FMCG · Advertising effectiveness
Predicting when a TV ad starts working, and when it wears out
P&G · MediaCom · India, Philippines, Japan, China
- Categories
- Laundry, haircare, skincare, feminine care
- Inputs
- Copy tests, brand tracker, media data
- Output
- Wear-in/wear-out calculator
- Duration
- About two years
The challenge
Without a way to predict a copy's life, TV ads could come off air before they had delivered their full impact. The question was how long a given copy takes to build impact, and how much airtime it can carry before it wears out.
The approach
- Linked pre-test copy scores to copy-level brand tracker KPIs and media weights
- Built wear-out grids that predict the GRP level at which a copy loses impact, by copy-quality band
- Identified what makes a copy wear in fast or slowly (suspense, celebrity, demonstration, strong claims, consistent mnemonics) and what that means for media planning
- Packaged it as a calculator planners could use
My role
I did the work end to end: gathering historical tracker, copy-test and media data, the wear-in and wear-out analysis, building the calculator, scaling it to new markets and writing the client decks. My manager and I developed the wear-in principles and analysis approach together.
The outcome
Piloted in India, then scaled to the Philippines, Japan and China, where a validation exercise confirmed the predictions held. In the India laundry review, most of the copies analysed had come off air before reaching their predicted potential, which made the case for planning copy rotation on evidence.