The spot that struck me in the funny bone and itched my insights-seeking scratch was Novartis’ Relax Your Tight End. While it was both funny and easy on the eyes, it caught my attention because it was grounded in the insight that many men avoid prostate cancer screenings because it’s pretty damn uncomfortable.
Being able to see a compelling consumer insight driving a Super Bowl campaign delighted my ad testing soul. Luckily, my husband wasn’t very interested in the game either and didn’t mind when I talked his ear off about how great the ad was for the next several minutes. In the end, I concluded the insights team at Novartis deserved a big round of applause for seeing their work come through so clearly on such a big stage.
Gaining Agency Trust
Not all consumer insights behind campaigns are as blatantly obvious as the Novartis example. Basing a campaign on a strong insight can help ensure it resonates with consumers. It’s that resonance that we as insights professionals should be looking for when looking for consumer feedback on potential advertising.
You might have noted, I said, “consumer feedback on potential advertising” not “ad testing.” As both a research supplier and corporate researcher, I’ve learned, like men avoiding prostate cancer screening, many ad agency folks are very leery of ad testing. In their defense, it’s often because they have experienced testing as grading of their homework accompanied by amateur suggestions on how exactly it should be changed.
If someone other than an insights professional I trusted came up to me and said, “Your proposed study design sucks and here’s how you need to change it,” I’d probably want to tell them to put their feedback where the sun doesn’t shine. Gaining an agency’s trust that you will respect them during the research process can be tricky. Have no fear, it can be done in as little as three “easy” steps:
- Get the driving consumer insights in the creative brief.
- Align on when and how to gain consumer feedback.
- Select a testing system that provides diagnostics… not just overall measures.
Reaching Internal Alignment
Before establishing trust with an outside agency, you need to build trust with your internal partners. Whether creative briefs are written by members of your MarCom team or your agency’s brand planners, working with these folks to have consumer insights clearly stated in their briefs will only make the work stronger. This includes clear definitions of the target market for the ad beyond demographics. Who are the people you are trying to reach, what action do you want them to take, and how are you going to get them to do it? Using the Novartis example, I’d imagine the answers to these questions were:
- Target market: Middle-aged men and the women who care about them.
- Desired action: Stop putting off prostate cancer screening.
- How we’ll get them to do it: Convince them a simple blood test is so much easier, and definitely worth it.
Winning Consumer Feedback Opportunities
Next, you need to decide when and how to gain consumer feedback once your agency has come up with answers to the brief. Since I have no clue what the Novartis team did, I’ll use development of Johnsonville’s Keep It Juicy campaign as an example. The research purist in me always would love to expose multiple campaign ideas to consumers via qualitative before turning some into animatics and quant testing them. In reality, that doesn’t always happen. Keep It Juicy was one of those campaigns.
Shortly after we selected the idea that would become Keep It Juicy, our agency made a rough cut of the spot with found assets and scratch VO. Dying to get some consumer feedback, I asked a moderator to show it to some multicultural consumers at the end of some focus groups we were conducting on a different topic. A single stock image in the spot was a red flag to the consumers and we realized that there was lots of potential for our depictions of folks from different backgrounds coming together at block parties, potlucks, and brunch to get phony, fast. The team quickly concluded, “Uh oh. We need help.”
I recognized the opportunity for consumer feedback and seized on it. I strongly recommended we hire a multicultural research agency to consult with us as we developed the ad. Having someone with expertise in this area could help us see through the many blind spots we, as a bunch of older Millennial/Gen X marketers sitting in a corn field in Sheboygan County, WI, would likely have. I pitched it as insurance… since we were going to film the ads before testing them, having someone looking at production through a multicultural lens was a small price to pay to avoid becoming the next big national brand to get canceled.
To avoid any skepticism around non-creatives stepping on the creatives’ toes, I assured them their feedback would always include WHY something was of concern. They as the creatives would be responsible for HOW to incorporate the feedback. While it wasn’t consumer “testing,” it helped us get the voice of the consumer represented long before production to up our chances of increasing resonance. As this example illustrates, consumer feedback can come in a variety of ways if you get a bit creative yourself.
Going for Gold: Ad Testing Standards
Finally, ad testing is the gold standard for understanding if the ad will resonate. Selecting the right testing platform for your company and agency is key to it being seen as a valuable tool rather than a time-consuming barrier. There are lots of systems out there. Here are the criteria I use when selecting them:
- Quick – Often production schedules don’t have lots of time built into them to allow for testing and revisions. The days of testing taking weeks to get a full report are gone. The easiest way to get ad testing cut out of the process is if the timeline is too long. There are lots of great online systems that can provide quality information in days, or even hours when needed. Use one of them.
- Cost effective – The traditional ad testing systems of yore also used to cost a lot of money. This often meant you could only test an ad once, make changes, and then hope for the best. Along with speed, many online testing systems are now extremely cost effective which allow for retesting after edits have been made to see if changes actually improved the ad as hoped.
- Diagnostic – While many systems hang their hats on a single number or two, the more important information to share with your agency is the why. Look for an ad testing system that will truly help you understand how and why an ad is resonating, or not. I’ve found those that provide detailed feedback on what is or isn’t catching viewers’ attention and engaging them, what is driving their emotions, and what messages they are taking away are the best at helping explain back to your agency the WHY something is working or not. Your agency then can use the diagnostic information as they work on HOW something is working or not.
- Not Optimizing – Even before AI, ad testing systems often include questions asking consumers how they would suggest changing the ad. In the AI driven world, some systems use AI to suggest how to change an ad. I never share either piece of feedback with our agency. At most I look through the responses/AI recommendations to see the themes on what they would change, not how they would change them. This is key to establishing trust with your agency. Don’t tell them how to do their job. Let them decide.
Keeping it Real
Again, the Keep It Juicy campaign is a great example of effective ad testing in action. Because we used a quick, cost effective, diagnostic testing system, we were able to test each execution multiple times, when needed to understand what was working and what wasn’t, give our agency feedback, allow them time to make tweaks, and then retest.
Our main sixty second intro spot was tested four times to make sure, as we added key elements like famous music and celebrity voiceover, we didn’t detract from how it resonated with our target. Our MarCom team and agency now see testing as a critical step to our advertising success, and both proactively make sure to allow both time and budget in their production plans for multiple rounds of testing when they are needed.
If your company or agency needs any further proof that, like early prostate cancer screening, ad testing can be painless and provide great results: the Keep It Juicy campaign resonated with consumers AND drove sales.
Last May, I sat next to our agency’s Chief Creative Officer at the 2025 Effie Award dinner. At one point in the evening, he leaned over and said, “Karen, I have to say, you have been the best consumer insights person I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve met a lot over the years. You are truly a partner, and you have no idea how much I appreciate that.” I smiled and said, “Thanks Brian, I appreciate the partnership we’ve developed, too.”
About an hour later, Johnsonville and Hold Fast were awarded a Silver Effie in the Marketing Disruptor category.
Editor’s Note: Check out Johnsonville’s Keep it Juicy campaign on the company’s YouTube channel.
Video: “Relax Your Tight End,” Super Bowl commercial, courtesy of Novartis.
