The buyer's order of argument
The agency's writers read the conversations in which buyers argued the lead message to themselves, including the doubts they raised and then dismissed. First drafts can follow the buyer's own order of argument.
Use caseTest campaign messaging
Test campaign messaging with AI interviews
Rank candidate messages with the audience before the brief is written, and leave with a hierarchy of a lead message, its supporting points and the proof each needs, including the claims legal will ask you to substantiate.
Candidate messages, ranked by the target
Messages are ranked by the audience the campaign is bought against, and read segment by segment, since that audience decides the order.
Arguments that differ in substance
Candidates make different cases, a saving, a feeling of control, a proof of quality, written to the same length and finish, so a winner is chosen for its argument and not for a sharper turn of phrase.
Clarity, belief and appeal, ranked
Pulse runs a survey that ranks each candidate on clarity, believability and how likely it is to make someone act, across the whole audience, giving the order the hierarchy is built on.
A quota for every target audience
Before fieldwork, name the audiences the media plan pays to reach, such as existing customers, lapsed buyers and people new to the category, and set a quota for each so every one is large enough to read on its own.
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GrowwLead, support and proof
The hierarchy is built for the brief it feeds, so every message leaves the study with its rank, the words that carried it and the proof it still needs.
A lead message for each segment
Pulse groups what people said about each message by segment, so the team sees which one leads with current customers and which with prospects, and the reasons each audience gave for its choice.
Phrases that earn belief
Some words make people trust a message and some make them suspect a sales pitch, and the audience's own phrasing shows copywriters which is which before the headlines are written.
Proof, and the claims legal will check
For a strong but doubted message, participants say what would convince them, a figure, a guarantee or a demonstration, and those doubted claims go to legal early, so substantiation starts before the campaign leads with them.
How Pulse does it
Draft messages that differ
Rank them by survey
Build the hierarchy
Hand legal the doubted claims
A sample study: Message test
Understand whether your message is clear, relevant, credible and meaningful to your audience.
- Before I show you anything, tell me how you currently think about or deal with [relevant need, category or situation].
- What matters most to you when you're considering something that helps with this?
- What's your immediate reaction to this message?
The method behind it
Message testing evaluates the words, propositions and arguments a campaign might use, before they are turned into finished creative. Candidate messages are grounded in research on what the audience needs and believes, then drafted to differ only in the argument they make. Messages are usually tested as plain text, without visuals, so the words alone carry the result. Open questions ask what each message promised and whether the person believed it, which explains the scores. For many messages, trade-off methods such as MaxDiff rank them efficiently; for a few finalists, monadic tests with diagnostic questions measure clarity, credibility, relevance and motivation in depth. The output is a messaging hierarchy with a lead message, supporting messages and proof points, which briefs the creative team and is checked again once finished ads are produced.
Related
A hierarchy built on category buyers
Only category buyers vote
The ranking survey decides the lead message, so who answers it matters. Every respondent must pass a category-buyer screener and a fraud check first, which keeps professional survey takers from voting a message to the top.
Why this message leads
When the CMO asks why this message leads, the brief is the answer: the question, the audience, the screener. Anyone reviewing the campaign can trace the ranking back to who was asked and how they qualified.