Product ServiceSpecific Research In addition to getting

general background research and preplanning input, creative people receive product/service-specific preplanning input. This information generally comes in the form of specific studies conducted on the product or service, the target audience, or a combination of the two. Quantitative and qualitative consumer research such as attitude studies, market structure and positioning studies such as perceptual mapping and lifestyle research, focus group interviews, and demographic and psychographic profiles of users of a particular product, service, or brand are examples of product-specific preplanning input.

Many product- or service-specific studies helpful to the creative team are conducted by the client or the agency. A number of years ago, the BBDO ad agency developed an approach called problem detection21 for finding ideas around which creative strategies could be based. This research technique involves asking consumers familiar with a product (or service) to generate an exhaustive list of things that bother them or problems they encounter when using it. The consumers rate these problems in order of importance and evaluate various brands in terms of their association with each problem. A problem detection study can provide valuable input for product improvements, reformulations, or new products. It can also give the creative people ideas regarding attributes or features to emphasize and guidelines for positioning new or existing brands.

Some agencies conduct psychographic studies annually and construct detailed psychographic or lifestyle profiles of product or service users. DDB Needham conducts a large-scale psychographic study each year using a sample of 4,000 U.S. adults. The agency's Life Style Study provides its creative teams with a better understanding of the target audience for whom they are developing ads.

For example, information from its Life Style Study was used by DDB Needham's creative department in developing an advertising campaign for Westin a few years ago. The agency's Life Style Study showed that the younger business travelers the luxury hotel chain was targeting are highly confident, intelligent, assertive, and classy and considered themselves to be "winners." Rather than using the traditional images that feature buildings and golf courses, the creative team decided to "brand the users" by playing to their ego and reinforcing their strong self-image. The ad campaign used the tagline "Who is he/she sleeping with? Westin. Choose your travel partner wisely" (Exhibit 8-6).

Recently a number of advertising agencies have been conducting branding research to help better identify clients' customers and how they connect to their brands. Agencies use this research to determine how a brand is perceived among consumers, and these insights, in turn, are used to develop more effective advertising campaigns.22 IMC Perspective 8-3 discusses how some of the

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