What framework do you use to define emotions?

As academics we are not limited to any one framework but look across them to see where evidence is strongest / most useful. The most common frameworks are:

• Continuums / dimensional theory of emotions divides the emotion space into continuous dimensions (Schlosberg 1954; Russell 1980; Scherer 2000).
• Valence and Arousal appears useful e.g. (Friestad and Thorson 1986, Burke, Heuer et al. 1992, Bolls, Lang et al. 2001).
• An alternate view is of discrete emotions, specifically a set of core of basic emotions (Tomkins and McCarter 1964, Ekman (various); Mai and Schoeller 2009).

The research that matters here is how they play out in advertising effectiveness. Most of the ad data relates to positive emotions with the importance of arousal becoming apparent. Much more work is needed.

Some of the questions we are interested in include:

1. What emotions facilitate and impede attention / memorisation?

2. How to consistently generate emotional response?

3. How to brand in the emotional continuum?

4. How to measure the “desire to watch”?

Some background

The role of emotion in marketing has been considered extensively since early work by Zajonc (1980) that argued that emotions can function independently of cognition, and can indeed override it. Emotions have been posited to be markers, mediators and moderators of consumer responses (Bagozzi, Gopinath et al. 1999). Batra and Ray (1986) stressed the need to consider both the cognitive and affective aspects of responses to advertising, while Erevelles (1998) argued that models of advertising that omit emotions do not adequately explain advertising effectiveness.

Neuroscience has demonstrated that emotions are involved even in rational processing (Damasio 1994); consequently, it is too simplistic to suggest advertisements are either rational or emotional. Emotions are known to direct what we give attention to, so they have a critical role. Advertisements are processed both rationally and emotionally, even if their creators intended to emphasise one element over the other.

Emotions and advertising effectiveness

Emotions have been shown to play a significant role in increasing brand liking (Biel 1990), increasing brand attitude (Russell 2002), influencing favorability (Heath, Brandt et al. 2006), persuading consumers (Ray and Rajeev 1983; Johar, Maheswaran et al. 2006), and predicting purchase intent (a poor but common measure) towards a brand (Morris, Woo et al. 2002; Teixeira, Picard et al. 2013). Emotions play a significant role in purchase decision-making, and advertising is often seen as an effective source of enhancement of these emotional associations (Mehta and Purvis 2006).

Attention

Attention is conceived as an integral component of advertising effectiveness; if viewers do not give an ad attention it is unlikely to have the opportunity to have any affect on their memory and hence their later behaviour. Therefore it is important to understand the role of attention in advertising effectiveness, and how it links to emotions and memory.

It has often been demonstrated that attention and memory are strongly linked (Wedel and Pieters 2007; Mai and Schoeller 2009). In the case of advertisements with visual content (e.g. TV, print, web), attention is often quantified as the amount of time eyes are fixated on the advertisement (Wedel and Pieters 2000). Lombardot (2007) shows that an element of surprise increases the attention given to advertisements, and the subsequent emotion then influences memorisation.

However, researchers who promulgate the view of low attention processing suggest that attention is not necessarily required for an effective response as emotions can be processed and implicit learning can occur at low levels of attention (Heath, Brandt et al. 2006).

Looking but not seeing

Not all types of attention are equal. It is not uncommon for our undivided attention to be given to something, but we still do not see everything. This is an area of research that continues to expand, with a few studies showing that even when we are paying attention to an event, we don’t always see all of the important details (Littman & Becklen 1976; McLay et al. 1997; Neisser 1979; Simons & Chabris 1999).

Research has shown that people still do not report seeing certain objects, even if they looked directly at the object’s location (Drew, Vo & Wolfe 2013). Eye tracking in one study revealed that the majority of respondents who reported that they did not see the object (83%) did look at the object’s location for more than a second (Drew, Vo & Wolfe 2013).

This phenomenon is known as inattentional blindness (Simons & Chabris 1999) and is not surprising when you consider attention by its very nature is the process of screening out events to concentrate on a select few (Fulcher 2003). This area of research shows that we are in fact looking (paying “attention”), but are not seeing objects or events that we are not expecting to see. This has been shown in many situations, including trainee pilots not seeing other planes blocking the runway when landing a plane in a simulation (Haines 1991) and in traffic incidents where drivers report simply “not seeing” the other vehicle (Scholl, Clifford & Simmons 2005.

This demonstrates that (1) we do not process (or, “see”) a lot of that which happens around us, even when paying attention, and (2) that we often don’t realise that we have even missed this information.

How do you measure / research / test emotions? Thinking holistically, not video only.

We look at range of measures and the evidence supporting them. Ideally we want forward predictive measures. The most common emotional measurement methods include:

• self-report — which is problematic because known patterns that relate to past usage of the brand e.g. users like content from brands they buy and are more likely to notice it;

• biometric / physiological (autonomic) response;
• brain imaging – looks promising but lacks scale and is difficult to validate.

There are many different measures in the biometric / psycho-physiological space and different ways to analyse the data. We are looking to validate the most predictive of these. It is vital that this work is continued, because simple, robust answers are still lacking (e.g. we find differences across markets and measures that have not yet been explained).

What do you recommend to do to brief creative agencies “for emotion”?

Get your agency focused on building (and incrementally nudging, strengthening or improving) the memory structures that matter in creative ways that people will want to watch. Also you need to brief to ensure that your brand’s Distinctive Assets are built and strengthened.

Let the creatives use them and bring them to life in ways that are true to the brand, that reinforce the memory structures that already exist in people’s brains and which will drive emotional response.

What should we do to ensure that emotions are accounted for during the creative development process?

You must design creative executions that people will want to watch time and time again. Have great creatives working on your jobs but give then the freedom to do what they do well (produce great copy) but you must stress as mandatory that it always immediately and unambiguously looks like the brand (especially to light and no brand buyers who do not know or care much about your brand).

How do we measure the emotional impact of a campaign post-launch?

We don’t recommend measuring the emotional impact of advertising or of campaigns. Instead, we recommend post launch measures of:

• Sales – e.g. via single source and/or split cable.
• Behavioural measures such as of attention and whether people did watch the content (e.g. skip measures).
• Biometrics – these measures look promising but much more research is needed. So, it’s useful to use to start to learn about these but not necessarily across the board yet.
  Here’s a useful article we’ve written on Biometrics that identifies what aspects of TV advertisements successfully lead to sales.
• Distinctive Assets are probably a higher priority to measure given how important these are to the successful execution of any advertising investment. These are relatively straightforward to measure. If they are not moving up then the advertising is not working for the brand.

What are the basic recommendations for increasing emotionality that any marketer should enforce straight away?

Typically you must aim for positive emotions, that have a high arousal response. The risk with negative emotions (although they can be attention-grabbing) is that people may switch away from the content and not come back.

You must always ensure that the brand must always be the hero in any creative execution, not a secondary consideration or element. It is not enough just to produce emotional copy if it does not sell or build the memories to the brand that matter.

It is possible that too much emotion distracts, so testing and learning through your own experiences in this space is encouraged.

What are your recommendations around emotionality and purpose?

Each brand needs to look like what light buyers and non buyers expect of the brand (and these expectations tend to be built up over very long periods). Hence to answer this questions we first need to know: What is in buyers’ heads (e.g. what do they know about the category and the brand) What do they notice and care about (typically not much).

What markets are performing well in emotions?

Emotional response is a fundamental human response, so they are helpful in aiding mental processing everywhere, in any market. Cultures respond to different things – memory structures matter here – with differences in what they know and value. There is probably more intra-market difference (differences between brands and executions within a market) than between markets.

Is any medium better / worse situated than the others for emotions?

There is still a lot of work that’s needed here but video has an advantage – given it has movement, sound (especially music), and the ability to tell a good story. Where there is less clutter and advertising gets more attention it is likely to help with emotional response.