We tested two concepts for a product with two different situations of an emotional payoff. The emotional payoff was itself built on top of a very simple functional feature of the product. Two different focus group researches told us that the emotional payoff, wasn’t working given the current category context (or it was too layered to comprehend). So, in the communication brief developed post this research, we kept the product promise to the functional space.
But, we also stated it to be the primary benefit and asked, if possible, to convey the emotional payoff as a secondary benefit. This very difficult task of convincing the consumer basis a non registering emotional payoff, was left to the good folks at the creative agency.
The creative agency basis this brief came back with two routes. One on the functional feature of the product and the second on the emotional payoff. And no guesses for what I preferred – the route delivering on the emotional payoff. I wanted multiple scripts on this route alone. They nonetheless, came back with scripts on both the routes. And no guesses for which ones I preferred again.
I had become greedy. I latched on to a script which sort of delivered the emotional payoff in a creative way knowing very well that at the concept stage, it didn’t work for various reasons.
Post multiple rounds of back and forth on the scripts, I had to give in, and take forward the script delivering on the functional feature. It was only during early stages of testing that I realised that this script didn’t set up the need for the functional feature! And it couldn’t – the need behind the insight tested in the concept was set up to deliver the emotional benefit.
This was the biggest mistake I made in 2018 as a marketer.
