Designing Impactful Public Campaign Research

During a guest lecture recently, I asked a class if they’d heard of and understood the goal of a few public campaigns and slogans… “Click It or Ticket,” “Texting Can Wait,” “Don’t Mess with Texas,” and others.

While almost everyone had heard of these campaigns, it was harder to judge the understanding, impact, and attitudes toward the topics—and this applies to the public at large, of course.

Like those for CPG or any other brands, public campaigns are living initiatives that should be monitored for awareness, understanding, and behavioral impacts. Campaigns need to be freshened, in terms of messaging and media, with solid research steering the decisions.

What are some unique considerations when designing “brand health” tracking for public campaigns?

Cast the Net Wide

Targeting of consumer segments is important in most brand health tracking. You don’t want apartment dwellers in a survey about lawn care, or vegetarians taking a survey about steakhouses. Public campaign research tends to be more nuanced. Tight screening requirements, like including only admitted litterers, can miss important attitudes, behaviors, and motivations among non-litterers. Including a broad sample of the population helps monitor what's working in these campaigns over time.

As a general rule, include the voices of everyone who is “at risk” even to a small degree. We all consume things and most of us drive, have trash, and often make conscious decisions on how to dispose of it.

Public campaigns are often executed in multiple languages. Include options to take a survey in languages other than English to avoid missing important segments. This is especially true in parts of the country where Spanish is common as a first language.

Approach Sensitive Topics Indirectly

Even in a “confidential” online survey, some people won’t admit to drunk driving, littering, or dangerous behaviors. While asking these questions directly uncovers shifts within a tracking program, other subtle ways can get a truer read on attitudes and provide a proxy for likely behaviors.

What are their family, friends, and peers’ behaviors and attitudes?
What is the relative danger of different activities? Is buzzed driving much safer than drunk driving?
How serious is dropping a banana peel versus a paper bag? Is litter being unsightly as important as being a potential danger to wildlife?

Using indirect methods, choice exercises, and ranking questions can gain more insight than simple yes/no or scaled questions where the danger is everything is “top box” and the data flatlines.

Often, complementing survey research with qualitative depth interviews or focus groups provides a deeper understanding and the "why" behind certain behaviors and motivations.

Stay Consistent

As with brand tracking programs, consistency in public campaign research is crucial. Unaided awareness should be general and not leading for the cleanest read, “What public campaigns and slogans do you recall?” should be asked before, “What littering campaigns do you recall?” People often remember a topic or initiative more generally than specific slogans or campaign elements.

In addition to awareness, understanding of a campaign and the initiative are critical elements to track. While awareness of Don’t Mess with Texas may be very high, is the public getting the message and changing behaviors?

Keeping these and other metrics consistent wave-over-wave is invaluable in tracking the health and understanding of a campaign. Secondary data and analysis may also provide an important complement to primary research. Are reported attitudes and behaviors lining up with reality?

Know Your Stakeholders

Executing public campaigns is important and passionate work. It literally saves lives or leads to a better world for present and future generations. There are often multiple agencies, both marketing and governmental, involved in campaigns themselves, as well as the research. Coordination and understanding of common goals help keep perspective and allow all voices to be heard in the research design. Timelines can be longer, but worthwhile to develop an effective and impactful monitor of campaign health.

Author

Mike Humphrey

Senior Vice President

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Mike partners with clients to deliver timely and accurate insights to address business challenges and strategic questions. Throughout his career in marketing research, he has focused on delivering data-driven insights while keeping a focus on the voice of consumers and stakeholders. Mike's experience includes designing and managing advanced quantitative studies, in addition to qualitative initiatives.

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