Effective advertising: Measuring the emotional connection

In recent years, marketers have come to understand the importance of building emotional connections into successful advertising and the role of that the subconscious plays in this process. It's now possible to test new advertisements for their power to activate consumers at the emotional level and JMI has started doing this in Japan.

Technically, emotions are a physiological phenomenon. They are autonomic responses that prepare an individual for action, often without the individual being consciously aware of them.

As such, advertising messages need to reach into the subconscious level and motivate the target audience, regardless of whether they are liked on a cognitive level.

Effective advertising builds an association between the product/service advertised and meaningful experiences in a consumer's life that are stored permanently in their subconscious. If the marketing stimulus strikes a responsive chord, the autonomic nervous system is activated preparing the viewer to act upon the message ...and increasing their likelihood to purchase the product.

Traditional Copy Testing

Traditionally, advertising pre-tests have relied on attitudinal data to predict consumer motivational response. But the results have often been disappointing for marketers, when comparing with the actual sales performance in market. Indeed, the Advertising Research Foundation's (ARF) copy validation project in the early 1990s failed to demonstrate a consistent relationship between several 'standard' evaluative copy-test measures and single source (scanning) data for sales.

The issue is not simply that consumers are intentionally misleading or that they subconsciously want to please the interviewer, though this may be partially true in some cases. The bigger problem is that consumers are largely unaware of the drivers that really motivate them. Rationally worded research questions tend to elicit rational responses. Yet in the market place, people buy and make brand choices for many irrational or emotional reasons, in addition to rational motivations.

So how can marketers capture real emotional reactions to their advertising in pre-tests and get the whole picture for their brands?

Real time emotional tracking: GSR

The solution that JMI is using is called Galvanic Skin Response (or GSR). As a human's emotional arousal changes so does the conductivity of electricity by the skin.

Such changes can be tracked by passing a weak electric current through the finger using a sensor, as individuals are exposed to stimuli, including TV advertisements.

Psychologists have used the GSR method since the beginning of the twentieth century and it is now becoming popular to integrate into advertising pre-testing.

The chart below shows the emotional arousal tracked for a successful 30s car commercial. The orange line shows the (low) level of channel switching or "zapping" that was measured during the commercial. After 3s, the arousal is seen to build steadily as the TVCM's music, narrative and tension builds.

The commercial maintained a very high viewer share (yellow line) and also generated high levels of recall and interest.

In contrast the TV commercial below for a major brand of shampoo, generated a very low level of arousal. While viewers maintained some interest during the first 8s, when the model was shown, any emotional activation then collapsed when the execution switched to focusing on the product after 6-7 seconds.

By the end of the commercial, half of the viewers had "zapped" to change channel. Only the brand's jingle at the end of the spot created any arousal among the remaining viewers.

JMI is working with our partner agency, Germany-based Eye Square (www.eye-square.com) to combine GSR tracking with eye tracking measures (showing which elements consumers focus their attention on) and traditional attitudinal/recall scores. This provides a comprehensive evaluation of TV advertising.

In Japan

Initial tests in Japan in FMCG, durable and service industries highlight the difficulty of building emotional motivation, especially in the 15s TVCM format. This short spot is often used in the Japanese market.

Generally those TV commercials that perform relatively stronger use narrative and social interaction to support emotional arousal. In contrast, announcing the brand in an overt way at the start of the TVCM often boosts recall at the expense of the narrative tension and hence emotional arousal. Therefore a balance is necessary.

It has also been found that music can play a leading role in emotional arousal and that even subtle changes in key or the pacing of a sound track can result in large shifts in emotional arousal. This is an area of creative evaluation where GSR is particularly sensitive and valuable. Some commercials that cleverly synchronize music with visual stimuli, including product demonstrations, are seen to be highly effective in triggering emotional reactions.

In cultures such as Japan where it is normal for individuals to maintain a "public" face and a "private" face, GSR is a particularly powerful technique for detecting an interest, or lack thereof, from people who may not know how or be willing to express such thoughts openly.

The results

By comparing the GSR research results against actual in-market results, GSR users have found that to be effective, advertisements must evoke an emotional response from the target audience. Indeed, it has been found to be a more discriminating measure than attitudinal scales such as likeability.

One long-term user of GSR stated that the secret of his success with new product development, versus the 90%+ failure rate for packaged goods, is a direct result of his integration of physiological methods (GSR and others) with traditional qualitative and quantitative research in a rigorous protocol. And this director of new-product development was responsible for the longest string of new-product successes in the history of his Fortune 100 company.

Measuring the emotional connection of your advertising to your target audience can be the difference between success and failure in new campaigns; so be sure to get connected!

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