••• ad research
The dos and don’ts of designing mobile creative
Mobile display advertising broadly outperforms online display advertising in traditional brand metrics – especially ad awareness – but as the novelty of this new medium wears off, creative quality matters more than ever, according to Dynamic Logic, a New York research company. Poor creative can even have a negative impact on a brand, compared to the past three years when mobile display advertising was just getting started and content was less significant.
According to Dynamic Logic, three important factors that drive a successful mobile campaign are the location of a brand name or logo within a mobile ad (left-side brand placement is generally most effective and has a strong impact on advertising recall); clear and persistent branding; and a strong call-to-action that encourages interactivity and engagement.
Conversely, the three biggest mistakes mobile advertisers make are repurposing online creative by cropping it for a mobile environment; showing the brand only through a product shot; and cluttering ads with too much text and too many logos.
The average mobile campaign significantly outpaces online campaigns in brand metrics for a multitude of reasons. While mobile advertising effectiveness is still driven by novelty, it also benefits from the larger proportion of the mobile screen devoted to the advertisement compared to online. In addition, the copy and content are typically more focused due to size and technology constraints. Finally, as consumers become more acceptant of mobile ads, the medium offers better targeting than most media.
Mobile works well at communicating messages for high-involvement categories like financial services. However, some of the best campaigns are found in low-involvement categories like consumer packaged goods, where ads are more effective in moving persuasion metrics, such as favorability and purchase intent.
••• consumer psychology
Age-progressed images spur retirement saving 
For many Americans, retirement feels so far off that they can’t imagine a future version of themselves retiring. Thus, they save less than they will really need. Presenting consumers with an actual, retirement-age face helps convince them to save more, according to “Increasing Saving Behavior Through Age-Progressed Renderings of the Future Self,” an article published in the November 2011 edition of the Journal of Marketing Research.
In a series of experiments, researchers Hal E. Hershfield, Daniel G. Goldstein, William F. Sharpe, Jesse Fox, Leo Yeykelis, Laura L. Carstensen and Jeremy N. Bailenson created age-progressed images of the research participants to show them what they will likely look like when they reach retirement age. Then they were asked to participate in investment scenarios.
When faced with an image of their actual future selves, working-age adults were willing to allocate approximately 33 percent more of their paychecks to their retirement accounts than participants who did not view an age-progressed image of themselves. In another online virtual reality experiment, participants who saw their age-progressed photo were willing to put away about twice as much in a long-term savings account than those who did not.