20 years ago we’d never heard of Smart phones or Tablets; there was no Facebook or Google. But we’ve always had emotions.
Key Takeaways
- Emotional response is a stronger predictor of advertising effectiveness than rational persuasion or attention alone
- Element Human measures second-by-second emotion, attention, and memory to reveal what truly drives audience behavior
- Behavioral data provides a more complete picture of content effectiveness than self-reported survey responses
- Understanding audience emotion before investing in media placement saves budget and improves campaign ROI
- Second-by-second measurement reveals exactly when and why audiences engage or disengage with content
Emotions are often seen as something to be overcome. Fear weakens us, love clouds good decision-making and happiness stops us from excelling. This mindset is flawed, emotions are at the center of everything we do.
No matter how sophisticated and technologically-advanced we become, we will always be driven by emotion. As evolutionary psychologists say, “Our modern skulls house a Stone Age brain.
Patrick Fagan, Behavioural Scientist
When we use logic to process emotions, it’s like asking a five year old to vote on a trade agreement. You end up undecided and making ill-informed decisions on something that should simply be driven by intuition. To be aware of emotions is to understand ourselves and others.
Related reading: Right in the Feels · Amnesty International's UK Housing Crisis Ad
Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value.
Donald A. Norman, Design of Everyday Things
By tracking emotional engagement towards media in partnership with BBC Worldwide, we found a disconnect between what we say and how we feel.
Despite claiming to dislike a show, the viewers did so smiling – 81% of the test audience said that they disliked the show, yet 82% showed high emotional engagement. When it was broadcast, it beat prime-time average viewing by 67% and slot average by 104% in market, highlighting the disconnect between what people say compared to what they do.
Do Emotions in Advertising Drive Sales?
This beautiful research PDF is brought to us by our friends at MIT, Affectiva, and Northeastern University. The research strongly suggests that emotions in advertising, particularly as measured by facial coding, do drive sales. It's not just about whether an ad evokes emotion, but how and which emotions are evoked, and how those emotions change over time. Using tools like facial coding can provide valuable insights that go beyond traditional surveys to better predict ad effectiveness.
Element Human is creating a technology infrastructure that extends humanity, not simply logic. A future that is shaped by human emotion and logic working together. In this future we can create technology that cares.
Simply, we feel the Tinman must have a heart.