by Andrea Bridges-Smith- Flash Producer
January 19, 2010
I recently had the opportunity to meet with an agency that was in the very early stages of a new campaign. Coming up with the creative for a campaign can be an exercise in prognostication—what will engage the consumer? What are the results we want and how can we get them?.........
I am reminded of one ad that we ran that had 0% CTR. That’s right—this ad drove no traffic whatsoever to the client’s website. But when I think back over all of the ads I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a LOT), this one sticks out in my mind as one of the best. The ad featured a game that was very cartoonish, silly and cute, but it really drove the point home of what that company did and what they were good at. It took the company’s logo and associated it with a single idea. To this day, when I see one of their TV ads, I think back to how clever that little ad was. And the ITR on it was astronomical.
This leads me back to the agency that’s just starting their new campaign. For the team starting to build new creative, I think it’s a good idea to start with the question “What kind of report do you want to see at the end of the campaign?” Usually, you want one with high ITR and/or CTR, depending on what the goal of the campaign is. But those aren’t just numbers; a high CTR means that what you’re doing is working—people were engaged enough by what you created that it made them want to go out and buy something or find out more about it. High ITR is a little more tricky, but if you’ve done things right, it means that people are enjoying themselves while your logo is in front of them, and while that might not add up to immediately heading for the website to buy, the benefits can go more long-term when they’re carrying around that association in their head.