Marketing research methods and applications

Anti-Drug Marketing Campaign

What do you think of the design of the advertising pretest?

The advertising pretest seems to have been seriously flawed in at least two specific ways. First, the main point of the entire project was to determine which would be the best and most effective possible message to prevent teenage drug use. By setting up the pretest to separate a prevention strategy and a curtailment strategy, the researchers weekend the potential value of the project. Initially, they had no basis for knowing how many teens already use drugs and how many do not yet use drugs. Obviously, a prevention strategy is comparatively less useful than a curtailment strategy in connection with teenagers who already use drugs; likewise, a curtailment strategy is comparatively less useful than a prevention strategy in connection with teenagers who do not already take drugs.

Instead of arbitrarily assigning some groups of subjects to the prevention message testing and others to the curtailment message testing, they should have exposed all of the test subjects to both messages. Thereafter, if they wanted to pursue the research further, they should have selected subjects who responded more positively to each approach to the different messages within that same approach. It is likely that this methodology would have provided test groups in which teenagers who already used drugs were more likely to be in one group (the group that selected the curtailment messages) and teenagers who do not already use drugs were more likely to be in the other group (the group that selected the prevention messages).

Second, the questionnaire contained two questions that served no purpose because they presupposed the responses or they merely confirmed that the subjects understood the message rather than whether or not the message was likely to be more or less effective than an alternate message with the same meaning. Specifically, there is absolutely no point to asking the subjects whether they thought the message would "help people avoid drugs" or "help people get off drugs." By definition, the messages that provided prevention content begged an affirmative response to the first of those questions (Question # 6). Likewise, the message that provided the curtailment content begged an affirmative response to the second of those questions (Question $7).

Better questions (posed to subjects who each viewed at least one prevention message and one curtailment message) might have asked "Which advertisement do you think would be more effective?" And "Which advertisement do you think would be more effective?" without any explicit reference to whether or not the advertisement corresponded to a prevention or a curtailment theme.

What conclusions, if any, can we draw from the results?

To the extent any meaningful conclusions can be drawn from the study, one might conclude the following:

(1) The more effective messaging approach to prevention would be the Basketball advertisement and not the Mall advertisement.

(2) The more effective messaging approach to curtailment would be the Grave advertisement and not the Loved Ones advertisement.

(3) In a study of this type, subjects are likely to provide the responses that they anticipate are expected of them. When presented with any message that promotes any form of anti-drug content, they are likely to respond in the affirmative to any question asking whether the advertisement might help achieve any anti-drug objective posed by the question. That is evidenced by the fact that prevention messages produced affirmative responses to questions about curtailment and curtailment messages produced affirmative responses to questions about prevention.

(4) Perception of realism is likely a critical element of any anti-drug messaging campaign expected to appeal to a teenage audience.

Exactly what do you recommend for the de-marketing communications campaign?

There would seem to be little basis to presume that either a prevention strategy or a curtailment strategy would be more effective than the other. It is most likely that both approaches would be advisable because teenagers who already use drugs are much less likely to respond as hoped to the curtailment messages whereas teenagers who do not already use drugs would be more likely to respond as hoped to the prevention messages. More specifically, teenagers who already use drugs are beyond the point where a prevention messaging strategy would be productive.

On the other hand, it is conceivable that teenagers who do not already use drugs might respond positively to both prevention and curtailment messages since the risks presented as a consequence of drug use would, presumably, be meaningful and effective in that respect. Nevertheless, these questions should have been investigated by the chosen methodology instead of ignored by the chosen design. In principle, the study, as designed, provided little potential insight into whether a prevention or curtailment messaging strategy would be more useful or which respective messages in each category might be the most effective. If the study were to be redesigned, the following might be a better methodology:

All of the subjects should have been presented with one prevention message and one curtailment message and they should have been asked which message would be more effective. Then, the trial should have been repeated successively for al of the messages, always pairing the prevention theme against the curtailment theme. Next, all of the subjects who preferred the prevention messages should have been retested, this time, comparing their responses to all of the prevention messages to identify the most likely prevention message to be effective. Then, all of the subjects who preferred the curtailment messages should have been retested, this time, comparing their responses to all of the curtailment messages to identify the most likely curtailment message to be effective.