A print ad gets one shot. No swap, no fix, no second version once it's on the press. Before committing a full-page placement in a walking magazine, Stap Reizen tested six travel photos with Brandpulse and walked away with a clear winner, backed by real audience data.
Stap Reizen is a Dutch specialist in self-guided walking holidays across Southern Europe. With individually planned routes and small-scale, comfortable accommodations, they help travellers explore far beyond the crowds, at their own pace.
Industry: Travel & Tourism
Company Size: Independent specialist (Netherlands)
Role: Marketing
Customer Type: B2C (Dutch and Belgian travellers)
Headquarters: The Netherlands
Chose a winning image for a full-page magazine ad before it went to print
Replaced an internal debate with a decision backed by real audience behaviour
Tested with 64,000+ real people across the Netherlands and Flanders
Full decision made in 7 days
Six good photos. One page. Zero data.
Stap Reizen had a full-page ad booked in a walking magazine, and six strong candidates for the hero shot. Once the issue went to print, whichever image ran was the image every reader saw. No revisions, no do-over.
"With print, there's no redo. This test gave us the confidence to choose that one image without guessing."
Esther Baarends - Managing Director & founder of Stap Reizen
Stap Reizen used Brandpulse Attention Testing to settle it before print, testing all six images with a real Dutch and Belgian audience to see which one actually stopped and engaged people, not which one looked best in a meeting.
The objective: find the asset with the highest Stopping Power Rating (SPR), the proportion of people who notice and engage after an asset captures their attention.
Two travellers at a mountain summit. One in a mustard jacket, one in black. Both smiling at the camera. It won, clearly, and by a wide margin over the next best option.
The reason: it wasn't relying on one trick. Two faces instead of one. Strong colour contrast. Real depth in the shot. The quiet, empty landscape photos that felt safe on paper actually performed worst, they had nothing for the eye to land on.
Stap Reizen went from six unranked photos to one confident decision in seven days. The winning image ran as the hero visual, paired with the headline "Jouw volgende stap begint hier," inside an inspiration-themed spread in the magazine. Not a guess. A decision made with evidence, before it became permanent.
Join other brands using Brandpulse to make high-stakes creative decisions with evidence, not opinion, especially when there's no second chance to get it right.
