Video production on 80 versions
With four employees, in addition to photos, we also made eight videos: four in which we said that the employee also had a product and four in which we gave away that product as a competition. But in addition to the different formats we had to produce (square, landscape, etc.), we decided to conduct another exciting test that resulted in a total of 80 different versions. Why not?
A/B test on social media
The test: do our videos score better if we have the voice-over recorded in the dialect of the local branch? Each video was therefore narrated by an ABN speaker, a Twente resident, a Hagenee resident, a Venlo resident and a Groningen resident. That was very close, because in Limburg, for example, the accents really differ per village.
The national-but-regional advertising campaign then went live in all stores, on bus shelters, OOH, banners, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. We tested all expressions per region on the three latter media. So in The Hague we only played the Hague and the ABN version, in Groningen the Groningen and the ABN version, and so on.
Result: many more impressions for the regular voice-over
It turned out that the ABN version won with flying colors on every medium and in every region. With differences of up to 59% more impressions for this ‘regular’ voice-over. The differences were greatest around the branch in Venlo, and smallest around the branch in The Hague. Results we certainly did not expect.
Fortunately, the overall results were very strong. Even the worst performing video achieved all set goals. This made the campaign a resounding success, despite the unexpected test results. And there was this Utrecht advertising agency very happy with it, both in plain Utrecht dialect and in ABN.