Message awareness

Additions, clarifications, extended definition

It determines how many respondents noticed the key (or other/additional) message, slogan, theme or main idea of the campaign and can at least partially reproduce it.

It is usually measured shortly after the campaign ends and often complements metrics such as campaign awareness or total reach.

It can be assessed both at the level of spontaneous message recall (the respondent describes what they remember) and aided recognition (the respondent chooses from presented messages or slogans).

Interpretation

A higher value means the key message was comprehensible and memorable to the target group and associated with a specific brand or campaign. Low values may signal that the communication was too complex, unclear in content or language, or that the main idea got lost in the volume of individual content pieces or elements.

Watch out: limits and risks of distortion

• Measurement can be distorted by factors such as the generic nature of the message (e.g. similar slogans across multiple brands), time lag, media overload or confusion with the brand's previous campaigns. We therefore recommend supplementing the results with qualitative insights – e.g. why people remember the message, what stuck with them and how they interpret it.

Where and how to measure

• Questionnaire survey among the target group (online panel, telephone or face-to-face survey).
• Representative public opinion polls, post-campaign research (e.g. Median, Ipsos, etc.).
• Given the size of the target group, a sufficiently large sample (number of respondents) is always needed for the results to be reliable and show minimal statistical deviation.