New York, NY 08.10.2021
GfK insights cited in two Ogilvy-winning campaigns
Two ad campaigns supported by GfK insights – for Microsoft and Chase for Business – took top prizes in the 2021 ARF David Ogilvy Awards, which were presented last night in a virtual ceremony. The Ogilvy Awards celebrate research- and insights-driven advertising in 17 categories overall.
The Chase for Business campaign “More Than: Zach and Zoe Sweet Bee Farm” won Gold in the Business-to-Business category. “Zach and Zoe” – a $30 million effort that extended across TV, online video, and social media -- tells the story of a family-owned raw honey business that uses a Chase small-business program. You can watch one of the ads at this link.
Chase for Business relied on GfK’s Ad Fit Optimizer (AFO) to pre-test “Zach and Zoe” ads. AFO is designed to accelerate and optimize digital ad spend and overall campaign ROI by assessing the performance of ads prior to campaign launch. It leverages in-context environments consistent with traditional and mobile banners and video.
In its Ogilvy case study, Chase for Business reported, “We developed the creative framework based on testing results, advertising insights and ongoing optimizations. The framework includes clear product messaging, real Chase small businesses with emotionally anchored stories and strong branding to drive recall.”
In addition, Microsoft’s “Nothing Can Stop a Team” campaign for the Microsoft Teams platform took home the SeeHer Award in Electronics, Tech, and Telecommunications. Presented by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and The Female Quotient, the SeeHer Award honors realistic representation of all in advertising, including accurate portrayals of women and girls.
With five ads representing nearly $150 million in spending overall, the campaign aimed to give Microsoft Teams high visibility and trust at a time when people were suddenly working from home amid COVID-19 lockdowns. You can see one of the ads from the campaign at this link.
GfK contributed insights in a number of areas, including:
- Weekly brand/campaign measurement to understand recognition and impact, as well as competitive ad performance
- Preponderance of evidence to understand the “real” impact of the campaign:
- Structural equation modeling and Bayes net analysis to understand the impact of ad recognition on key metrics
- Clustering technique and weighting, to identify meaningful variables to normalize deltas between recognizers and nonrecognizers, to understand impact of recognition
- Slope linear analysis to evaluate and compare Teams and category growth
In its case study, Microsoft reports:
Microsoft Teams was a new entrant to the communication category in 2019, going head-to-head against Slack and Zoom for market share among the working population. When COVID hit in 2020, it not only capsized our existing plan but raised the question on continuity of the campaign. We used extensive pretesting, message testing, weekly tracking, response-level modeling, and time-series modeling to answer this.
Kudos to all of our GfK teams who worked on these award-winning campaigns!
All proceeds from the ARF Ogilvy Awards benefit ARF WIDE, a charitable foundation designed to improve the diversity and excellence of the marketing research and data analytics workforce of the future. GfK and MRI-Simmons are Corporate Partners for ARF WIDE, taking part in a variety of initiatives related to the program.