Campaign and message pretesting with qualitative research

By Federico Elgueta, Director of WAV Research · Published October 27, 2026 · Updated October 27, 2026

A qualitative campaign pretest tells you, before you spend on media, what people take from an ad or a message, what they believe, what bothers them and what they remember. It also shows what your audience believes about the category, including the wrong beliefs, so the message can address them instead of running into them.

What does a qualitative pretest answer?

• What people take from the ad or the message, in the words of those who saw it, and whether it matches what the brand meant.
• Which part they believe and which part sounds like advertising.
• What they remember after seeing it, and whether they remember it with the right brand.
• Which tone puts off, offends or bores one segment and not another.
• Among several creative routes, which has the most potential and why, so it can be refined before production.
• What beliefs, myths and open questions the audience has about the category.

How do you work with beliefs and myths?

New or technical categories are full of ideas nobody has checked. A format that works is to hand each person, before the conversation, a list of statements to mark in writing as true, false or "not sure". Then the group discusses each statement.

For example, in a study about electric cars the list could include "the battery only lasts a few years", "charging at home is complicated" or "an electric car is no good for long trips". The same format works for any category with technical, health or price questions.

That gives you three readings: what each person believed before the group had any influence, what changed with the conversation and which question is still open. The last one is the most direct input for the message: it tells you what the campaign has to clear up, and in which words people ask about it.

What does it not answer?

It does not measure the campaign's effect on sales or recall at scale. With small groups you see which reactions appear and whether they repeat across groups, not what share of the audience shares them. If you need to compare creative routes with a number, run a survey afterwards, with the routes already refined. Nor does it replace creative judgment: the group tells you what it understands and feels, not how to write the ad.

How does WAV design it?

We start from the decision, not from a questionnaire. In the first conversation we agree on what has to be settled when the study ends, and from there we build the groups, the guide and the stimuli.

• Groups by profile. Each segment the campaign speaks to gets its own group, for example customers and non-customers, to hear how the reading of the same message changes.
• 6 to 8 people per group, sessions of 90 to 120 minutes. Enough for contrast, and enough time for everyone to speak.
• Concrete stimuli. Scripts, storyboards, animatics, print pieces or the finished ad. When there are several routes, rotate the order across groups so the first one does not color the others. See stimulus.
• In writing first. With the nominal group technique, each person notes their reaction before hearing the others, so you know what they thought before the group had any influence.
• A 360 room in Santiago. A 360 camera records the whole room and each participant wears their own microphone. The brand can follow the session live.

The session follows a guide in blocks, each with its goal and minutes; there is an example in the focus group discussion guide template.

What do you receive?

A report that says which routes and messages work, which do not and why, with the beliefs the campaign has to address. For the creative team, it means hearing how a person reacted to a piece, in their own voice. Every finding comes with its literal quote, the profile of the person who said it (for example "Woman, 35-44 · Non-customer") and the exact minute of the session. WR3, our software, separates who is speaking with 90.4% agreement with a human review, measured on 141 moments of a real session (how we measure it), and every quote is checked word for word against the transcript, which is produced on our own computers.

The deliverables come in Spanish and English: the 360 video of each session with English subtitles, the report on the web and as a PDF, a deck for the board and an action tracker with the evidence behind each action. You can browse the format in the sample report, built from a fictional study.

Frequently asked questions