Creative Potential
Overview
The Creative Potential Score is a summary measure which looks holistically at the potential of the idea to be translated into a successful finished execution. It summarises 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.
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 idea delivers on even at this earlier stage of development. There is less emphasis on Reach measures as the translation of the idea 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
- Compare the creative potential of ideas 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 ideas 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 idea/story to life in an ad.
Why is it useful?
It’s useful because it provides a straightforward way to identify the best ideas 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 idea or 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?
The Creative Potential score very much aligns with the Sales & Brand Impact scores, recognising 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 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.