Closing the say-do gap: we observe, as well as ask
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If you wanted to promote an upcoming movie in the 90s, you’d probably show a movie trailer in cinemas for a captive audience to enjoy. You’d probably have a shorter version for TV too, and then layer on some press, OOH and PR.
Fast-forward to the present day, and things are different. You’re just as likely to see a movie trailer on your phone, scrolling through social media or YouTube, as you are to see one on TV.
A movie studio wanted to understand how they could tailor movie trailers to engage people in this new media landscape. We knew that, when it comes to media attribution, people are poor witnesses to their own behaviour; they wrongly assume that they see trailers on TV (not online) and that they watch them in their entirety (as opposed to in part).
The truth is a little more complicated.
To piece together an effective strategy, we couldn’t just ask people for their opinions. Instead, we spent time with 12 households over several weeks. After we got to know them, we left CCTV cameras in the rooms where they consumed media.
This allowed us to capture natural behaviour, helping us understand what people engaged with, who they did it with, on which device, and at what time. Not stopping there, we combined this with other methods – observation, interviews and online screen recording.
This built up a great understanding of what people DO, and not just what they SAY. In effect, it showed us how people really engage with movie trailers, what they watch and what they scroll past. Crucially, it allowed us to understand the hooks that trailers should employ to keep people watching – and how long the window of attention is in different contexts.
The outcome was a playbook with guidance by platform (e.g. Facebook), by device (e.g. smartphone) for each of their audiences.
Our next post is about how choice-based tasks and experiments can improve quantitative measurement.
Free copies of our book Closing the Say-Do Gap are available now. Drop us a line to grab your copy.
