SYDNEY: Neuroscientific testing helped National Australia Bank’s radio ads that encouraged Australians to download property valuation reports to be significantly more effective, according to a senior marketer from the brand.

NAB worked alongside Global Traffic Network – a leading provider of custom traffic and news reports to radio and television stations – and neuroscience research consultancy Neuro-Insight to help listeners get the most from its ads.

“What it’s about is how we actually take that ad – in this case, it’s a 10-second live read within the radio environment, adjacent to traffic – and then how we optimise that to ensure the key points in getting through to memory,” explained Kelly McIlwraith, global marketing and strategy director at Global Traffic Network, at the Mumbrella360 conference in Sydney recently.

“What you don’t want to have is conceptual closure [listeners mentally turning off] during your point of brand. You don’t want to have it during your key message because we have a problem. We need to make sure those points, those key elements, are getting through to memory,” she emphasised. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: How National Bank Australia boosted its radio ads with neuroscience.)

While NAB’s initial radio spots were good performers, there was definitely room for improvement, and McIlwraith advised those putting together a radio ad to focus on what they want the consumer to feel to further boost interest and encoding of the ad.

The revised script included a question at the start to get consumers thinking about the value of their property.

“It could be a feeling. It could be emotions. Something that actually means something to me, whatever it might be… think about the consumer, and thinking about what is most valuable to them will certainly change the way you deliver in terms of your creative,” McIlwraith said.

Lachlan Davidson, head of home owner and insurance marketing at National Australia Bank, recommended isolating the test version of the ad to determine true effectiveness.

“For me, test design came down to: How can we isolate our results internally, and how can I prove that this was a worthwhile investment in this research?” he said.

“We wanted to get more people to download property reports, and that was hopefully going to naturally come just by advertising, and then we wanted to test. When we changed the ads, did that have a material impact on the number of people that went to our site and downloaded property report? The answer to both of those questions was yes, which is really good,” he added.

“We couldn’t have done that unless we isolated the test, and we couldn’t have done that without a great partnership which allowed us to all respectfully challenge each other to try to get the best out of what we were trying to put together.”

Sourced from WARC