Take your audiences on an emotional rollercoaster ride

In the latest post in our series by industry experts, Seelin Ho from ICM Unlimited asks: What was your favourite Christmas ad? Have you ever wondered why and what makes a good ad?

With Christmas being an emotionally charged time of year, brands race to produce nostalgia-loaded and tear-inducing content to woo the masses. In the battle for Christmas supremacy, ICM Unlimited found that Sainsbury’s Mog’s Christmas Calamity won, beating favourites John Lewis and their Man on the Moon to the top spot. While both ads demonstrated the qualities that make ads successful, why were audiences more drawn to Sainsbury’s?

Our work has shown that Sainsbury’s success was down to the combination of high ‘explicit appreciation’ – audiences said they liked the ad – with high emotional engagement. The suspenseful story, peppered with humour and cute characters, resulted in high scores for fear, puzzlement, and happiness. Fear, a sign of the protective instinct, kicks in when viewers see Mog in peril, while puzzlement stemmed from curiosity and intrigue to see how the story would end.

John Lewis, on the other hand, had low explicit appreciation scores and only average emotional engagement. True, the ad’s novel and unusual storyline led to high surprise scores, but peaks of disgust and sadness were also registered. Exploiting feelings of guilt towards the elderly in a branded ad may have contributed to disgust levels. Sadness – literally a depressing emotion – inhibits the nervous system, resulting in less brain activity and a negative impact on attention levels.

Why do emotions matter when thinking about advertising effectiveness?

Emotions are deeply ingrained in human behaviour and with 0.0004% of all sensory processing being conscious¹ they dominate our decision-making processes. Core emotions – based on Paul Ekman’s work on the uniformity of facial expressions – are universal, regardless of age, gender or upbringing. They were borne out of the need for survival, an instinct still very much present today. While it might not be as drastic as life or death, loss aversion is a fundamental human behaviour.

We know that ‘stated’ measures including likes and shares tell us part of the story. But they don’t indicate why content is good at pulling heartstrings. Indeed, in surveys, people often claim they’re not influenced by advertising. But by analysing facial reactions and applying facial coding, we can chart the emotional rollercoasters audiences experience in watching commercials and begin to understand how ads influence our attitudes and behaviours in ways we don’t often realise.

Audiences respond to and revel in emotional journeys

With this in mind, ICM Unlimited devised ShowReal: a research solution integrating Crowd Emotion’s sophisticated facial coding technology into an online survey environment. ShowReal allows us to gain a comparative view of what people both think and feel about media content, with participants only needing a webcam to take part.

In this way, emotional reactions are captured in real-time, instead of asking respondents to post-rationalise how they felt. Watching media content in familiar surroundings on laptops/PCs is more reflective of actual media consumption habits, resulting in a more natural and immersive research environment and allowing us to pinpoint both what people find engaging and why.

There isn’t a set formula for creating an ad that works on the emotional as well as rational level. It’s definitely not as straightforward as churning out content that triggers continuously high levels of happiness. But it is clear that people respond to and revel in emotional journeys. Brands should strive to take audiences on that journey: create contrasts throughout, prompt those mixed emotions, and keep audiences hooked, just as Sainsbury’s have done with Mog’s Christmas Calamity.

ICM and CrowdEmotion tested adverts from Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, Asda, Boots, Marks and Spencer, and Tesco amongst 300 respondents. Fieldwork ran from 30th November – 1st December 2015.

¹ Wilson, T. D. (2004): Strangers to ourselves. Harvard University Press.