A new television commercial called 'Breath' for SC Johnson's Toilet Duck brand by FCB Johannesburg, is predicted to shake up the toilet care market, according to pre-flight testing conducted by Millward Brown Impact. Using its Link pre-test methodology on a pre-shooting animatic, the research house predicted it will elicit a positive short term sales response. 
The Link methodology was designed to establish with a high degree of accuracy, whether an advert achieves its objectives, or not. It tells the brand owner and advertising agency both the likelihood of the ad at generating short terms sales, as well as, how well the ad will build longer term memories and associations.
Hindsight has proven that 93% of Link's predictions have been correct for ads pre-tested and subsequently tracked on-air.
The animatic tested by Millward Brown Impact was devised with very specific objectives in mind, said FCB Johannesburg executive creative director, Brett Morris.
"Faced with the success of thick toilet cleaners globally, SC Johnson elected to launch Toilet Duck Ultra Gel ahead of its major competitors in South Africa. Not only would this affirm the brand's positioning as an innovator within the toilet care market, it would provide an ideal opportunity to halt a slight slip in Toilet Duck's market share - ostensibly caused by a lack of major brand innovation since 1998 and no above-the-line support in the last year - before it turned into a slide.
"International research had shown that cleanliness and hygiene in the consumer's home - especially the toilet - is key. 'She' (the target market is female between 24-49 years of age) looks for products that will work the hardest to clean their toilet most effectively, leaving it sparkling clean, hygienic and fresh. However, 'she's' sceptical about current liquids and their ability to clean thoroughly because they run down the bowl too quickly instead of sticking to the side.
"The new ad, therefore, had to build awareness for the range, encourage trial and clearly demonstrate the product benefits through differentiating Toilet Duck Ultra Gel from competitors. Our approach was to simply show how thick the gel is, how long it clings to the toilet bowl and how clean it leaves the toilet. We also used a stronger, more serious Duck with loads of attitude," he said.
Key elements highlighted by the Millward Brown Impact research included:
--Toilet Duck killing germs emerges as the most memorable element of the ad.
-- Enjoyment of the commercial is significantly above norm and it ad achieves a notably high liking score of 7.8.
-- The ad engages the audience to an average degree but proves to have a largely active positive communication style (more active positive words are used to describe the ad than passive positive words are used to describe the ad).
-- The ad is strongly linked to the brand with many respondents saying if the logo and product pic were taken out, they would easily recognise it as a Toilet Duck brand.
It has a high persuasion score.
"Importantly for SC Johnson and FCB Johannesburg, the three key ratings can be translated into an accurate prediction of the ad's ability to raise advertising awareness," said Morris.
"This is termed the Awareness Index (AI), by Millward Brown Impact. Ads with a higher AI are more likely to see an increase in sales. According to Link, 'Breath' achieves above normative scores on all key measures resulting in a high AI prediction. We are exceptionally pleased with results of the test, and look forward to sales results which will show if Millward Brown Impact's predication comes true for Toilet Duck Ultra Gel."
C-Cubed Communications for FCB Johannesburg
