pre-dispose more people. Great advertising builds pre-disposition and loads the dice in favour of the brands. Creative content can and should punch above its weight”.

To this, Prasanna Kumar, Head of Creative Domain and Executive Vice President- South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar, added, “Truly creative ads are the ones that are effective. The journey from being just creative to being effective starts by including your key stakeholders – your target consumers, into the process by pre-testing your ads. This year we have seen some original creative ideas shine through by ensuring that they have brand and consumer at their heart.” 

In addition, to launching the report, Kantar also held an awards ceremony wherein brands’ creatives were judged by consumers as jury as the company believes that it is people who control a brand’s fortunes through their spending power and it is their voice that decides what is effective advertising. 

This time around, the India report shortlists stood at close to 300 ads after being tested across categories, markets, TGs and media channels and the winners list doubled from that of last year, with Kantar awarding 10 standout performers in the Television ads category and 4 in the Digital ads category. 

Television categories include Food and Beverage, Home Care, Personal Care, Services and Unstereotype. New categories introduced include ‘Original Creatives for South’, ‘Adaptations for South’, Most Creative and Effective TV Ad (overall) and Most Consistently Effective Advertiser. Creatives for Digital continue to grow this year as well, with Kantar awarding standout performers in 4 categories- 3 based on ‘Ad Length’ format and one for the Most Creative and Effective Digital Ad, for bringing to life the exciting storytelling possibilities in the digital world.

 Here is a list of brands that won this year at Kantar’s Creative Effectiveness Awards: