Two weeks ago my LinkedIn absolutely blew up with praise of a little ad put out by Norwich City Football Club for Samaritans and #worldmentalhealthday. It had almost no dialogue, took place in one location (with one camera position), and probably didn't cost much, but like any great ad, it delivered a huge emotional payload that caught the attention of many, myself included.

Go on, have a watch:

Very powerful work - and a memorably simple way of conveying an important learning for us all about the human experience; that those who struggle the most might show it the least.

When I showed it to a colleague, she was instantly moved to tears - and because of that, she will remember this ad for a long time. It has long been known in marketing science that moments of emotional intensity trigger long term memory - this comes from a survival instinct in all of us; when things shock us or trigger our emotions, our brain interprets that our survival is under threat, and so commits details to memory that might aid in our survival. In a roundabout way, this is what advertising aims to do: engage us in a way that unlocks this survival mechanism so that the message might be remembered.

A lot of our decision making, including buying decisions, are driven by our subsconscious and emotion centres. So when it comes to advertising, emotions are an important driver of the brand message. I took the opportunity to use the Element Human ad-testing technology to test the You Are Not Alone ad and explore how well it engaged with the audience and got its message across.

Let's take a look at the results.

How the test works

Element Human's testing suite allows you to take an ad creative and insert it into a social media feed such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube Shorts to test a range of audience metrics. I noticed that You Are Not Alone had been released on Facebook, so I decided for this test to see how it would have done on Instagram. As it turns out - REALLY WELL.

To briefly explain the test, a target audience are recruited through a panel provider, and are then given a task of scrolling through the feed and watching the ad. The system then tracks a number of metrics - including obtaining consent to use the webcam for face and eye data - and compares it all to a deep set of benchmarks from thousands of tests across the industry:

1. ATTENTION (through viewability data and eye-tracking)
2. EMOTION (facial coding through the webcam)
3. MEMORY (through an implicit association test)
4. BRAND UPLIFT (through a post-view survey)

For this test, we recruited a General Population sample aged 18-64 from the UK. There were 250 total participants, of which 150 were exposed to the ad, and 100 acted as a Control group.

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The Results

In Feed Attention

Let's first check out how noticeable the ad is in the Instagram feed...

As you can see - the ad is highly noticeable in the feed. On average it gets 13 seconds of in feed attention. For a two and a half minute ad that might not seem like a lot, but the infinite scroll of social feeds has made attention an increasingly precious resource. In fact, the 13s score puts it in the top 22% of all Instagram Tests on Element Human; this ad is noticed on Instagram.

The Emotional Journey

Our system overlays the emotion metrics on top of the video, so you get a second by second view of the intensity of each emotion (see the colour coding at the bottom of the above image). As you can see, there are a variety of emotions that the audience experienced throughout the piece.

I find the scene above particularly poignant. Through a simple visual of the man on the right jumping up to celebrate a goal whilst his friend on the left stays seated, we got an early and ominous sense that things weren't quite right. The test showed a spike of sadness (see the peak of the blue emotion line indicated by the arrow) as the audience reacted. At the same time, you see the heat map (which indicates where the audience is looking) slowly move over to the face on the left; as we wonder at the inner battle that might be going on.

Now let's take a look at the moment above. Man On Right sits down in relief at a goal. He throws his hands on his friend's shoulder who assumes he wants his team scarf back. The amusing misunderstanding leads to a spike in Happiness from the audience - take a look at the yellow line in the above GIF.

In the final sequence the audience reacts to the terrible twist - it was Man On Right that was having challenges. This then becomes a wry smile as the taglines follow: 'Sometimes the signs are harder to spot', and 'Check in on those around you'. The emotional whiplash of amusement at their antics, followed by a terrible realisation, and then a feeling of 'yes, you got me', is an effective vehicle for impact. We call it an 'emotional cocktail' and it centres around delivering competing emotions all at once: Happiness & Sorrow, Surprise & Thoughtfulness, Excitement & Disgust.

The emotional journey of the story is clear, but the appreciation didn't end there. Viewers gave it a 7.2 out of 10 for enjoyment. When ranked against all Instagram ads tracked by Element Human, this puts it at Number 1.

So they felt every emotional beat... BUT DID IT WORK?

It's attention-grabbing and it's emotionally impactful, but did it get its message across? One way to test this is an implicit assocation test (IAT), which measures your 'implicit' (or subconscious) associations by measuring reaction speed when being presented with them. You can read up about it here. We have constructed the Element Human IAT test around measuring the subconscious associations between a brand - in this case Norwich City Football Club - and a set of 'brand values'. We then compare how the associations differ between the Test group and the Control group.

As you can see, watching the ad significantly increased a number of subconscious associations. Norwich City was more associated with being 'Authentic', 'Empathetic' and 'Inclusive'. And by the looks of it, this ad was putting the Club into territory it hasn't previously had any associations with at all: only 6% of the Control group associated the Club with 'Mental Health', however this ad created an association with almost half of all viewers (46%). This is a jump of 640% - which I'd like to point out is the highest implicit association uplift Element Human has ever recorded.

Driving Action

So the ad successfully created memory structures by associating the Club with relevant values within an emotionally intensive storyline. But what kind of action are we looking to see in viewers? In this case, we tested for an uplift in the likelihood to check in on a friend this week and make sure they're doing OK.

Thankfully, the UK General Population are an empathetic lot, as the Control group already scored 68% for this. However the ad managed to increase this by 27%. So now, thanks to You Are Not Alone, more than 8 out of 10 viewers intend to check in on a friend.

It is also stimulating better education around mental health. 3 out of 4 viewers said they are likely to learn more about mental health as a result of seeing this ad. And this is highest amongst younger viewers, with 8 out of 10 of those under 35 intending to do so.

All in all, an ad with an important message that is powerfully conveyed; and effortlessly accomplished without the need for big budget spending power. Instead it is a wonderful example of the power of emotion and storytelling in spreading ideas and delivering successful outcomes.

‍Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director of Element Human

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