The UK Christmas Ad season began on November 1st, as Currys PC World released three ads showing off the best new tech in store this year. The theme is members of staff taking the items home to try them out – and landing in amusing situations because of it.
For as long as I have worked in this industry – both as a Marketing Leader and Ad Agency boss – there’s been a tension between creativity and the bottom line. The tools and channels change, but the arguments don’t. “Research ruins ideas!” “Awards are meaningless!” “Data makes us soulless number-crunchers!” “Social is self-indulgence!”
Last year nothing symbolised the UK’s Christmas advertising crop better than the humble mince pie. The festive treat took a starring role in commercials by Waitrose, Aldi, and M&S (whose gently comedic “Mrs Claus” was the most emotional Christmas ad of the year). It summed up the trends we saw last year.
Especially for young people, instant ramen is the snack that fuels the world. The inventor of the instant noodle, Nissin founder Momofuku Ando, is a heroic business figure. In Japan he has his own museum and was the star of a top-selling “business manga”, a comic adapting the Cup Noodle story.
Is your agency helping you reach 5-Star Advertising? This coveted 5-Star ranking is based on System1 Research’s pioneering behavioral science work to predict long-term profitability by ranking ads on a 1- to 5-Star scale based on emotional impact.
The campaign for Colman’s Mustard was one of the first examples of a new kind of advertising idea, one that would go on to drive profitable growth for hundreds of brands in the decades since: a Fluent Device.
Something changed this year at the ESOMAR Congress. Tectonic plates are shifting. Age-old market research certainties are vanishing. The most visionary clients are doing things differently and changing what they buy and the way they buy it. And where they lead, others will follow.
Platforms and publishers are changing to accommodate the current surge in online video – think Facebook’s introduction of auto-playing ads. But testing and insights have to change too, as marketers still have trouble getting a reliable read on which bits of content are performing well – or even what “performing well” looks like.
Nathan Waechter, Associate Vice President at System1, reflects on the IIEX Forum in Atlanta – and highlights 3 key takeaways from the conference.
During the Book Launch Party in London, in the shadow of a six foot replica book, a new ground-breaking tome was unleashed on the world: System1, Unlocking Profitable Growth.
In a move away from product-pushing and pricing wars, French supermarket giants Intermarché and Monoprix have made the move into Feeling. Using the classic boy meets girl love story template, the brands’ new 3- and 4- minute spots are more short film than classic ad.
Happy Christmas to all our Readers! Plenty of creatives and planners are having to do, looking to hit exactly the right emotional note to delight and inspire the British public.
In order to create profitable, brand-building campaigns, marketers should look to long-term campaigns that drive System 1 decision-making.
Ollie Aplin, author of ‘This Book Will Make You Stronger’ applies the principles of Fluent Innovation in his new book to improve mental health issues in men.
Fluent Devices help solve one of the great problems of emotional advertising – how do you build on the success of a blockbuster 5-Star ad and make sure your next commercials are just as strong? Find out in this blog post.
Every year GreenBook runs a study called the GRIT (GreenBook Research Industry Trends) Report, which examines key metrics within the market research industry. One component of the GRIT Report is a ranking of the 50 most innovative market research agencies.
Donald Duck Magazine’s “The Duck and the Boy” had the highest Dynamism score (a measure of changes in emotion throughout an ad) in our 2016 FeelMore50 rankings.
Chapter One of our book about our System1 philosophy focuses on decision-making itself – it sums up everything we’ve learned from thinkers like Daniel Kahneman and Gerd Gigerenzer and shows how their ideas are relevant to everyday life.
What should shopper marketers aim for? Research has shown that aiming for moving power is much more successful in driving System 1 decision making processes than stopping power.
Hello, and a very warm welcome to the new System1 Research blog. We used to be BrainJuicer, and as of April 4th this year we’ve rebranded as System1 Research, part of the wider System1 Group.
Great news for fans of advertising that makes people feel more and buy more! The 2016 FeelMore50 ranking launched yesterday– our annual list of the global Top 50 most emotional ads.
Agency co-founder Rod Connors gives his insight into why Adidas chose not to endorse and run student-made ad ‘Break Free’.
Super Bowl debutants have a big job to do. They have to hold their own against some of the biggest brands on the planet, and they have to introduce themselves to a super-size audience for the first time.
In recent years, a pillar of Super Bowl advertising has been the sentimental ad. Usually – but not always – built around telling a moving story, sentimental ads work by tapping different types of happiness – awe, joy and particularly uplifting emotion. They also often toy with negative emotions, and if they resolve those feelings of sadness into happiness, such ads can be highly emotionally dynamic (which tends to mean better sharing and interaction rates).
Emotional advertising isn’t all about emotion – while Feeling is the thing advertising does best to build brands, advertising is also a great opportunity to build Fluency. What is Fluency? It’s making your brand easier to recognise, easier to process mentally, and easier to choose quickly. You build Fluency by creating and using what Professor Byron Sharp calls “distinctive assets” – anything that brings your brand quickly to mind. Logos, slogans, songs, shapes, even colors can be distinctive assets.
Humor has always had a big part to play in Super Bowl advertising, and the last few years have seen the most emotional ads shift between commercials to make you laugh, and commercials that bring a happy tear to your eye.
Adorable snowmen, woolly hats and scarves, and a heart-warming story of togetherness… this ad from China could be a typical Western Christmas-themed ad. But the fireworks might give you a clue that this Coca-Cola commercial is something a little different.
Everyone’s excited to watch the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots battle it out on February 5th to decide who will be crowned Super Bowl LI Champs. But that’s not all we are excited about. We also tune in to see which brands will leave us talking about their advertising the most. Who’s going to make us LOL, smirk or even cry, we will find out in a few short weeks.
Welcome back to another FeelMore50 “Ad of the Moment” spotlight! With the Super Bowl just around the corner we felt it’d only be fitting to shine a light on 2016’s FeelMore50 Super Bowl winner – Super Bowl 50’s most emotional ad of the night – PepsiCo’s Doritos “Dogs”.
After festivities and the respite of public holidays, it’s that time of year when we pause for a breath to refocus, re-energise and rebuild. In many ways it is a clean sheet – new diaries, new calendars, perhaps some new socks? And of course there’s the formality of new year resolutions that we hope can make us better versions of ourselves, or at least make us temporarily tougher on our perennial feeble-mindedness.
It’s been a difficult year and there is no better way to raise the country’s spirits than with funny, heart-warming ads.
John Lewis wanted to make people smile this year with an ad that embraces a sense of fun and magic. They’ve certainly managed to achieve that with the appropriate help of a trampoline and some animal assistance.
Aldi’s offering was the season opener in this year’s Christmas ad parade. Quite surprising, in that it stars a root vegetable, viewers found Kevin the Carrot to be a happy, innocent and cute little chap; his triumph at the end of his exciting adventure leads to good levels of happiness and an effective resolution.
After many commentators bemoaned the melancholic tone of 2015’s adverts and sensed that the emotional heartstrings were being over-plucked, 2016 has already shown it’s still an emotional playing field, albeit with a very different tone. As emotional engagement correlates best with long-term business success, this is not too much of a surprise to see, nor is the excellent story-telling that we’ve witnessed in some of the more lengthy and big-budget ads released so far.
Spend any length of time in market research and you become aware of the notorious Cost-Speed-Quality Triangle. Notorious because the idea is you can only have two out of the three. Good and cheap research takes time. Fast and good research ain’t cheap. Fast and cheap research means cutting corners on quality.
At the IPA Effectiveness Week Genesis Conference, Les Binet and Peter Field unveiled the first findings from their third volume unpacking the IPA datamine for ad effectiveness nuggets.
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