A great ad campaign isn’t one big decision. It’s a series of smaller ones. What’s the idea? Which creative version actually lands? Who should you be targeting? And once it’s live, is it working?
Guessing at any one of those stages is where campaigns lose money. The brands and agencies below used consumer research at each of those decision points — and have the results to show it worked.
Here’s how to use Attest for campaign planning from the very first spark of an idea through to post-campaign proof, with real brand examples.
1. Inspiration: validate the idea before you brief the agency
Every campaign starts with a concept, and the boldest ones are usually the riskiest. The question isn’t whether an idea is creative enough, it’s whether it will actually resonate with real people before you commit budget to it.
Case study: MANSCAPED
MANSCAPED had built its entire identity around below-the-waist grooming. To launch a new face and beard range, the team needed a campaign that stretched the brand upward without breaking what made it distinctive. What they landed on was provocative: “Send Face Pics Instead,” a campaign reframing the habit of sending explicit images by encouraging men to lead with their face.
It was a bold bet, and MANSCAPED knew it. Rather than pitch it on instinct, they partnered with creative agency The Special Group and academic researchers to design a study exploring the motivations behind sending explicit images, then ran it at scale and anonymously through Attest, surveying a nationally representative sample of 1,000 US men and women.
The data gave them the confidence to move forward: face pics were nine times more likely to provoke a positive reaction than explicit images, across every gender surveyed. As Tori Herman, Senior Manager of Consumer Insights at MANSCAPED, put it, the research “transformed a sensitive, culturally risky idea into evidence-backed insights.”
The campaign went on to rack up 60 million views in four days, with 95% positive sentiment across social — proof that when a risky idea is validated with real consumer data first, brands can commit to it with confidence instead of crossing their fingers.
The takeaway: before you pitch a big idea internally — or greenlight the budget behind it — test the underlying insight with real consumers. It turns “we think this will land” into “we know this will land.”
2. Creative testing: find out which version actually works
Once you’ve got a direction, the next fight is usually internal: which headline, which visual, how prominent should the logo be. Everyone in the room has an opinion. The people who’ll actually see the ad don’t get a vote unless you ask them.
Case study: Lucky Saint
Lucky Saint was preparing its biggest out-of-home campaign to date to align with its sponsorship of Dry January. With a large chunk of annual marketing spend riding on a single month, Head of Brand Emily Laws wanted more than internal opinion to settle open questions about the creative, like logo prominence and which lines of copy to run.
Lucky Saint tested four versions of the ad through Attest, asking respondents about their initial reaction, what brand they thought it belonged to, what messages came through, and their intent after seeing it. That let Emily weight the campaign spend toward the strongest-performing versions rather than the ones the internal team liked best.
The result was Lucky Saint’s most successful campaign to date: 10 million people reached, the number one alcohol-free beer in UK grocery that month, and — thanks to Attest’s brand tracking data — hard proof that the campaign had hit its awareness targets.
The takeaway: creative testing turns subjective arguments about logos and copy into a data-backed decision, and gives you a benchmark to prove the campaign worked once it’s live.
3. Strategy and targeting: know who you’re actually talking to
A campaign can have great creative and still miss if it’s aimed at the wrong audience. Assumptions about “who our customers are” are often based on whoever’s loudest on social media and not who’s actually driving revenue.
Case study: Little Moons
When mochi ice cream brand Little Moons went viral on TikTok, sales jumped tenfold overnight. The hard part was what came next: how do you turn a social spike into sustainable growth once the trend cools off?
The obvious assumption — based on who was engaging on TikTok — was that Little Moons’ audience was late-teens and Gen Z women. Consumer profiling through Attest told a different story: the people actually driving volume in premium ice cream were affluent, 30-plus shoppers with the disposable income to buy a nearly-£5 pack habitually.
That single insight reshaped the whole strategy. Instead of chasing the TikTok audience, Little Moons leaned into PR and press coverage aimed at reaching those older, affluent shoppers who weren’t necessarily on the platform at all. As Marketing Director Ross Farquhar explained, the theory was that landing coverage in outlets like the Telegraph made the story “far more likely to become part of the cultural conversation” than staying confined to TikTok.
The strategy paid off: prompted awareness tripled and consideration grew by almost 50%, turning a viral moment into durable brand growth.
The takeaway: don’t assume your loudest audience is your most valuable one. Profiling who actually drives spend in your category should shape where and how you target a campaign, not just where the buzz is.
4. Tracking: prove the campaign worked (and justify the spend)
Planning and creative are only half the job. Once a campaign is live — or once it’s wrapped — you need to know if it actually moved the needle, both to justify the spend to stakeholders and to steer what comes next.
Case study: MOMA
Oat milk and porridge brand MOMA was about to launch its first big above-the-line campaign for Barista edition oat milk, built around a new positioning as “the craft oat company.” It spanned connected TV, outdoor, in-store and social — a serious step up in scale and spend for the brand, and one that Marketing Director Natasha Thompson knew would need to be justified in hard numbers. As she put it, “you need to be able to show the needle moving in response to the money you’re spending.”
MOMA worked with Attest to run pre and post-campaign brand tracking, capturing baseline metrics on brand awareness, sentiment and purchase intent for the oat milk category before the campaign, then repeating the survey afterwards, this time showing respondents the ad itself and asking what they took from it, and whether (and where) they recalled seeing it.
The results gave MOMA a clear, evidenced shift in awareness and largely positive feedback on the ad’s messaging, which the team used to support the investment internally and share with their media and creative agencies — helping decide what to ramp up or dial back for future campaigns.
The takeaway: pre and post-campaign tracking turns “we think it worked” into a number you can put in front of stakeholders and agencies, and gives you a live feed into what to change next time.
Why data-backed campaign planning pays off
Whichever stage you’re at, bringing real consumer data into the decision delivers benefits.
It de-risks the big bets. The boldest ideas are often the ones most likely to get killed on gut feel alone before they ever reach an audience. Testing early means you can commit fully to a bold idea because you’ve already seen the evidence it will land, rather than finding out with real money on the line.
It makes budget work harder. Data doesn’t just protect a budget from being wasted; it tells you where within that budget to lean in, which version of an ad deserves the bigger spend, and which channel or audience is worth doubling down on.
It sharpens where and how you reach people. Knowing who’s actually worth targeting is only half of it — the other half is knowing where to find your audience and what will land once you do. Getting that right at the planning stage doesn’t just improve one campaign, it can reset the strategy for everything that follows.
It builds credibility in the room. Every campaign eventually has to convince someone else: an internal team, a client, a stakeholder holding the purse strings. Numbers change the nature of that conversation — from “we believe this worked” to “here’s what moved, and by how much.” That’s the difference between a marketing team that has to defend its instincts and one that gets taken at its word.
It makes the case for more. Proving that a campaign moved the needle isn’t just about justifying money already spent, it’s also what earns a bigger budget next time. Evidence of ROI is the strongest argument any marketer has for future investment, and it’s hard to make that argument without the numbers to back it up.
It compounds. Perhaps the most underrated benefit: research done at one stage often feeds decisions well beyond it. A creative test becomes the benchmark for proving impact later. A profiling exercise reshapes strategy for months, not just one campaign. A tracking habit that starts as a one-off becomes a standing part of how a brand plans. Data-backed planning builds an evidence base that makes every future campaign easier to plan, pitch and prove.
With consumer insights in your marketing toolkit, you can pinpoint where the real uncertainty sits — the idea, the creative, the audience, the outcome — and close the gap with evidence rather than opinion. Do that consistently, and campaigns stop being a bet you hope pays off, and start being a process you can trust.
