Proof-Powered Creativity: Going From Artful to Data-Backed Messaging
Business Challenge
Create A Branded Message That Hits Home
Lockhart Veterinary Consulting knew they needed a clear, emotionally resonant message—but they didn’t want to rely on guesswork. Their audience of overextended veterinarians doesn’t respond to fluff.
The message needed to address the tension between being a medical professional and managing the business of a practice.
But how do you write a tagline that cuts through?
We needed a way to test emotional resonance before committing to a final direction.
Our Process
Getting From 70 Ideas to a Clear Winner
We began with a wide-open creative brainstorm.
Over the course of several sessions, we generated nearly 70 tagline possibilities.
Some were direct, some were metaphorical, and many explored different emotional tones—from relief to pride to frustration.
To narrow them down, we scored each tagline across three core criteria:
Will the audience know this is for them?
Does it address a pain point or benefit?
Does it use a literary device? (e.g., contrast, rhythm, repetition)
This gave us a clear framework for eliminating weaker options and prioritizing lines that were emotionally sticky and strategically grounded.
Five lines made it to the final round:
Be the Vet Again
Own the Practice. Not Paperwork.
Less Office, More Exam Room
Pets Matter, So Do Profits
Profits that Protect Pet Care
We then tested these finalists in two phases.
1. Survey-Based Feedback
To gather insights directly from real people and to get out of our heads, we used the user testing platform Lysanna to run tests. Each ad was tested with groups of 25 participants.
We asked the participants three core questions to understand their reactions:
Is this ad relevant to you?
Does the message resonate?
Would you click on it?
Each tagline was paired with an “imagine” statement to help frame it in context.
Imagine you are a DVM, doctor of veterinary medicine. After years of education, training, and working for others, you officially opened your own practice. Now, you’re working long hours and have a huge workload because you’re handling both patient care and the business side of the practice, including pricing, scheduling, and inventory. Then you see this ad…
Out of the five, the tagline Less Office, More Exam Room clearly stood out:
88% said it was relevant (highest)
68% said it resonated (tied for highest)
64% said they would click (tied for highest)
Respondents said it “got right to the heart of the problem” and directly captured their daily frustration with admin overload.
“I’m tired of paperwork eating into patient time.”
Other options, such as Pets Matter and So Do Profits, were rejected for being too commercial.
“It’s about animals, not money.”
“Doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Feels cold.”
Be the Vet Again was a client and team favorite. In the test, it sparked interest but also raised some questions:
“Sounds good, but what are you offering?”
We decided this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as having a question to answer means people are more likely to click for that answer.
2. Real-World Ad Testing
To validate our findings about the survey winners, we moved from 25-person user testing to thousands of people in addressable geofence ads.
One ad—promoting Lockhart’s Resource Library—served as a control, offering a clear and specific call to action.
The other ads featured our new, tested copy, which focuses on emotional resonance.
Campaign Metrics Table
Tagline
Spend
Impressions
Clicks
Be the Vet Again
$50
6951
7
Less Office, More Exam Room
$50
7023
14
Resource Library
$50
7104
15
The Results
Testing Revealed a Front-Runner, But Not a Knockout
Less Office, More Exam Room outperformed the other ad in clicks, reinforcing what we heard in the survey: that clarity and specificity matter to get people to click.
That said, Less Office, More Exam Room narrowly lost to the control ad promoting the Resource Library (15 clicks vs. 14). While not a clear overall winner, Less Office, More Exam Room showed strong potential as a message that resonates emotionally and performs well.
Lockhart hasn’t fully rolled out the tagline yet, but the process delivered more than just copy—it gave us a message rooted in real vet pain points, and a confident, data-backed direction for future marketing.
