Communication testing – do we need to be a little braver?

First Officer Sian Lewis shares her vision for the future of communications testing.

Let’s be honest. When it comes to communication testing, we often fall back into the safe, tried and tested approaches to research. But there are a number of important pitfalls to this standardized approach.

1. A lot of research still focuses on system 2 thinking?– we ask respondents to post-rationalize their instinctive reactions, paying little attention to system 1 - the unconscious, emotional, sometimes ‘irrational’, thinking processes. These aren’t new concepts in the field of research, but the balance is still out of whack.

2. The environment is sterile?- we test materials in a way they would never be consumed in the Real World. We force respondents to sit, re-read and dissect the communication in front of them. In reality, they would have long since turned the page.

3. Time is of the essence?– increasingly, we’re finding the results are needed yesterday. But red tape and approval requirements aren’t going away anytime soon. We also know that key decisions are often made on partial results whilst we wait for multi-market, large sample interviews to complete. Delivering results to a room where decisions have already been made can feel a little deflating.

And yet here we are, commissioning another 60-minutes in-depth interview.?

Do we really need to? I’d argue not.

One could argue that the most valuable insights are those gleaned in the first few seconds of reviewing any communication, before we think of a reason to justify why it resonates or not. There seems to be scope to keep interviews short, with the added benefit of keeping participants engaged and completing larger samples in less time.?

Of course, we shouldn’t forgo the ‘why’ question completely; the two systems work in tandem so we cannot fully understand behaviour without both. There is still a place for system 2, because we are ultimately rational beings and not simply driven by our primal urges - we understand there are consequences to our actions. But we shouldn’t press the issue. Over-prompting and, dare I say, ‘forcing’ physicians to explain their gut reactions can be counterproductive. Which leads me to my next point.

Context is everything. Our reactions, thinking, and ultimately behaviour are very much context-dependent. Thus, creating experiences that reflect real-world environments will encourage conditions that promote system 1 thinking and get us closer to real-world decision-making. We therefore need to be creative in mimicking how the communication would be consumed, whether that’s a sales rep visit (these days probably a Zoom call, thank you Covid) or an ad campaign in a medical journal. And with Sales reps being afforded less and less time these days, we should be realistic about how long we spend reviewing the materials. Would a physician really spend 10 minutes looking at a creative concept? The answer, dear reader, is no.?

In addition to re-thinking how we do the research, technology has recently been developed to accurately predict how our system 1 brain functions, and therefore how we view and make sense of visual communications.?Complementing the core research with?AI?algorithms?can be an effective solution, giving you confidence that the materials put in front of customers are playing to the viewer’s unconscious biases. And the best part? The results are instant, therefore adding no additional time to the project, but likely saving you time in the long run.

So, is it time to re-think our approach to communication testing? Who’s ready to step out of the comfort zone?