Liquid breaks the fourth wall for the first-ever UserTesting spots

After nine long months of quarantining, we all want to climb out of our Zoom windows and actually interact with our clients and coworkers. Free ourselves from that video conference with mom and dad and just lean over and give them a big hug. Fortunately for us at Liquid, UserTesting let us do it.

Well, on film anyway.

As their on-the-nose name denotes, UserTesting allows designers, researchers, product teams, marketers, creative teams, and the like to get unfiltered feedback on their products, services, or messaging. Many of these tests are taken with video recording or video conferencing, allowing the test creators to get real authentic reactions in real-time and quickly course-correct if something doesn’t feel right to the customer(s).

Turns out, it’s a super useful tool. Because we tried it out ourselves. Twice. Liquid used the platform not only to test our launch campaign for client Acoustic but also to test our initial messaging “Real. Human. Insight.” for the UserTesting digital and outdoor campaign that launched earlier this year. Which was about as meta as it gets.

So when UserTesting came to Liquid to create and buy their first-ever TV spots,
we jumped at the opportunity. The key idea was to convey “A window into your customer’s world.” And the approach? Create five 15-second spots and deploy using AI-based, custom persona targeting across OTT streaming platforms to connected TVs to bring that idea to life. The challenge was not only to gain brand awareness but to capture what UserTesting actually does within a blink-and-you-missed-it time frame

With a lot of help, a ton of real-life examples, and some serious (as in fruitful) collaboration with the client, Liquid landed on five test scenarios: a pizza delivery site oversight, an online checkout gone awry, a mobile banking glitch, a steamy product demo and a marketing message mishap. Take a look at the whole series, here.

In case you were wondering, of course, UserTesting tested the spots we made to test if our messaging was up to the test (phew!). It was fun to see peoples’ reactions to our work.

It was almost as if we were right there with them.