MT219 Unit 8 Advertising Evaluation Example

7,400 Kits at $32.43 Each, and Then What: A Unit 8 Advertising Evaluation of a Creator Video Campaign

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT219: Marketing

Unit 8 Advertising Evaluation

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Brightdrop Home, the campaign, its results and the comparison channel are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Campaign

For six weeks in the spring, Brightdrop Home ran short creator videos in which a tablet hit the water and turned it to spray in a sunlit apartment kitchen, closing on the brand's water-shipping slogan. The videos ran on two social platforms through paid promotion of about [thirty] creators' posts, with a budget of [$240,000] covering creator fees and media. Every video linked to a starter kit page with a creator-specific discount code.

The Objective

The brief, quoted from the brand's planning document, set one objective: acquire 10,000 new starter kit buyers at a cost per acquisition under [$30]. It set no target for awareness, for reorders or for which kind of buyer the campaign should reach. The brief also did not say how buyers from the campaign would be tracked after their first order, so the reorder figures below come from matching discount codes to later orders by email address, which misses buyers who reordered under a different address.

Results Against the Objective

The campaign produced about [18.6 million] impressions and [7,400] starter kit sales tracked through the discount codes. Against the objective, it reached 74 percent of the buyer target. Its cost per acquisition was [$240,000] divided by [7,400], or [$32.43], about [$2.43] above the ceiling. Click-through and conversion rates were in line with the brand's earlier social campaigns. By its own standard, the campaign fell short but not by much, and the brand's marketing team recorded it as a near miss. The creative was also rated well in a post-campaign survey: viewers remembered the fizzing tablet and could name the brand, which is more than many first campaigns achieve.

The Question the Objective Forgot

A starter kit buyer is valuable only if she reorders. Unit 3 showed that more than a third of first-year buyers never bought a second box, and the brand earns little on a kit sold at a discount. Gupta et al. (2004) argued that customers should be valued by the future profits they bring, not by the cost of acquiring them, and that is the test the brief left out.

The brand's records allow a cohort comparison. Of the [7,400] creator campaign buyers, about [22] percent reordered within ninety days, or about [1,628] people. In the same period, buyers who arrived through search ads and friend referrals, at a cost per acquisition of about [$41], reordered at about [38] percent.

Dividing the campaign's cost by the buyers who stayed gives a different picture. The creator campaign spent about [$147] for each buyer who reordered. The search and referral channels spent about [$108]. The channel that looked cheaper per kit was about a third more expensive per retained customer.

The campaign bought kits cheaply and kept customers expensively.

Why the Reorder Rate Was Low

Three explanations fit the evidence. The discount code drew deal seekers who tried the kit because it was cheap. The videos reached the audience the Unit 7 critique identified, urban renters who use one bottle a month or less, rather than the heavy-use households the brand now targets. And the creators showed the product dissolving rather than cleaning, so buyers did not learn what it would do for their kitchens.

Lavidge and Steiner (1961) laid out a ladder of effects that runs from first awareness up to the purchase itself, and argued that each rung calls for its own measure. The campaign was strong at awareness and weak at conviction, which is the stage that produces a second order.

What the Brand Should Measure Next Time

Binet and Field (2013), reviewing a large set of advertising effectiveness cases, found that campaigns judged only on short-term response tended to undervalue longer-term effects on brand and loyalty. Brightdrop's next brief should set at least three objectives: new buyers at a target cost, a ninety-day reorder rate for those buyers, and the share of buyers from the heavy-use segment, measured by household size and tablet volume. Creators should be chosen partly by who their followers are, with a share of the budget reserved for parents whose kitchens resemble the target's. It should also hold back the discount code from part of the audience to see whether the code is attracting buyers who would not stay.

Verdict

Judged against its brief, the campaign was a near miss, a respectable first effort for a young brand. Judged against what the brand needs, it was an expensive way to sell starter kits to people who mostly did not come back. The creative was memorable and should be kept for awareness, perhaps at a lower budget aimed at reach rather than kit sales, but the brand's acquisition spending should shift toward channels and messages that reach households that will reorder.

References

Binet, L., & Field, P. (2013). The long and the short of it: Balancing short and long-term marketing strategies. Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

Gupta, S., Lehmann, D. R., & Stuart, J. A. (2004). Valuing customers. Journal of Marketing Research, 41(1), 7-18. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.41.1.7.25084

Lavidge, R. J., & Steiner, G. A. (1961). A model for predictive measurements of advertising effectiveness. Journal of Marketing, 25(6), 59-62. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224296102500611