In 2005 Baileys Minis was launched worldwide. A very creative commercial performed well in conventional pretests internationally, in which attractive people chase Bailey liquid drops, floating in a bar room without gravity.
In Germany, however, this spot achieved nearly no sales effects despite high attention and attractiveness values. Therefore a German commercial “Mini Bar“ was developed, in which an attractive man takes Baileys Mini during a party from a fridge.
The German alternative communicated the small product size better showing Baileys Minis situated close to eggs. The “Mini bar” commercial convinced new target groups and forecasted sales effects were high. These pretest predictions proved to be true and Baileys Mini was awarded “product launch of the year 2005” in Germany.
The product, however, was discontinued due to unsatisfactory global sales development, because the creative international commercial did not sell. This case study proves again that it can be dangerous to use traditional advertising pretests which are based on false assumptions. Benchmarks are misleading if the predicted values do not achieve a correlation to real market values and are a major cause why 64% of all advertising campaigns for established products do not achieve a sales increase. The same is true in 45% of all communication campaigns for new offers.
Methods used: advertising effect test
