System1 Ad Testing Reveals Consumer Insights to Supercharge Effectiveness of Xero’s Brand Campaign
Xero is a global small business platform that helps 4.4 million customers around the world supercharge their business by bringing together crucial tools, including accounting, payroll and payments — on one platform.
Prior to the launch of a new campaign to support Xero’s refreshed brand platform, “Your business supercharged”, the team sought to understand the resonance of the messaging and creative style of their new ads. The ad portrays several business owners from different sectors, like a hairdresser and fitness instructor, taking flight riding everyday objects and soaring into the sky.
“Our customers often tell us they just want accounting to feel simpler and less intimidating. That’s the spirit behind Your business supercharged — it’s about showing what it feels like to have real control over your books, and your business,” said Alex Haigh, Global Head of Brand Strategy at Xero. “Testing the work meant we could refine the creative and make sure it genuinely spoke to their needs.”
Xero turned to System1 to gauge how its target audience would feel about the campaign. System1’s Test Your Ad platform measures emotional responses to predict creative effectiveness. This can be coupled with hands-on Guidance from System1’s experts, who provide actionable insights to improve commercial impact.
The initial creative was tested with a custom audience of business owners in the U.S., UK and Australia. The Test Your Ad reports provided useful metrics and additional diagnostics like “Reasons for Emotion”, “Types of Happiness” and “Key Associations.”
As a result, the team focused optimizations on:
Thanks to System1’s testing and easy-to-read reports, the subsequent version of Xero’s creative secured an increase of 1.4 stars, compared to the previously tested version, with the B2B target audience in the U.S., predicting ‘Strong’ brand-building potential.
The ad also achieved an ‘Exceptional’ Spike Rating, predicting short-term sales potential.
The benefits of eliciting intense, positive emotions can’t be fully realized if creative isn’t well branded. Xero successfully landed its messaging, with over 90% of viewers correctly identifying the brand, as expressed by System1’s Fluency Rating.
This was partly accomplished by adding the Xero logo within the first 3 seconds, as well as incorporating “Xero” in the music track to further embed the branding throughout. Adding in the brand context from the beginning also helped to reduce confusion, successfully landing the second goal of increasing story comprehension.
Starting the music earlier and enhancing message comprehension helped to drive more intense, positive reactions. The percentage of viewers feeling ‘neutral’ dropped 41% — demonstrating a significant shift toward positive emotional engagement.
Leveraging the insights to make further optimizations as well as testing the subsequent version of the creative, helped Xero enhance the resonance of the global campaign. Star, Spike and Fluency metrics all increased in the second round of testing with U.S., UK and Australian audiences.
“System1 provided clear and consistent metrics and actionable insights that enabled us to enhance brand attribution and emotional engagement,” added Haigh. “These optimizations enable the creative to work harder and to deliver greater commercial impact.”
"Using System1 allows us to measure and compare past and future ads against the same consistent set of benchmarks, making it easier to understand the impact of each creative iteration."
Isabel Parashos Lead Insight Consultant, Xero
As World leaders in predicting and improving advertising effectiveness, Test Your Ad provides the most accurate/predictive metrics.