Delta Dental Unlocks the Keys to Entertainment with System1’s Test Your Ad Platform
Health insurance ads, on average, do not offer much long-term brand-building potential. According to System1’s Test Your Ad Premium database, the category averages 1.9-Stars on System1’s 5-Star scale, landing lower than the average for all US advertising. Most ads focus on rational messaging and direct sales, neglecting the emotional and entertaining elements that build long-term brand equity.
Delta Dental, the nation’s leading dental benefits provider, wanted to change this. Three Delta Dental member companies, Delta Dental of Virginia, Delta Dental of New Jersey/Connecticut, and Delta Dental of Kentucky, believed there was an opportunity to make a wider impact in the category. Chris Pyle, Vice President of Marketing, Government Relations, and CX at Delta Dental of Virginia, wanted to break away from boring and prove that entertainment could deliver the long and the short for Direct Response Television (DRTV).
He envisioned a new type of ad – a fresh direction for health insurance creative – but he needed to validate this creative direction with data.
“I had a hypothesis that health insurance ads could do more than activation, they could build the brand through humor and entertainment,” said Pyle. “To give the business confidence in moving forward with this idea, we needed System1’s support to bring the voice of the customer into the room through emotional measurement.”
By measuring the emotional responses of consumers, System1’s Test Your Ad platform predicts the commercial impact of ads. Additionally, System1’s Guidance helps to further improve ads, which are often tested from the early stages to give marketers insight into concepts with the greatest growth potential.
Delta Dental’s idea was bold: put actor Erik Estrada in a testimonial-style commercial that offers a funny twist on the category’s conventional approach to customer testimonial ads. Would a testimonial poking fun at itself and its spokesperson land with audiences?
Following System1’s advice to ‘test early,’ Delta Dental and agency partner Anderson provided an animatic for testing to set a benchmark and extract insights that could be implemented at the production stage to drive even greater results. In addition to testing with a nationally representative audience, the testing included custom samples for the 45-64 age cohort and 65+.
Once the first cut of the ad was ready, Delta Dental again relied on testing to understand the audience’s emotional journey and where further improvements could be made, adhering to System1’s second piece of advice to ‘test often.’
The animatic scored 2.1-Stars, ‘Good’ short-term potential and ‘Strong’ Fluency or brand recognition. Overall, a solid foundation on which to apply System1’s Guidance moving into the production phase.
Guidance diagnosed that some of the jokes weren’t landing as well as they could with the audience, with some viewers feeling the jokes were at Estrada’s expense. Additionally, being a student of System1’s Chief Innovation Officer, Orlando Wood, Pyle asked System1 for guidance relating to the use of left-brain vs. right-brain tactics in the original animatic. The hypothesis was that by using supers on the screen to deliver the punch lines, the ad was forcing people to read – a very left-brain activity – and was likely suppressing effectiveness. After consultation with System1, Anderson and Delta Dental revised the script to allow the character to deliver the humor and to incorporate other humorous and emotion-driving elements such as a prop and a dog.
In the next iteration for the film, Estrada grabs a giant toothbrush with Delta Dental branding and its signature green color to support brand recognition. He is also joined by a cute puppy, playfully joking that the dog is the key to the ad going viral.
The revised ad was a hit. Testing the final version revealed a 3.2-Star score – a 1.1-Star increase from the animatic. This elevates the ad’s brand-building potential from ‘Modest’ to ‘Good’ and puts Delta Dental far above the category average. The ad also performed ‘Exceptional’ on Spike Rating (short-term sales potential), proving that ads that prioritize entertainment and showmanship over salesmanship can deliver both long-term brand growth and short-term sales.
“The team at Anderson nailed the brief, System1’s database helped us benchmark against the category, the testing helped prove our hypothesis of the long delivering the short, and Guidance got us to a final version that resonates strongly with audiences,” added Pyle. “It’s a testament to investing in entertainment and a new era for Delta Dental creative.”
“This ad is an exciting new direction for Delta Dental and a breath of fresh air for the category,” said Anthony Vercelli, Creative Director – Motion & Sound, Anderson. “Testing enabled us to make adjustments that had a big impact on the creative’s impact, while still respecting the direction we wanted to take with the humorous testimonial-style approach.”
"System1’s database helped us benchmark against the category, the testing helped prove our hypothesis of the long delivering the short, and Guidance got us to a final version that resonates strongly with audiences."
Chris Pyle Vice President, Marketing, Government Relations, and CX, Delta Dental
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