Every Ubiquitous campaign is measured. Most of what the measurement tells us is what we would expect it to. Some is not…
Every Ubiquitous campaign includes bespoke research carried out via our third-party partner, Attest. We have now measured more than 150 campaigns across a wide range of sectors, audiences, formats and durations.
The core of each study covers what a campaign is expected to do: awareness, recall, consideration, preference, sentiment and action. That gives clients a clear, consistent view of how their advertising performed - undeniably the essential measures of any campaign’s effectiveness.
But in amongst the data, we sometimes find something nobody set out to look for. And clients sometimes find these the most interesting part. Sometimes it is a question the demographic data built into every study raises that nobody had thought to ask. Sometimes it is a result that points to a wider business question. Sometimes it is a link between a campaign and the world around it.
1. The most useful question may be one you haven’t asked yet
When we examine the results of research, we have questions in mind. Did people remember the advertising? Did awareness improve? Were particular audiences more receptive?
Some answers turn up again and again. People who are more relevant to a brand, and people who commute more often into the zones where the taxis ran, tend to show a bigger uplift in recall. These are reassuringly common-sense findings, but measuring every campaign lets us confirm them rather than assume them.
The data usually holds more than those questions use, though. In one campaign, the client was surprised by how much detail the research contained. Once the results were shared, they became increasingly engaged, asking further questions and exploring what else the data might reveal. Their insights team became involved and deep dives into the data took place.
Looking at how different groups respond, which audiences over-index on particular measures and where results differ from the overall picture can show patterns that aren’t obvious at first. Not every pattern turns out to matter, so we check each one against the underlying data. But the ones that hold up are sometimes the ones nobody planned to look for.
2. The full picture is more useful than the headline
Good campaign research is not only about finding evidence that an advert worked. It is about understanding what happened, including the parts that don’t fit our expectations.
In one campaign for a major B2B brand, people who needed this kind of service most often for work were more likely to know the brand. No surprises there. But as frequency of use of the service increased, consideration of the particular brand within the competitor set was lower.
That might look like an unwelcome result. When we shared it, though, the client recognised something familiar. They had already suspected that their offer to frequent customers was less competitive than some alternatives, and the research was consistent with that suspicion.
So the value wasn’t only in showing where the campaign performed well. It helped the client look at a wider business question. The research couldn’t answer that question on its own, but it showed them where to look.
That is why we share the full results with the client, beyond the valuable staples of awareness, recall and consideration.
3. The context around a campaign may change how people encounter it
One campaign for a major alcohol brand ran alongside the brand’s sponsorship of a major sporting event. For the first time, we asked Attest to look at whether people’s connection to an event was reflected in how they encountered the taxi advertising.
Respondents who had attended in person were 1.7 times as likely to recall seeing the taxis as other respondents (70% recall uplift). And recall mattered: people who remembered the taxis also scored higher on brand awareness, consideration and sentiment.
This says something useful about taxis when it comes to tangible, branded presence presence at events. A handful of branded taxis within a wider campaign can form a convoy, chauffeur guests or wait outside a launch. We have always treated that kind of presence as an extra on top of the taxis’ everyday coverage of the city. This result suggests it may be a multiplier rather than an addition. Among people who were there, the taxis were more likely to be remembered. Sometimes the value of a campaign lies not just in the advertising itself, but in the context in which people encounter it.
Hidden Treasure
None of these findings was in the brief. The first came from a client who fully engaged with optimising the data. The second came from a result that looked mixed at first. The third came from a question we put to Attest for the first time, about one specific event.
That is why we measure every campaign, and why the Attest research is included with every Ubiquitous booking. For some brands it adds detail to what a wider brand-lift study already shows. For others it is the first time they have had a robust read on their brand without a separate research budget. In both cases, awareness, recall and consideration do the brilliant but essential job. However, the beauty of data like this is that measuring every campaign means the answers sometimes include a question we didn’t.
