While planning is very important for communication campaigns, it is imperative to ask a question – how willing are we to deviate from the plan? Now it may be asked as to why if there is meticulous planning, should we deviate from the plan. The answer lies in the intangibles. There are a variety of factors that might affect the outcome or the impact of a campaign that might be different from what we had expected. Sometimes it is better and sometimes not as good. While we put a lot of emphasis on defining our Target Audience, profiling them, looking at their media habits, understanding their requirements from our product/service, promising them a better experience that seems relevant, communicating in the language that they understand (the theme and not the vernacular), and ultimately delivering it at the time we think they are most receptive, things can always go wrong.

And by wrong not that they will be dramatically opposite but not up to expectations. If it goes completely wrong then we definitely would have messed up one of the factors listed above. But when the results are not up to expectations we should look at immediate course corrections. This of course leads to the question – what should be corrected and how do we find it.

In the case of online advertising or campaigns, it is relatively easier as the monitoring and feedback are both real-time and measurable. For example, if you are running a Google PPC campaign you monitor the click-through rates, the cost per click, and so on and tweak the ads so that they can be optimised. However, in the case of offline advertising like Print or Television, the process is much more involved. Hence these campaigns have a lot more research, both pre and post, to determine their effectiveness. Concept testing is done for large print or television campaigns to see if the intended message is going through in the manner planned. Advertisers develop a series of concepts to check which one of them is most received. Similarly, post the campaign or ad happening a recall test would be done to judge the impact. These processes help in knowing if the campaigns are to be tweaked. And it is not just the content, even the media schedule is tested. For example, commercial airing times on television channels are differed to see the impact across time periods or the fact that the duration of ads could be varied to check which one is most impactful.

So is the Perfect Campaign a myth – not exactly. If you consider that a campaign will include changes and tweaks then a perfect campaign is indeed possible!