Why I love testing
creative confidence

In recent years, heightened consumer frugality has raised the stakes for marketers.

As purse strings tighten, to be bold feels more daunting, because the consequences of failure seem deeper than ever. And an instinctive shift towards playing it safe often leaves agencies feeling in a chokehold when trying to do our job, creativity.

In trying to eliminate risk, creativity is often the first casualty. And yet, as anyone who’s read any evidence-based marketing literature knows, creativity is not a luxury in uncertain times. It’s a necessity.

In the Planning department at Guy & Co, it feels like more than ever we’re navigating the tension between caution and creativity.

Kill risk, elevate creativity. Easier said than done.

We’ve spent the last 8 years refining our approach to this challenge, and one of our most effective tools has been our in-house testing.

8 years, 303 tests, and over 15,000 consumers from 8 countries. The foundation we’ve built has given countless clients the confidence to trust in creativity not as a compromise, but a solution in challenging times.

Here’s 3 reasons why our approach has worked for so long:

1. We focus on what matters

It’s easy to get caught up in whether people like a piece of creative work. While people liking our ideas is obviously nice, the truth is that liking doesn’t always translate to action. Our job is to create work that not only grabs attention but drives behaviour.

By measuring impact rather than taste, we give the creative we produce the best chance of doing more than just looking great, but driving real business results.

2. We don’t discriminate

We’ve put logos, products, pack designs, brand positionings, and a whole host of other creative concepts through the ringer.

Our testing system is designed to measure creative in a way that isn’t limited to any one format.

If it’s creative, we can test it — and get results that don’t just “feel good” but actually mean something.

3. We’ve got a great catalogue to benchmark against

With 8 years of data, we can do more than just evaluate creative; we can contextualize it too.

Our catalogue isn’t just a record, it’s a resource. Whether we’re comparing across FS, tech, telecoms, food & drink, countries or time periods, it lets us benchmark in a way that adds perspective to results, allowing for more informed decision-making and ultimately better outcomes.

Why testing is more critical than ever

For our clients, the confidence to pursue ambitious creative work has come directly as an outcome of our testing process. And often it’s resulted in work that’s both won awards and achieved short and long-term commercial success. We call that Bravely Effective.

With shoppers holding on to their wallets more tightly, and more brands vying for an increasingly smaller share of the prize, creativity is more critical now than ever before.

As Adam Morgan of eatbigfish puts it: brands simply can’t afford to be dull.

For us, that’s why testing is a vital cog in ensuring every creative project works as effectively as it can.