Zappi Amplify Storyboard & Boardomatic

Summary

Zappi Amplify Storyboard and Zappi Amplify Storyboard Boardomatic are part of the Zappi Amplify Ad System. Both are perfect to help you find the best storylines to progress to production and provides rich diagnostics into how to make your ideas even stronger. These solutions help you set your ad up for success and prevents the need for major, costly post-production changes. Designed with the same key metrics framework as Zappi Amplify TV, you can track effectiveness throughout the development stages.

Stimuli:

If Storyboard: static frame-by-frame storyboard carousel: you can upload 2-10 scenes per project/survey, within the same country and category.
If Boardomatic: video-based storyboard, typically containing a voiceover of the storyline and/or music.

Evaluation: Monadic

Sample default: 200 category consumers

Norms: Yes; market-wide norms are activated when total stimuli tested reaches N=20 and your own customer norm per market activates when you've tested 20 stimuli in each market.

Getting started

Key measures
Testing process
Configuration checklist
Storyboard stimuli preparation guidelines

Key measures

Consistent with the full Amplify ad system's metrics. While it does not have the same later effectiveness summary scoring as Amplify TV or Digital, we introduced the early stage Creative Potential summary score to make analysis easier and more compelling (jump to section). Like all solutions in the Zappi Amplify system, the Zappi Amplify Storyboard & Boardomatic framework is comprised of measures grouped into key ROI-driver areas:

Creative Potential: a summary measure which looks holistically at the potential of the idea to be translated into a successful finished execution. It summarizes whether the idea has potential to:

Reach people by breaking through the clutter and bringing the brand to mind
Resonate to hold attention, be relevant, relatable and make people feel good
Create a response by making people more likely to consider and feel good about the brand
jump to more on the Creative Potential score

Individual measures help establish whether an ad idea resonates emotionally, provides a strong foundation for campaign executions or presents any risk for the brand:

Reach: cut through the clutter, link to the brand, and build distinct memory structures
Resonance: engage and trigger an emotional response, and communicate key messages and category drivers
Response: increase brand purchase and appeal
Risk: avoid insensitivity and damaging virality

This is different than Amplify TV, which includes a fifth 'R' called Return that helps predict sales uplift and added brand equity. Amplify Storyboard does not include Return because at this stage of development it is hard to accurately predict sales and brand impact.

Testing process

You can select between two different versions of Amplify Storyboard based on your preferred stimuli:
1. Amplify Storyboard: for static, comic strip style storyboards shown in a carousel. Each storyboard can consist of 2-10 scenes spliced into separate frames/images.
2. Amplify Storyboard Boardomatic: for video-based boardomatic stimuli.
200 category-consumer respondents are exposed to each storyboard
Key questionnaire components:
1. Uniqueness, relevance, and ability to persuade: Respondents answer questions to gauge your ad idea’s ability to stand out from the crowd and persuade viewers to select your brand.
2. Appeal: Respondents are asked to rate how appealing they find your ad idea and answer why.
3. Emotional engagement: Respondents are asked to rate which emotions are conveyed by each scene for static storyboards, or second-by-second for video boardomatics.
4. Message believability and clarity: Respondents are asked how clearly the stimuli conveys the intended messaging and how believable the messaging is after they’ve been exposed to your stimuli.

Configuration checklist

Obtain your stimuli:
- If Storyboard: static frame-by-frame storyboard carousel: you can upload 2-10 scenes per project/survey, within the same country and category.
- If Boardomatic: video-based storyboard, typically containing a voiceover of the storyline and/or music.
Ensure you add the following information to configure your survey:
- Storyboard name: to help you keep track of which stimulus is which in reporting, this will not be shown to respondents.
- Brand name: to feed into survey questions such as brand appeal, brand usage, etc.
- 8-10 Brand/category attributes: to see which attributes respondents associate with your stimuli. We recommend entering 8-10 attributes, but the platform can accommodate 2-20.
  - 255 character limit, per attribute
- 1-4 key messages for your stimuli: to see which messages respondents find believable after viewing your stimuli and which they think are clearly conveyed.
- Names of any celebrities, characters, or personalities in the storyboard: to feed into survey questions to assess appeal, awareness, and fit with your brand.

Storyboard stimuli preparation guidelines

Do not exceed 10 pages to avoid respondent fatigue.
Focus on communicating story flow, dialogue and action notes to establish whether the overall ad idea
Don’t explain meanings. Just write what is happening in the scene visually. (Say “Fruits start moving” instead of “Fruits come alive”)
Include key lines from the script, brand assets, product imagery, and characters or celebrities, notations about music and/or sound effects
If there are celebrities, write their names. Don’t rely on drawing alone
You may add sound bubbles or write the sound as a text as in comic books.
Try to explain the type of music used (soft, fast, energetic, pop music, jazz, etc) and underline if music intensifies, slows, etc.
Specify the language of the song to be used, especially if the language is not the local language.
Make sure that the drawing style between the ads tested within a single project is similar as they will be compared directly to each other.

Creative potential

What is the Creative Potential score?

The Creative Potential score is a summary measure which looks holistically at the potential of the storyline (storyboard/boardomatic) to be translated into a successful finished execution. It summarizes whether the idea/storyline has potential to:

Reach people by breaking through the clutter and bringing the brand to mind
Resonate to hold attention, be relevant, relatable and make people feel good
Create a response by making people more likely to consider and feel good about the brand.

How is the Creative Potential score calculated and displayed?

The measures cover the 3 key areas of Reach, Resonance and Response in keeping with brand/sales impact scores which we use as the headline predictive metrics at the final execution stage.

At the earlier stages of development, the Creative Potential score puts greater emphasis on Resonance as that is something that we’d want to be sure the storyline delivers on even at this earlier stage of development. There is less emphasis on Reach measures as the translation of the storyline into a video will have a much bigger impact on its success in standing out and grabbing attention.

All measures we use are relevant to the stage of development and are given an equal weight, except for overall emotion as it is particularly important to check how the idea makes people feel at each stage of development. An idea which resonates and makes people feel something (particularly something positive) has greater potential to result in a powerful execution.

The score is calculated at the respondent level, aggregated across the full survey’s sample, and then displayed as a percentile versus all of the other survey level scores that contribute towards the norm’s universe that you have selected in the platform (country, category, brand).

Area of effectiveness framework	Measure	Weighting
Reach	Branding (uniqueness of branding)	12.5%
Reach	Claimed attention	12.5%
Resonance	Overall emotion	25%
Resonance	Relevance	12.5%
Resonance	Understanding	12.5%
Response	Persuasion	12.5%
Response	Brand Appeal	12.5%

How should the Creative Potential score be used?

The Creative Potential score provides a good indicator of a strong vs a weaker idea and can be used to help you:

Take a holistic view on the potential of an idea or storyline
Compare the creative potential of storylines to decide which to progress
Learn. Having a single holistic measure of creative potential enables you to explore the characteristics of the best/worst ideas, helping you learn over time and set future ideas up for success.

Its primary purpose is to make it easy to understand and compare storylines at a top level before diving deeper. It should not be used in isolation as there is so much more to understand at the early stages of development. Ultimately, the single most important things we can do at this stage are:

Know whether the idea is understood as intended (because if not, the evaluation won’t be helpful)
Diagnose what is working or not so you get hints, tips, ideas on how best to bring the story to life in an ad.

Why is the Creative Potential score useful?

It’s useful because it provides a straightforward way to identify the best stories to take forward as well as identifying areas of strength and opportunity in development before diagnosing why and what next. By doing this, it helps brand/creative teams stay ‘on track’ with creative development. By using a common language and having a common thread through the stages of development, it’s easier to move successfully forward across stages of development, understand results at each stage and learn across everything you do. Starting with a powerful story means that executions that follow are considerably more likely to be successful.

How does the Creative Potential score relate to the sales/brand impact scores used in later stage Amplify TV and Amplify Digital?

The Creative Potential score very much aligns with the Sales & Brand Impact scores, recognizing the importance of reaching people, resonating with people and creating a response. It uses many of the same measures, just adapting them and their weight to the stage of development. The stimulus is too early in its development to be able to predict in-market outcomes. Executional details will make such a huge difference to whether the ad ultimately lands or not. However, this score is directional of which ideas have most potential. Ideas which achieve a high score on average will have higher potential to be turned into successful ads with strong Brand and Sales impact scores than those which achieve a low score.

Has the Creative Potential score been validated?

It has not been validated to in-market outcomes as there’s such a big difference between the ideas and the executions that finally bring that idea to life. But on average, an idea/storyboard with a better Creative Potential score results in an ad with high sales/brand impact. It won’t always be the case of course as execution really matters …. But there’s a relationship.

Interpreting cultural sensitivity

Why measure it

It's crucial to approach the interpretation of sensitive or potentially offensive content with empathy and cultural awareness. This type of feedback is largely subjective, but by actively engaging with the feedback and striving to stay attuned to cultural nuances, you can refine your advertising to better align with the values and expectations of your audience, thus building trust and equity for your brand.

Jump to read our full best practice advice.