Practical and real-life insights on creative testing from growth marketers at Vadham, Clovia, Bewakoof, Eruditus, Rebel Foods and Starz Play.

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In a world of ever-shrinking attention spans and constantly evolving algorithms, brands have just one rein in their control – creatives. But even that has no room for gut feelings or a "let’s throw it on the wall and see what sticks" approach. The sole way to leapfrog the competition is creative testing. It’s only by running creative experiments that teams get data-backed insights on what works and what doesn’t.

That’s why Rocketium, in a session curated with ETBrandEquity, sat down with marketing growth practitioners to shed light on how creative testing reaps dividends for brands. We distill nuggets of wisdom from each speaker here.

Creative Testing: The Building Elements To Experiment In Creatives

Marketing campaigns need creative testing to deliver maximum performance, and this is true for every industry. However, what elements need to be tested do differ for each sector.

For instance, for a retail brand like Vadham, the copy is not important for CTRs, but for an Edtech brand like Eruditus, it becomes pivotal. Keeping this polarity in mind, the session panel included speakers from varying industries to share key insights from their creative experiments.

How Rebel Foods, An Online Restaurant Company, Does Creative Testing?

The imagery, the copy, and the other elements that Rebel Foods, which owns cloud kitchen brands like Faasos and Behrouz Biryani, use in its creative assets depend on the product. So, while Fasoos has a quirky feel, Behrouz Biryani has a premium tonality. But the central aspect of each creative is visualization because to customers the image of the food speaks the best.

How did they achieve this learning? From heat mapping a few key creatives during testing. Rebel Foods realized that the center of the creative pulls in the maximum amount of user attention. So, that’s where they place their food shots.

"We use 3M’s VAS to get heat maps. We don't do this for every creative, maybe one out of 10. For most, we use the 9-block grid. We know it's the central four and five grids in the image that a user focuses their attention on. The maximum is right in the center, so that’s where we show the food that we are going to serve."

• Ameet Phadke, Associate Vice President - Growth Marketing, Rebel Foods

Another creative element that they run a lot of experiments on is the background. For them, rich neutral backgrounds that stick to the brand palette give higher CTR, but that too differs for each platform. For example, on Google, black backgrounds were apt, while on Facebook they failed to bring in results.

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To battle creative fatigue and blindness, they refresh creatives in a week or two, while keeping a few principles constant:

• The food is always the hero of the creative because it connects with the customers.
• The value proposition offered, be it a discount or a free product, is shown in very clear terms. Customers respond best to performance creatives with very strong value propositions.
• The call to action remains very simple, like "Order Now."

How Vadham, An Online Tea Brand, Does Creative Experiments?

For Vadham’s growth team, creative experimentation is in their DNA. They concentrate on testing during major sales events like Diwali in India or Cyber Monday in the US as they burn roughly 30-40% of their yearly ad spend on these high-impact marketing campaigns. The element tested is the creative unit itself, with experiments run on color, shape, and size.