In 2007, Kerry Collinge, who works in marketing, worked on an unusual project involving a drumming gorilla.
The TV commercial was for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate and the gorilla – or rather, an actor in a very convincing gorilla suit – plays the drum solo from the Phil Collins song “In the Air Tonight”.
It was an instant hit with viewers: sales of the chocolate skyrocketed and the ad was voted a UK favorite.
At the time the advert was published, Ms Collinge was a senior figure in Cadbury’s internal marketing team. But as she explains, the finished piece might never have seen the light of day.
“The ad sat in the company, at Cadbury’s, for nine months before anyone published it,” she says.
Initial market research had shown that the ad would not go down well with customers. After all, a drumming gorilla has nothing to do with chocolate.
However, Ms Collinge and her colleagues were convinced it would be a hit. So she went to a London-based high-tech ad testing company called System1 for a second opinion. The online-based system does not ask participants if they like a particular ad.
Instead, at least 150 people are being asked to watch the ad and record their emotional reactions to it – the drumming gorilla received a hugely positive review. Mrs Collinge reported this to the Cadbury bosses, and the advert was published to great acclaim.
“I used the tests to really give Cadbury confidence that the ad would do a fantastic job,” she says. “Because it was very, very different for her.”
It takes a foolhardy person to claim that they are not influenced by advertising. In today’s digital world, it’s coming your way all the time, and the amounts of money companies are spending promoting their products and services have never been higher.
Global advertising spending will reach $706 million (£527 million) this year, according to a study. That’s up from $634 million in 2019, and digital advertising — ads you see or hear on your computer and mobile — now accounts for 62% of the total.
The problem for brands, however, remains neatly summed up by this quote from US auto industry pioneer Henry Ford: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the problem is I don’t know which half.”
To ensure ads are as successful as possible, retailers are increasingly turning to high-tech ad testing firms.
The British company Kantar is another company working on these analyses. The online testing system also focuses on a person’s emotional response to seeing an ad. One way to do this is to connect to a tester’s laptop or webcam, and then use face-mapping software to monitor their reactions.
Jane Ostler, executive managing director for creative and media products at Kantar, says there is increasing demand for this type of more sophisticated testing.
This shift is because companies want to promote their products across a variety of platforms—print, TV, and social media. These different media may require a different ad for the same product.
“I think for customers that’s the real challenge – not just making it [the adverts] to integrate everything and make it part of the same campaign, but also how to measure it and if it works,” she says.
Ms. Collinge now works for System1 as Director of Marketing and Partnerships. The system prompts testers to reveal their emotional response to a played ad by clicking on the relevant small human head graphic on their screen.
Each of these images depicts a different emotion, with that emotion also written underneath. Choices are Contempt, Surprise, Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Neutral.
“We don’t want to ask people what they’re going to do [whether they will buy the product or not]because we know that’s not very indicative of an ad’s performance because people go into their left brain and start overthinking,” says Ms Collinge.
“Instead, we want to measure what their natural feeling is, what their natural emotion is, what all these basic emotions are. We can get a snapshot of what parts of an ad are working or not.”
The ultimate goal is to provide customers with both accurate short-term and long-term sales forecasts and additional metrics, such as finding out whether the company’s brand is recognizable and familiar to customers or not.
New Tech Economy is a series exploring how technological innovation will shape the emerging economic landscape.
Priyanka Carr, chief operating office of US software company Momentiv, says the advantage of using online advertising tests is that they’re cheaper than in-person tests or market research. (Momentive also owns another online ad testing provider – SurveyMonkey).
“It doesn’t take hundreds of thousands of dollars to run an ad test [as it could do previously]’ says Ms. Carr. “It now costs tens of thousands of dollars to run a large ad test, and you can do it early in the process. That’s a key differentiator.”
One such online tester is Nicole Cheong from Johannesburg. She recently reviewed an alcohol ad that featured wheelchair users but found the survey questions somewhat to the point and examined her response to people with disabilities in the ad.
“It was a cute and touching story, but it didn’t fit the product for me,” she adds.
System1 says its pricing starts at around £2,000 per ad, while Toluna, another online ad tester, says its pricing can be as little as 5% of an ad’s campaign budget.
But if brands can now test their ads more extensively than ever before, what makes a good ad anyway? How can a retailer and its advertising agency come up with the next “drumming gorilla”?
Psychologist Stuart Duff of UK business coaching firm Pearn Kandola says if brands want to reach customers, hope is the emotion to focus on.
“Emotions are crucial to our memory,” he explains. “We don’t easily remember factual or boring information, but something moving or uncomfortable will be easily remembered. What are the three strongest emotions? I would suggest fear, guilt and hope.
“Hope is associated with feelings of joy and relief and offers an escape from fear and guilt. It is what drives us forward and inspires confidence in the product.”
Additional reporting from Will Smale, editor of the New Tech Economy series.
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