What Matters Most in Advertising Campaigns

What matters most in
advertising campaigns?
The relative effect of media expenditure
and message content strategy
Bas van den Putte
University of Amsterdam
Three main factors determine the effect of advertising campaigns: message content strat-
egy, advertising expenditure and previous consumer behaviour. This study investigates
the relative strength of each of these influences. Four possible campaign targets are taken
into account: campaign recall, campaign likeability, brand recall and intention to purchase
the advertised brand. A study of 40 advertising campaigns, evaluated on average by 1200
consumers, shows that, after controlling for the effect of previous purchase behaviour,
the effect of message content strategy is generally larger than the effect of advertising
expenditure. Nevertheless, more media expenditure positively influences campaign
recall and influences brand recall and purchase intention of small brands. The most effec-
tive message content strategy differs per campaign target, but overall awareness and like-
ability strategies are most effective. For purchase intention only, the emotions strategy
can be advised. The information strategy is best avoided.
Introduction
Every year, more and more money is spent on advertising. Between 1997
and 2006, television expenditures rose by 24% in the United Kingdom,
by 43% in the Netherlands, and as much as 57% in the US (Trends in
Advertising Expenditure 2007). But is all this money well spent.? Lodish
et al. (1995) found that increasing the television advertising budget was
effective for 55% of the brand introductions studied, but only for 33% of
the established brands (though a recent update of this study showed that
advertising campaigns became more effective after 1995 - Hu et al. 2007).
In a test of 63 on-air commercials, Gibson (1996) found that only 19% had
International Journal of Advertising, 28(4), pp. 669-690
2009 Advertising Association
Published by the World Advertising Research Center, www.warc.com
DOI: 10.2501/S0265048709200813 669
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING, 2009, 28(4)
a significant positive effect on brand preference of consumers who saw the
commercial (and 8% of the commercials even had a significant negative
effect). Jones (1995a) studied the campaigns for 78 brands and found that
70% of them had a positive short-term effect, but only 46% had a positive
long-term effect. Based on these and similar studies of real-world advertis-
ing, both Maclnnis et al (2002) and Tellis et al (2005) concluded that, on
average, increased advertising exposure had only small positive effects on
the responses of consumers, if any.
These results raise the question of how advertising budgets can be bet-
ter spent in order to stimulate more consumers to purchase the advertised
brands. Of course, the amount of advertising is not the only determinant
of advertising success. The content of the advertisement can also matter:
the message content strategy. A huge advertising budget, making sure
that the target group encounters the advertising campaign several times,
is useless if the commercials themselves do not convey an effective mes-
sage. Likewise, a brilliantly made commercial is useless if no one sees it.
Both advertising expenditure and message content strategy are under the
advertiser's control, though limited by practical and financial considera-
tions, and each has an important influence on the advertising effects.
The effects of media spending and message content variables have
been studied extensively. However, few studies have compared the effect
of message content strategies with the effect of advertising expenditure,
though there is some evidence from an early study that message quality
had far more influence than advertising expenditure on changes in mar-
ket share (Buzzell 1964). Aaker and Carman (1982) gave an overview of
studies that tested either advertising expenditure or advertising copy, but
none of these tested expenditure and copy simultaneously. They found
that increased advertising expenditure had a positive effect on short-term
sales in 30% of the studies, whereas variation in advertising copy showed
significant differences in 47% of the studies. These results suggest that
variation in message content strategy has more effect than variation in
advertising expenditure. However, it is hard to draw a conclusion, because
none of the studies examined the effect of variation in message strategy
and advertising expenditure simultaneously. The present study combined
both variables in order to gain more insight into the relative influence of
media spending and message content strategies on advertising effect vari-
ables. Because effects might not be independent, the interaction effect
670
WHAT MATTERS MOST IN ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS?
between message content strategies and media expenditure was also
taken into account.
Of course, there are other relevant independent variables in addition
to media expenditure and message content strategies, the most important
of which is probably past purchase behaviour. It is likely that consumers
remember the brands they usually buy the best, and that they will buy the
same brands again. Many people are loyal to one brand or to a small set of
brands. For example, Batra etal. (1995) found that advertising expenditure
had no effect on purchase intention ( = 0.01), but that previous behaviour
had a large effect on it ( = 0.79). Tellis (1988) found similar results.
The present study tested a simple model to explain consumer behav-
iour that included all three of these aspects: media expenditure, message
content strategies and previous consumer behaviour. The study examined
which of these three variables had the most influence on campaign recall,
campaign appreciation, brand recall and purchase intention. This study
was unique in several aspects. First, these three factors have never been
combined in one research design before. Whereas some studies have
examined the effect of media expenditure (e.g. Jones 1995a; McDonald
1996), and others have investigated the effect of message content ele-
ments (e.g. Stewart & Furse 1986; Belch et al. 1987), media expenditure
and content have seldom been combined in one study. Second, though
many studies have shown that past behaviour has an enormous influence
on future behaviour (e.g. Tellis 1988; Batra et al. 1995), the influence of
previous behaviour on advertising effects has often been ignored. Third,
whereas previous studies on content elements have often employed forced
exposure in theatre settings or experiments (e.g. Stewart & Furse 1986;
Laskey et al. 1995), the present study investigated the effects of natural
exposure to campaigns, by interviewing consumers who were exposed to
the campaign over several weeks in their own homes during the period
that the campaign aired on television.
Message content strategies
There are many ways to look at message content strategies, and various
typologies have been developed (e.g. Rossiter et al. 1991; Laskey et al.
1995; Taylor 1999). The present study used a typology originally devel-
oped by Franzen (1999) and further developed by Van den Putte (2002,
671
2006). This typology stipulates that every successful brand must meet
three basic conditions.
First, people must know the brand, be aware of it. Awareness is impor-
tant because consumers generally do not choose brands that are unknown
to them (Rossiter etal. 1991). They tend to prefer brands that are known
to them, even if they are confronted with unfamiliar brands of better qual-
ity (e.g. Hoyer & Brown 1990; MacDonald & Sharp 2000). Brand aware-
ness can be achieved by designing a campaign that stands out, by doing
something different from the competition, by doing something that draws
attention. This is called the awareness strategy.
Second, people must like the brand. This goal can be achieved by using
humour or by amusing people in another way. This is called the likeability
strategy. The rationale for this strategy is that appreciation of the advertise-
ment is transferred to the brand, which is thus also liked (Muehling &
MeCann 1993).
Third, the brand must fulfil a consumer need. This need may already
be felt by the consumer, or it can be induced by the campaign. Whereas
the awareness and likeability strategy are more or less relevant for all
product categories - though the creative execution can differ - the type of
eonsumer need varies enormously over product categories or even brands.
The message content strategy thus depends on the relevant consumer
need: it can be instrumental, emotional, hedonistic, normative or social
(for the corresponding strategies, see Van den Putte 2002; Van den Putte
& Dhondt 2005). The present study concentrated on two major strategies,
the information strategy and the emotions strategy. These appear in many
typologies and are the ones most relevant to the product categories used in
this study: cleaning products and food products. The information strategy
communicates instrumental advantages. For example, people buy wash-
ing powder primarily to make their laundry clean, so a commercial might
give information about the instrumental advantages of the product. The
emotions strategy eoncentrates on the emotional consequences of product
use, creating a completely different kind of commercial - for example, a
happy family enjoying a cup of coffee. Finally, another strategy is also rele-
vant for this study, the sales-response strategy. Campaigns using this strategy
might mention a temporary discount, or offer consumers a gift if they buy
the brand this week. This is an important strategy because research has
shown that advertising in combination with promotions had more effect
672
WHAT MATTERS MOST IN ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS.?
than advertising that was not combined with promotions (Jones 1995b).
Bemmaor and Mouchoux (1991) found that advertised price reductions
increased sales between 20% and 180% more than unadvertised in-store
price reductions.
iVIedia expenditure
Media expenditure is often evaluated using GRPs (gross rating points).
This is a statistic that indicates the reach of a campaign among members of
the target group. The GRP measure takes into account both the number of
people that are exposed and the number of times each person is exposed.
It is generally assumed that the more GRPs a campaign achieves, the
more likely it is to achieve its communication and marketing objectives.
Of course, the success of a campaign may depend not only on the GRPs
it achieves, but also on the GRPs that competitors' campaigns achieve.
Perhaps, it is less important how much a brand is advertised than that it be
advertised more than other brands in the same product category. Thus, a
distinction must be made between absolute and relative GRPs. The rela-
tive GRPs represent the GRPs achieved as a percentage of total number
of GRPs obtained by all competing brands in the product category. This is
generally called share-of-voice. The absolute number of GRPs, independ-
ent of competitors' efforts, is called voice in this study.
Campaign effects
So far, the term campaign effects has been used in a general way. Of course,
this is much too simple, as a campaign can have many different effects.
The first distinction that needs to be made is between what people think,
feel and know about the commercials in the campaign - the advertisement
effects - and what people think, feel and know about the advertised brand
- the brand effects. This study considers two advertisement effects - cam-
paign recall and campaign appreciation - and two brand effects - brand
recall and purchase intention.
The awareness strategy is the best strategy to increase campaign recall
and brand recall because it attempts to attract attention to the campaign
and brand. Gampaign and brand recall are also influenced by voice and
share-of-voice. Most likely, share-of-voice has more effect than voice.
673
because campaigns that achieve more exposure relative to their com-
petitors are more successful in increasing recall (Rossiter & Percy 1998,
pp. 222-223). If brand recall is already large, it might be difficult to
increase it further. Therefore, larger effects are expected for small brands.
The best way to increase campaign appreciation is the use of the like-
ability strategy. Because appreciation of a campaign depends mainly on
the campaign's content, it will not be influenced by media expenditure.
Nevertheless, increase in voice might have a negative effect on campaign
appreciation if consumers get irritated as a result of overexposure.
To influence purchase intention, the campaign should address relevant
consumer needs. Therefore, the information strategy is probably most
effective for cleaning products, and the emotions strategy for food prod-
ucts. Eor both product categories, it is also important that people are aware
of the brand and have a generally positive feeling towards it. Therefore,
the awareness and likeability strategy might be effective for both product
categories. This equally holds for the sales-response strategy because a
temporary discount probably has a positive effect on purchase intention.
Intention to purchase a brand will also be increased by media expenditure,
especially share-of-voice. It is expected that this effect will be stronger for
small brands because there are more consumers that have not yet tried
these brands.
Overview of the study
This study examined the effects of 40 advertising campaigns in two main
product categories: cleaning products and food products. Four effects
were included: campaign recall, campaign appreciation, brand recall and
purchase intention. Three types of influence were considered: message
content strategies, media expenditure and previous consumer behaviour.
The main aim of this study was to see which of these three independent
variables influenced the four dependent variables most.
Method
As mentioned, 40 advertising campaigns were studied: 18 campaigns for
cleaning products and 22 campaigns for food and candy products. These
two main product categories were further divided into ten subcategories
674
(e.g. all-purpose cleaner, dishwasher detergent, meal sauces, chocolate
bars), so that share-of-voice could be calculated. This was calculated as
a percentage of the total GRPs achieved by all competing brands in a
subcategory.
Intomart GfK, a Dutch market research organisation, conducted the
interviews on behalf of SPOT (Foundation for Promoting and Optimising
Television Advertisements). A random sample of Dutch households was
taken, and telephone interviews were conducted with the person in each
household who did most of the daily shopping. The response rate was
30%. Each respondent answered questions about two of the 40 campaigns.
On average, 1200 respondents were interviewed per campaign. The sur-
vey was conducted over a period of 30 weeks, but respondents were asked
only about campaigns that had run on television in the eight weeks prior
to their interview.
Intomart GfK also maintains 2L people meter panel o 1300 households that
is used by Dutch advertising companies to measure the GRPs a campaign
achieves on national television. The data from this panel were used to esti-
mate the GRPs of each of the campaigns in the eight weeks prior to each
interview. Both voice (absolute number of GRPs that a campaign reached)
and share-of-voice (GRPs reached compared to the GRPs reached by all
competing brands in the same product category) were estimated. Though
both the people meter panel and the survey sample were random samples
of the Dutch population, sample differences were taken into account. The
number of GRPs found in the complete people meter panel was corrected
by taking into account the characteristics of the respondents in the survey
sample (including their television viewing behaviour) in order to estimate
as closely as possible the number of GRPs achieved in the survey sample.
This varied over the campaigns from six GRPs to 954 GRPs.
Questionnaire
This study focused on differences between campaigns. Thus, the advertis-
ing campaign was the unit of analysis, rather than the individual respond-
ent. The average scores for campaign recall, campaign appreciation, brand
recall, purchase intention and previous behaviour were calculated over all
respondents. The following questions were asked (in the order presented
here).
675
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OE ADVERTISING, 2009, 28(4)
Brand recall: an open question asked respondents to name all the brands
they could think of in a certain product category (e.g. all-purpose clean-
ers). Brand recall was operationalised as top-of-mind brand recall - that
is, the flrst brand that a respondent mentioned. On average, the brands
in this study were top-of-mind for 13% of the respondents, ranging
between 1% and 65%.
Campaign recall: respondents indicated which advertisements they
remembered having seen in the past few weeks for a certain product
category. In order to correct for false memory, respondents were asked
to describe the content of the commercial to check whether they had
seen a recent commercial. A positive recall was coded only if respond-
ents correctly remembered at least one content element of the recent
commercial. On average, 11% of the respondents (ranging between
0.02% and 33%) could spontaneously recall a speciflc campaign.
Campaign appreciation: respondents gave each campaign they could
remember a score between 1 and 10. On average, the campaigns scored
a 6.5, varying between 4.6 and 8.5. In order to measure campaign
appreciation, brands that respondents had not recalled at the previous
question were mentioned, and if respondents correctly remembered the
campaign after this cue, their appreciation was measured.
Previous behaviour, respondents were flrst asked what brand they usu-
ally buy, and then what other brands they occasionally buy. Previous
behaviour was deflned by combining both items (i.e. the set of brands
that were either usually bought or occasionally bought). This deflnition
correlated .97 with a deflnition of previous behaviour that included
only the most often bought brand. Brands were usually or occasionally
bought by between 2% and 73% of the respondents.
Purchase intention: for each product category, respondents were asked
what brand they planned to buy at their next purchase. On average,
10% of the respondents intended to buy a particular brand, ranging
between 1% and 47%.
Content analysis
Using the description of the message content strategies formulated above
(based on Franzen 1999), a coding form was developed. Three trained
676
coders independently coded the message content strategies used in each
campaign. A code was assigned only if the three coders were unanimous.
If they disagreed on the assignment of a particular strategy to a campaign,
the code for this strategy was set to missing. Overall, the agreement among
the coders was extremely high. In fact, they disagreed only twice, once
with respect to the use of the awareness strategy and once with respect to
the emotions strategy.
Most campaigns consisted of a number of commercials (between one
and six), which almost always used the same strategies. Of course, a cam-
paign can use several message content strategies - for example, combining
the information strategy with the likeability strategy. If a certain strategy
was used in at least one commercial in the campaign, this strategy was
coded as being used in the campaign.
In the coding form, the following yes-no questions were used to code
the message content strategies for each commercial in each of the 40
campaigns.
Awareness strategy: 'Does the commercial differ from what is normal
for the product category (e.g. in content or style).?' and 'Does the com-
mercial use animation or special effects.?'
Likeability strategy: 'Is the commercial intended to be humorous.?',
'Does the commercial aim to amuse viewers (other than by being
humorous).?' and 'Are there any "cuties" in the commercial, such as pets
or children.?'
Emotions strategy: 'Does the commercial aim to touch the feelings of
the consumer or does the commereial show what feelings can be expe-
rienced by using the brand.?'
Information strategy: 'Does the commercial give information about
(new) instrumental advantages, qualities, or properties of the brand.?' or
'Is the commercial primarily rational (e.g. by giving instrumental advan-
tages or disadvantages).?'
Sales-response strategy: 'Does the commercial offer a temporary dis-
count.?' or 'Does the commercial include other forms of sales promotion,
such as gifts or prize contests.?'
677
Procedure
Bivariate correlations, means and standard variation of all variables are
given in Table 1. Regression analyses were used to test the relationships
between the four advertising effect variables and message content strate-
gies, media expenditure and previous purchase behaviour. Because the
advertising campaign was the unit of analysis in this study, 40 cases were
available. This limited the number of independent variables that could be
included in each regression analysis, so composite message content vari-
ables were constructed instead of entering each of the five coded adver-
tising strategies separately. Because different message content strategies
were effective for each campaign effect, four composite message content
variables were constructed, one for each campaign effect (i.e. campaign
recall, campaign appreciation, brand recall and purchase intention).
In order to find the most effective advertising strategies, each cam-
paign effect was regressed on message content strategy, previous purchase
behaviour and product category (0 = cleaning product, 1 = food or candy
product). Because the effect of content strategy might differ by product
Table 1: Bivariate
Variable
1. Purchase intention
2. Brand recall
3. Campaign
appreciation
4. Campaign recall
5. Awareness strategy
6. Likeability strategy
7. Information strategy
8. Emotions strategy
9. Sales-response
strategy
10. Voice
11. Share-of-voice
12. Past purchase
behaviour
M
SO
correlations, means and standard deviations
1
1.00
0.97
0.00
0.28
-0.03
-0.22
0.18
-0.14
0.05
0.35
0.37
0.98
10.56
10.84
2
1.00
-0. 04
0.25
0.05
-0. 18
0.14
-0. 06
0.07
0.31
0.30
0.96
13.67
16.14
3
1.00
0.36
0.29
0.26
-0. 36
0.26'
-0.07
-O.09
0.30
0.02
6.48
0.67
4
1.00
0.27
0.25
-0. 14
0.09
-0.25
0.10
0.42
0.31
10.79
8.83
5
1.00
0.28
-0.41
0.48
0.21
-0.07
0.06
-^).O4
0.64
0.49
6
1.00
-0. 35
0.39
-0.10
-0. 04
0.03
-0.21
0.80
0.41
7
1.00
-0.95
0.17
0.15
-0.28
0.16
0.53
0.51
8
1.00
-0.21
-0. 16
0.30
-0. 12
0.51
0.51
9
1.00
0.20
-0. 19
0.01
0.18
0.38
10
1.00
0.53
0.31
247.27
198.52
11 12
1.00
0.32 1.00
0.63 20.30
0.23 16.66
678
category, an interaction effect between both variables was added. An
interaction effect between previous purchase behaviour and content strat-
egy was also added because the effect of advertising strategies has been
shown to depend on the amount of experience with a brand (Van den
Putte 2006). This regression analysis was done separately for each content
strategy. Content strategies that had a significant regression coefficient, at
p <O.IO, were used to calculate the composite content strategy variable.
Each composite message content variable indicated how many advertis-
ing content strategies were effective for one of the advertising effect
variables. For example, if the awareness strategy increased brand recall, all
campaigns that applied the awareness strategy would receive a score of ' 1'
on the composite message content variable, whereas all other campaigns
would score '0'. However, if brand recall was not only influenced by the
awareness strategy, but also by the likeability strategy (though only when
the average previous purchase behaviour became smaller), then small
brands that applied the awareness strategy as well as the likeability strat-
egy would receive a score of '2', small brands that applied the awareness
strategy or the likeability strategy (but not both) would receive a score of
' 1' , all large brands that applied the awareness strategy would receive a
score of ' 1' , and all other brands would receive a score of '0'.
The results of the above analyses were used to estimate the relative
effect of message content strategy, media presence and previous behaviour
on the four campaign effects. Two regression analyses were performed for
each campaign effect. First, each campaign effect was regressed on pre-
vious consumer behaviour, product category, message content strategy
(the composite variable), voice (i.e. absolute GRPs), and the interac-
tion between voice and message content strategy. The second analysis
included the same variables, except that voice was replaced by share-of-
voice (i.e. relative GRPs). Following the recommendations of Jaccard etal.
(1990), all variables were standardised before calculating the interaction
variables. Though unstandardised regression coefficients from the SPSS
output are reported in Tables 2-5, these coefficients can be interpreted
as standardised because standardised variables were used in the analyses
(Jaccard etal. 1990, p. 34). All analyses were checked for multicollinearity.
679
but no problems were found. For each analysis, standardised residuals
and Cook's distance were checked in order to find outliers and influential
cases. Two campaigns were removed from some analyses because they
were problematic. One of these campaigns might have been an outlier
because it was for a product introduction. Only 2% of the respondents had
previously bought the advertised product, which was the lowest figure of
all brands. The other problematic campaign was for an established brand,
which was occasionally bought by 35% of the consumers, though only 5%
intended to purchase it next time. Of all campaigns, this showed the larg-
est difference between purchase intention and previous behaviour.
Results
Construction of the composite message content strategy
variables
First, the most effective content strategies were estimated separately for
each campaign effect (Table 2). Campaign recall was largest when either
the likeability strategy or the awareness strategy was used. An interaction
effect between product category and awareness strategy indicated that this
strategy was twice as effective for food products than for cleaning prod-
ucts. The information strategy had a positive effect on campaign recall for
cleaning products. Campaign appreciation was found to be largest with
the awareness strategy and likeability strategy. Campaign appreciation
was smaller when the information strategy was used. The only effective
content strategy for brand recall was the awareness strategy. The effects
of content strategies on purchase intention depended on brand size.
Interaction effects between previous purchase behaviour and message
strategy indicated that when fewer consumers regularly or occasionally
bought a brand, the likeability and emotions strategies were more effec-
tive, whereas the information strategy was less effective. Purchase inten-
tion was somewhat larger for cleaning products than for food and candy
products, but though an interaction effect between product category and
content strategy was expected, this was not found. Also, no effect of the
sales-response strategy was found.
680
Table 2: Regression of the four campaign
effects on previous purchase behaviour,
product category, and each of the five message content strategies
Awareness strategy
Previous purchase behaviour
Produa category
Awareness * Previous behaviour
Awareness * Product category
Likeability strategy
Product category
Lii<eability * Previous behaviour
Likeability * Product category
Information strategy
Product category
Information * Previous behaviour
Information * Product category
Emotions strategy
Product category
Emotions ' Previous behaviour
Emotions * Product category
Sales-response strategy^
Past purchase behaviour
Product category
Sales-response * Previous behaviour
Campaign
recall
(n = 40)
0.28
0.37*
0.10
0.20
0.28
0.31
0.50**
0.14
0.20
0.17
-0.15
0.50*
0.13
-0.28
-0.31
0.08
0.46*
0.13
0.22
0.24
-0.41
0.11
0.02
-0.20
Campaign
appreciation
(n = 40)
0.30
0.08
0.19
0.05
0.11
0.31
0.10
0.21
-0.05
0.05
-0.36
0.11
0.03
-0.04
-0.12
0.24
0.04
0.05
-0.05
0.00
-0.01
0.05
0.17
0.02
Brand recall Purchase intention
(n = 39)
0.10*
0.97***
-0.03
-0.03
-0.02
0.05
0.96***
-0.03
-0.04
-0.05
-0.01
0.93***
-0.05
0.07
0.00
0.06
0.95***
-0.06
-0.04
0.03
0.04
0.96***
-0.02
0.01
(n = 38)
0.00
0.97***
-0.07*
-0.04
-0.04
0.00
0.92***
-0.07*
-0.09*
-0.04
0.04
0.93***
-0.06#
0.08*
0.00
-0.05
0.93***
-0.06
-0.09*
-0.01
-0.06
0. 91***
-0.06
-0.09
The interaction effect between content strategy and product category was not included in the analyses of sales-response
strategy, because only one food product used the sales-response strategy.
p < 0.10; 'p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001
Comparison of effect of media expenditure and message
content strategy
The above results were used to caleulate the eomposite message eontent
strategy variables, following the proeedure outlined above. Next, the
effects of message content strategy were compared to the effects of media
presence (measured in GRPs). Table 3 shows the results of the regres-
sion analyses testing the effect of voice (i.e. absolute number of GRPs).
Campaign recall was most strongly influenced by the composite message
681
Table 3: Regression of the four campaign effects on previous behaviour, voice,
message content strategy and product category
Campaign Campaign Purchase
recall appreciation Brand recall intention
(fi = 39) (n = 39) (n = 38) (n = 37)
Voice (absolute GRPs)
Message content strategy
Voice *Message strategy
Product category
Note: For campaign recall, adjusted R' =0.21 (p <0.05). for campaign appreciation, adjusted fi^=0.15 (p <0.10). For brand
recali, adjusted R' =0.93 (p <0.001). For purchase intention, adjusted R' =0.97 (p <0.001).
p <0.10; *p <0.05; **p <0.01; ***p <0.001
0.12
0.46**
0.05
0.40*
0.09
-0.14
0.40*
-0.29
0.17
0.09
0.03
0.10*
0.05
0.94***
-0.02
0.03
0.09**
-0.03
0.99***
-0.06
Strategy variable and previous purchase behaviour. This indicated that use
of the most effective message content strategies had more influence on
campaign recall than increasing the absolute number of GRPs. Message
content strategy also had the greatest influence on campaign appreeiation,
but as absolute number of GRPs grew, the effect of the message content
strategy tended to decrease. Both brand recall and purchase intention
were almost entirely influenced by previous purchase behaviour, but for
both of these variables a small but signiflcant effect of message content
strategies was also found. Purchase intention was slightly smaller for food
products. No direct effect was found for absolute number of GRPs for any
of the four campaign effects.
Table 4 shows the results of the regression analyses testing the effect of
share-of-voice. Gampaign recall was most strongly influenced by message
content strategy and by share-of-voice. Gampaign appreciation was most
Strongly influenced by message content strategy, though the effect of con-
tent strategy became smaller when share-of-voice increased. Brand recall
and purchase intention were almost entirely influenced by previous pur-
chase behaviour. In addition, message content strategy had a significant
effect on both brand recall and purchase intention, whereas share-of-voice
had no effect.
Acomparison of the regression coefficients of voice and share-of-voice
(Tables 3 and 4) showed that share-of-voice had more influence than
voice on the advertisement effects, in particular campaign recall. For
682
Table 4: Regression of the four campaign effects on previous behaviour, share-
of-voice, message content strategy and product category
Share-of-voice (SOV; relative GRPs)
SOV * Message strategy
Produrt category
Campaign
recall
(n = 39)
0.37*
0.36*
0.08
0.26
-0.08
Campaign
appreciation
(n = 39)
0.21
0.38*
-O.28#
0.08
0.11
Brand recall
(n = 38)
-0.01
0.10*
0.06
0.95***
-0.04
Purchase
intention
(n = 37)
0.00
0.10**
-0.03
0.99***
-0.07*
Note: For campaign recall, adjusted fi' = 0.32 (p < 0.01). For campaign appreciation, adjusted R' = 0.21 (p < 0.05). For brand
recall, adjusted R' = 0.93 (p < 0.001). For purchase intention, adjusted R' = 0.97 (p < 0.001).
p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001
brand effects, neither voice nor share-of-voice influenced brand recall and
purchase intention. As was suggested above, brand recall is difficult to
increase when it is already large, and more effect was expected for brands
that scored low on brand recall. Therefore, brands with a brand recall
below 10% were compared with those with a recall of at least 10%. Table
5 shows that both voice and share-of-voice had more positive effect on the
low-recall brands. Message content strategy also had more positive effect
when brand recall was low. Still, these results must be considered tenta-
tive for two reasons. First, brand recall before exposure was unknown.
Therefore, brand recall after exposure to the campaign was used to
split the campaigns into high- and low-recall groups. Nevertheless, it is
unlikely that the results would differ significantly if brand recall before
exposure was known, because the level of brand recall was mainly influ-
enced by previous purchase behaviour rather than by campaign exposure.
Second, because the number of campaigns in each group was too small for
a regression analysis with four independent variables, the results that are
presented in Table 5 might not be stable.
A similar analysis was done for purchase intention. Previous purchase
behaviour was used to split the campaigns into two groups: small brands
and large ones. Brands that were bought by less than 15% of the respond-
ents were defined as small brands, whereas brands that were bought by at
least 15% were defined as large brands. Table 5 shows that voice, share-
683
Table 5: Regression of brand recall and purchase intention
behaviour, media presence, message content strategy and
comparison between brands
Voice (absolute GRPs)
iVIessage content strategy
Product category
Adjusted R^
Share-of-voice (reiative GRPs)
Product category
Adjusted R^
p < 0,10; *p < 0,05; **p < 0,01; ***p < 0,001
Brand recall
on previous
product category:
Purchase intention
Low recall High recall Small brands Large brands
(" =
0,26
0,32
0,83
-0,20
0,48
0,26
0,25
0,79
-0,44
0,45
21) ( n=17)
-0,07
0,09
* * * 0,94***
-0,06
** 0,88***
-0,18#
0,16#
** 0,96***
-0,08
** 0, 91***
(n = 20) (n = 16)
0,12 0,01
0,17 0,03
0,88*** 0,95***
-0,33* -0,08
0,73*** 0,96***
0,29* -0,11
0,12 -0,03
0,89*** 0,99***
- 0, 51* * -0,13*
0,78*** 0,97***
of-voice and message content strategy all had more effect on purchase
intention for small brands.
Conclusion and discussion
This study investigates the influence of media expenditure, message
content strategies and previous behaviour on four campaign effects: cam-
paign recall, campaign appreciation, brand recall and purchase intention.
Most of the expectations formulated above are confirmed, though there
are some additional findings. Previous behaviour has a strong influence,
especially on brand effects. Brand recall and purchase intention are almost
entirely explained by previous purchase behaviour. These results are in
line with Ehrenberg's view of advertising as a weak force whose main
aim is to maintain existing buyers (e.g. Ehrenberg 1974; Ehrenberg et
al. 1997). Because of consumers' habitual buying behaviour, advertising
campaigns can effect only small changes in purchase behaviour. However
small, these effects can still have significant consequences. Suppose that
an advertising campaign influences the behaviour of just 1% of all con-
sumers: this would make an enormous difference in sales. The results of
684
this Study also indicate that it is important to include previous behaviour
in studies of advertising effects. For example, if purchase intention had
been regressed on the message content strategies without taking previ-
ous purchase behaviour into account, the content strategy of the largest
brand would always have appeared as the most effective, irrespective of
the strategy employed.
Advertisers control two main factors that determine the effect of adver-
tising campaigns: media expenditure (i.e. GRPs) and message content
strategy. Advertisement effects (i.e. campaign recall and campaign appre-
ciation) as well as brand effects (i.e. brand recall and purchase intention)
are more strongly related to the choice of message content strategy than
to media expenditure, with one exception: campaign recall is equally
influenced by message content strategy and share-of-voice (i.e. relative
number of GRPs). However, voice (i.e. absolute number of GRPs) has no
significant effect on campaign recall. This makes sense, because television
campaigns that are seen more often than other campaigns are more likely
to be remembered than those that are seen less. On the other hand, both
voice and share-of-voice have a negative interaction effect with message
content strategy on campaign appreciation. This suggests that consumers
do not appreciate campaigns to which they are exposed too often. Turning
to the brand effects, voice and share-of-voice have more positive influ-
ence on brand recall for smaller brands than for larger ones. This could
be because small brands are less well known and therefore have more to
gain from exposure. Because more consumers are familiar with the larger
brands, increasing brand recall will be much more difficult. Finally, share-
of-voice has a positive effect on purchase intention, but only for small
brands.
The effects found for media expenditure were generally small, which
is somewhat surprising. The main reason is probably that this study con-
trolled for the influence of previous purchase behaviour. When, in an
additional series of analyses, previous behaviour was omitted from the
regression equation, voice ( = 0.27) and especially share-of-voice ( =
0.54) were found to have large effects on purchase intention. While this
suggests that media expenditure has a large effect on overall sales, this
would be a false conclusion. It is more likely that these effects are largely
explained by the fact that (1) media expenditure is related to brand size
(previous purchase behaviour has moderate correlations with voice, r =
685
0.31, and share-of-voice, r = 0.32), and (2) most people purchase one of
the brands that they normally buy (the correlation between purchase
intention and past behaviour is 0.98). Proper conclusions on the effect of
media expenditure can therefore be drawn only when previous behaviour
is included in the analyses.
Limitations and future research
A first limitation of this study is that it does not explain the effects of cam-
paign exposure on loyal brand behaviour, because the effect of previous
purchase behaviour is controlled for in the analyses. The results show to
what extent GRPs and content strategy can explain why people intend to
purchase a brand they do not usually or occasionally buy. Many advertis-
ing campaigns are aimed in large part at preventing loyal consumers from
switching brands or at encouraging them to purchase more of the brand.
This study does not address these aims, concentrating instead on changes
in brand preference.
A second limitation of this study is that only a few product categories
are analysed - namely, cleaning products, food and candy. It is unclear
whether similar results would hold for all product categories, especially
for products other than fast-moving consumer goods. Future research
should include other product categories, and ideally each product category
should be analysed separately. However, the cost of collecting a sufficient
number of cases per product category would be high, because hundreds of
consumers need to be interviewed for each campaign.
A third limitation of this study is that measures of message content
strategy and media expenditure are relatively crude. The effects of media
expenditure also depend on variables that are not included in this study,
such as the use of other media than television, the media schedule, and
other marketing efforts (e.g. in-store promotion). Also, the five content
strategies are not separately tested because the number of cases in this
study limits the number of variables that could be included in each
regression analysis. Instead, composite message content strategy variables
are calculated. In future studies incorporating more campaigns, it would
be interesting to see extended analyses that test each content strategy
separately.
686
WHAT MAIT'ERS MOST IN ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS.?
Implications
This study shows that, in so far as campaigns can influence consumers,
choosing the potentially most effective message content strategy is one
of the most important decisions for the advertiser. The message content
strategy should be chosen according to the campaign goal, and differ-
ent market situations call for different message content strategies. The
awareness and likeability strategies are good choices for advertisers who
want to achieve advertisement effects (i.e. campaign recall and campaign
appreciation). In addition, the information strategy has a positive effect on
campaign recall, but only for cleaning products, probably because people
more easily remember information that meets their expectations.
For new brands, the first priority might be increasing brand recall. This is
best achieved by using the awareness strategy. Increasing purchase inten-
tion is another important potential objective. This study suggests that this
is best achieved by using the emotions strategy in combination with the
likeability strategy, whereas the information strategy should be avoided.
These results hold only for small brands because the purehase inten-
tion of large brands is almost entirely determined by previous purchase
behaviour. The expected interaction effect between product category
and content strategy on purchase intention is not found. The emotions
strategy turned out to be more effective than the information strategy
for food and candy products as well as cleaning products. This is in line
with recent results of Binet and Field (2007), who report that the emo-
tions strategy more effectively than the information strategy influences
brand commitment and sales, even for rational products. The likeability
and emotions strategies might have a more positive effect on purchase
intention for both cleaning and food products because most respondents
probably have a low level of involvement with these products, particularly
when they have less personal experience with the brand, as in the case of
the small brands. When people have low levels of involvement, it is less
likely that they will process the message eontent, particularly when they
are in a positive mood (Batra & Stayman 1990; Zhang & Zinkhan 2006).
More likely, evaluation of the brand is influenced by a general evaluation
of the advertisement, often based on peripheral cues, sueh as the use of
humour in the likeability strategy, and this will have more effect than the
informational content of the message. As was seen, the likeability strategy
687
makes respondents evaluate the advertisement more positively, whereas
the information strategy has a negative effect. In addition, when people
watch a commercial they like, their mood might become more positive,
thus further decreasing the processing of information.
Another conclusion of this study is that spending more money than
competitors does help to increase campaign recall. But, if too much money
is spent, campaign appreciation suffers because of excessive campaign
exposure. Furthermore, increasing voice and share-of-voice increases
brand recall, but only for small, less well-known brands. Finally, increasing
share-of-voice has a significant effect on the purchase intention for small
brands.
So, which is more important for the advertiser who wants to make an
effective campaign: media expenditure or message content strategy.^ For
most effects, message content strategy is more important than the abso-
lute and relative number of GRPs. The effects of media expenditure are
more limited. However, more media expenditure positively influences
campaign awareness. Media expenditure can also influence brand recall
and purchase intention for small brands.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank SPOT (the Foundation for Promoting and
Optimising Television Advertisements) for providing the data used in this
research.
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About the author
Dr Bas van den Putte is Associate Professor in Commercial Communication
and Health Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communications
Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam. His main interest in com-
mercial communication is studying what advertising content strategies
can best be used in what situation. His interest in health communication
is in the effect of mass-mediated health campaigns, especially in the field
of smoking, alcohol and cannabis use. He has published in journals such
as Addictive Behaviors, British Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Applied
Social Psychology, Patient Education and Counseling, Psychology of Addictive
Behaviors and Preventive Medicine.
Address correspondence to: Bas van den Putte, ASCoR, Department
of Communication, University of Amsterdam, Kloveniersburgwal 48,
1012 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: s.j.h.m.vandenputte@uva.nl
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