Cebuco was the marketing association for all newspaper media in the Netherlands. Their mission was to promote the mediatype newspaper to advertisers. Part of their operation was doing research into the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in newspapers. They enlisted ABDC to develop the concept and design for a website to disclose the research data.
We started by identifying and interviewing the target audience: media planners at advertising agencies and marketing agencies. From these interviews a couple of personas were developed and concepts were drawn up and tested again with respresentatives from the target audience.
During each phase of the design process, end users were involved. Their requirements and wishes, expectations and stumbling blocks were always central. A mix of observation, interviews, and usability testing at different stages of design ensure a very user-friendly interface.
The first functionality to be developed was a top 5 / ranking of the efficacy of different advertisements. The layout allowd for a quick comparing of format and other properties. You could filter the advertisements down to specific properties, and see how the other factors, like the use of color, influenced the efficacy of the ad.
Another functionality was to input two sets of specifications for an ad, and see how they differed, between them and from the benchmark of all advertisements. This enabled planners to finetune their ads and to evaluate tradeoffs in format and use of color and placement.
Benchmark comparison
For powerusers we designed the ability to make pivot tables on the data, in a way that was consistent with how the planners and buyers work in their day to day workflow. This gave the users full access to the data of all the research.
The homepage laid out the options in a clear way and gave pride of place to the nr 1 effective advertisement, according to the research.
ABDC also developed the name, logo and campaign graphics for RRepOrter. The name RRepOrter highlighted the RRO (Reclame Reactie Onderzoek) acronym that represented the type of research that the tool was based on. It also implied that the tool was factual and impartial, merely reporting results. And the term reporter also tied it formly to the news- and reportage based newspaper medium. The icon in the O is a stylized newsapper with 2 indicators for advertisement formats.
Credits
Daphne Communication Management (now part of GFK) was responsible for the RRO research and data. ABDC was responsible for the naming of the application and logo design, and developed the persona profiles, daily use scenarios, interaction design, and screen designs.
