Thanks to all my readers who voted! I’d love to give you all first prize…but I can’t…because a lot of you got it wrong. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about please refer my David Ogilvy vs Bill Bernach post). I asked you all “which ad you think performed the best in terms of sales?” Your options were:
There were close to 200 votes. Here is the spread:
58% Ogilvy ad1.
12% Bernbach ad1.
15% Ogilvy ad2.
13% Bernbach ad2.
Ogilvy’s ads dominated with a huge 73% of people voting for one of his two ads. Poor Bill Bernbach could only manage to entice 27% of votes. But that doesn’t matter. Who actually performed the best???
These were the results for CTR (click-through ratio)…Ol’ Billy Bernach’s ad 2 took it out and was considerably higher than any other ad. It had a 31% higher CTR than the second ad which was Ogilvy ad 1.
Why did Bernach Ad 2 get the highest CTR? I’m guessing it came down to the image caption “So Why Play?”. I personally thought Ogilvy ad 1 would have taken it out thanks to “Cockeyed Louie” and the unique list ad copy. I will definitely test out some more image captions in my future Facebook campaigns.
“But but but but…Mr Green that’s not fair. You told us to vote based on sales!”
You know now how on American Idol they delay and draw out results making you want to release a pack of frenzied midgets on Ryan Seacrest? Well that’s what I’m trying to do here. However after thinking about it I don’t really feel like being attacked by those little ones.
Without further ado…
The winner of the 2010 Marketing Masters fight of the century is:
58% of you got it right! Ogilvy ad 1 took it out by doubling its nearest competitor which was Ogilvy ad 2.
Why did Ogilvy’s ads perform better? My theory is that both of Ogilvy ads simply had a call to action. Neither of Bernbach’s ads had any form of call to action. Although they were more creative and interesting than Ogilvy’s ads, they weren’t effective in serving their number one job which was to convert views into sales.
Well done to all of you who picked the winner! To the losers…well, maybe next time.
I’ll be on the lookout for a worthy opponent to put up against the reigning champion David “Oh no he didn’t” Ogilvy. If anyone can recommend any great marketing masters let me know!
I'm loser baby so why don't you kill me… I got it wrong
We still love you Silver.
I wonder a mix of Bernbach ad2 ad image and ad text of Ogilvy ad1 would double the CTR and CR and make it a total killer ad ? hmm…might just worth a quick test to confirm.
Haha yes I will give that a test!
THere's an aff program for Mafia Wars? I thought it was all inhouse? Or are you hired direct by them? Interesting case study anyways – appreciate you sharing!
p.s. You can get an extra link for this on abtests.com
I'm also curious about this.
Maybe you should put Cockeyed Louie on top of the picture to get better CTR. Maybe then ad1 would win both portions of the testing.
That probably would of worked. However Ogilvy always keeps his captions at the bottom of images. I had to stick to the rules!
Right, people always look at the image first so he built his ads to fit the natural pattern: Image > Headline > Copy
I got it wrong too Silver. The list copy was very cool. Funny how very simple changes make a huge difference.
prolly one of the best case studies ive seen in a long time and its actually packed with useful info! nicely done mr.green
Awesome case study! I got it right!
I can see why bernbach 2 had a higher CTR.
I can't wait for the next case study.
Keep it up!
quick question…how many impressions did each ad see?
Around 200,000 each.
What was the estimated CPC?
My CPCs were around 12-15 cents.
i got it right based on ctr anyways, ctr is what it counts ass hole
Good point! I'd definitely prefer more clicks than sales. Gawd, can't believe I didn't think of that before!
Yes Mr Green
I also get a real buzz out off having more clicks than sales.
Hey robstar – profit is what counts you goose.
Cheers
Murray.
PS : Hows Courtney Place Lorenzo.??
Haha that is a very stalkerish question…CP is so-so we are actually getting kicked out this week because of renovations!
lol yea u could see my comment on last post that i selected those 2 best options(higher ctr ad + higher sales one)… atleast i was able to figure out the beest 2 outta them
hahaha which one profited the most/ had the best ROI overall?
Ogilvy 1 did, they all spent a similar amount.
[...] Case Study Results: David Ogilvy vs. Bill Bernbach | Mr Green [...]
Great post, thanks Lorenzo. Linking back to it from http://www.FacebookAdTactics.com
Hey Lorenzo,
great post…just curious – how did you get 12 to 15 cent clicks on Facebook…
No matter how I slice or dice the targeting, the CPC range always seems to be 50 cents or higher
M
Targeting New Zealand, a young demographic and a high ctr.
Nice I was right. I still utterly fail at FB, but at least I know a good ad when I see one.
Rocking case study Mr. Green. A couple of face offs I would love to see:
Dan Kennedy vs. Gary Halbert
Bud Weckesser vs. Eugene Schwartz
Keep shakin' off the haters Green.
I'll look into them! Cheers John.
is there a trick to get the list to always show up on separate lines? I tried and it keeps turning into a paragraph.
sick post though – great info as always
What list are you talking about?
The list in the body text
1. benefit 1
2. benefit 2
3. benefit 3
In the FB thing, it makes it looks like this:
1. benefit 1 2. benefit 2 3. benefit 3
When you are creating the ads in the text field it comes out as a paragraph. But if you space it right it will come out as a list on the ad preview.
Most interesting. How a combination of both would work out ?
Why not take the best of both ads and come up with a mutant ad that would rock the rest of them ?
I know you had to stick with the 2 schools, but now that it's done, why not try ?
All the best
MaxR
Maxadi.com
This article is just… awesome :]
holy crapness lord.
never thought about using aline of copy above the image in the same image.
that made ma day broda.
cheers and keep the quality work
Totally going straight to FB and implementing this for my biznez
An interesting thing Im not sure too many people do but I will be trying is targeting college students by state school, and naming out their schools acronym in the headline.
Im sure this will have some sort of positive effect on ctr/roi, i smell a test!
Great case study. I enjoyed all of the ads!
since FB don't allow download offers i wander how you would promote this
It's a facebook app.
[...] esimerkki on tämä case study, jossa testattiin David Ogilvyn ja Bill Bernachin klassisten mainostyyppien tehoa Facebooksissa. [...]
Great case study, I like how you choose to target a location where costs are smaller. This is something that most people forgot to test!
This test has way too many limitations to be valid. First, Ogilvy was a major proponent of long copy. While he valued brevity, he believed that long copy sold more. The copy that won had the shortest amount of information. And I'd hardly call 100% Free a "Call to Action". A call to action is "Play Now, 100% Free!"
I would wager that the reason the first ad had more sales is that it qualified the people before they clicked on it. "If you want to do the following, play this game". The people who didn't want to, didn't click. The people who DID want to, DID click. And because they already wanted to, they were more likely to buy it.
The last ad didn't succeed in doing that at all, and in fact is a poor swipe of the original ad for Avis. Avis was positioning itself as an underdog that, because of its status, would work harder for ME. It used the word "you". Your ad doesn't use the word "you" at all. Instead it just says "we, we, we." I don't care about the company selling me the product/service. I care about what that product/service will do for me.
So why did it have such a high click thru rate? Simple. I think it was mostly do to the last line "we load faster" and the curiosity-based questioning headline (Which was unsatisfactorily answered in the body copy). I'm going to click on it for the same reason that I click on a vague, but interesting, blurb on Engadget… I want to know what the heck they're talking about.
Once that curiosity is satisfied, I have no reason to stick around. So I go away.
But this is in no way a comparison between two methods and views on advertising… it's really just a piece about how a good set of targeted, qualifying bullets can triumph over curiosity-based copy (Something Caples figured out a long time ago and put in his book "Tested Advertising Methods").
An interesting comparison for that reason, but the pretense of a casestudy between Ogilvy and Bill Bernach is frankly bunk.
All your points are valid. But like you said the this test had too many limitations.
It was create for a bit of light entertainment. I did it out of curiosity. Sometimes I need to create my own limitations to keep my job stimulating. I am very interested in Ogilvy\’s and Bernbach\’s work. Since I was running Facebook ads at the time I thought \”what the heck\”.
This is not meant to be a scholarly article just a random test using some crazy rules.
I do appreciate your feed back though.