Since the Covid-19 pandemic, online retail has grown rapidly. With that comes smarter technology that allows companies to resonate with target consumers. Seems fair enough, that’s what companies have always tried to do, right? Right. However, before the age of TikTok and other social media giants, younger people were less exposed to the online world.

In 2014, the average age of acquiring a mobile phone was 13 years old, with pay as you go limiting time spent online, averaging at 12.5 hours per week. Fast forward ten years and the average age of acquiring a mobile phone is just 9 years old, with a startling 25% of 3-4 year olds also using a mobile phone of their own. Children are now spending a minimum of 7 hours a day online (Source: Children’s Media Lives 2024).

The scary part? Companies have realised the untapped marketing potential of these children. Advertising targeted toward children used to be solely via parents or TV ads, but now children are exposed to advertising around every virtual corner.

Global Action Plan creatively demonstrated this point and just how terrifying it is in their latest campaign Stop Following Me. Take a look at the ad below before we explore what worked and what didn’t:

The messaging is clear: children face pressures of over-consuming on a daily basis - basically anytime they are online - from companies and influencers. But what’s really interesting is the way that Global Action Plan demonstrated this point. Let's explore what worked and what didn't work.

With Element Human’s testing suite you can take an ad creative and insert it into a social media environment to test how it performs in context. This means ad campaigns can be tested ‘in the wild’, offering the most accurate read of performance by collecting real human reaction data. Currently there are four different social feeds available: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.

For this test, I placed the ad in an Instagram environment and tested among 327 UK general population respondents. The Element Human system then tracks and records audience data comprising both biometric and survey data which can be compared to a deep set of benchmarks:

1. Attention (via eye-tracking)
2. Emotion (via facial coding)
3. Memory (using an implicit association test)
4. Brand uplift (using a post-view survey with traditional brand metrics)

So how did the ad perform?

Firstly, Global Action Plan successfully boosted Brand Awareness (0% to 5%). Secondly, they successfully landed their key messaging with 78% of viewers agreeing 'Children and teens are dangerously ad-targeted by companies and businesses’.

However, Global Action Plan failed to really capture attention from the get go. When our viewers were tasked with scrolling through a lookalike Instagram environment with the ad placed in there, they only spent 9 seconds looking at the ad - placing the ad in the middle of the road with a very average score out of all Element Human Instagram tests.

The emotional journey is a slow burner, with the first emotional peak only arriving at the one minute market when our viewers first experience significant levels of both happiness and disgust.

During the first key moment,  we see a woman jump out of a white van and bombard a young girl with products that she ‘needs’ to buy. The young girl makes a purchase from the woman, only to then be told there’s another product she ‘needs’ to buy. It’s the first moment some viewers realise just how sinister the undertones of the ad are, while others still feel amused by the ad. It’s clear that the messaging isn’t yet being taken seriously by all viewers.

The next key moment is when multiple people are backing the young girl into a corner, trying to sell their products. Our viewers express happiness as this is a seemingly amusing moment to them.

Our final key moment is what drives the messaging home. The young girl turns to the viewer and says ‘You wouldn’t follow me like this in real life, so why do you think it’s okay to follow me like this online?’. We then see her being bombarded yet again but this time online, as the personification of the messaging comes to an end. The happiness in our viewers subsides and disgust takes over as they finally realise how serious of an issue ad targeting is. Global Action Plan then finally conveys their message that we need to help ban surveillance advertising of under 18s.

Unfortunately, while the messaging was strong, the ad failed to hook the audience in time to experience key emotional moments. But why is this important? Well, a study carried out by the BBC in collaboration with Element Human found that emotional intensity that is triggered earlier delivers a higher memory effect (Source: BBC Science of Memory 2018).

So by placing peak emotional moments earlier on, we can better encode memories in our audience. This is beneficial for both raising awareness and driving action. We want the brand to be top of mind for the consumer the next time they consider making a purchase (or in this case, donating to a charity).

Furthermore, the audience are more likely to raise awareness of the key issue as it is well encoded in their memory. But by failing to capture the audience sooner, a smaller group of people will be impacted by the ad and ultimately efforts are wasted - especially when a charity is trying to raise awareness of such a relevant issue.

Takeaway message: Quickly capture attention and evoke strong emotional reactions for maximum memory encoding and behaviour changes.

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If you’d like to find out more about Global Action Plan or donate to their cause then click here.

Written by Georgina Ferreira, Data & Insights Executive at Element Human.

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This analysis contained only a small portion of the creative & campaign metrics tracked by Element Human. And it only took 13 minutes to set up and 3 hours to complete! Ready to test your creative and show off the performance of your advertising? Let’s chat.

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