The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Super Bowl Realeyes

Facial tracking tech reveals Doritos had the most disgusting, but emotionally engaging, Super Bowl ad

Author

By Jennifer Faull, Deputy Editor

February 12, 2016 | 4 min read

Doritos, recently crowned the most shared ad of the Super Bowl 2016 by Unruly, has now been revealed as the most emotionally engaging, even if that emotion is disgust.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile’s ‘Restricted Bling’, the second most shared ad from the advertising extravaganza didn’t seem to elicit much emotion in viewers.

The Doritos ad features a pregnant woman having an ultrasound while her husband eats a bag of its crisps. According to Realeyes – which tracks the ‘likability’ of a brand’s marketing efforts by measuring people’s emotions via standard webcams as they watch video content – it achieved an ‘Emotion Score’ of 10 (the top score possible). It also scored 10 out of 10 for retention and impact.

It had above average levels of disgust, particularly amongst men who showed approximately 10 per cent more disgust throughout the ad than the norm – but clearly this doesn’t impair its performance and ultimately worked in its favour.

Despite T-Mobile’s Restricted Bling ad achieving 346,854 shares - making it second most shared – it came 39th in the list of 72 Super Bowl advertisers when it came to provoking an emotional response.

“The barometer of a successful ad shouldn’t just be whether people like and share it, but also whether it actually makes them spend money – ads that connect emotionally with people are more likely to make this happen,” explained Realeyes’ chief Mihkel Jäätma.

“The four key tips to doing so are to hook the audience early, retain their attention, invoke a reaction – the stronger the better – and finish with impact.”

Though it didn’t make it to the top 10 for emotionally engaging ads, Budweiser will be pleased to have resonated the most amongst the younger audience. This is especially important for the beer brand after last year’s puppy ad, which whilst hugely successful amongst women was a total flop amongst the beer-drinking, beer-buying men they were targeting.

Meanwhile, the much discussed Mountain Dew PuppyBabyMonkey ad did not actually resonate that well amongst the under 30s, which brought down its ‘Emotion Score’. It was much more popular amongst 30-49s and the over 50s, who appreciated the irony of combining three of the internet’s most popular things into one ad.

The least emotionally engaging ad from the Super Bowl perhaps surprisingly came from Colgate. The #EveryDropCounts tried to highlight the millions of people around the world who don't have access to running water, and urged that every person who turns off the tap could save close to 3,000 gallons of water per year. However, the simplicity of the way the message was delivered fell flat as it achieved only three out of 10 against Realeyes’ ‘Emotion’ metric; worse still, it mustered only one out of 10 for retention.

Analysis came from Realeyes which conducted the study of 3,000 Super Bowl viewers alongside software company Lucid and insight platform Qualtrics. Find the top 5 most emotionally engaging Super Bowl ads and their scores (out of 10) below.

Emotion Score: 10

Attraction score: 9

Retention Score: 10

Engagement: 10

Impact: 10

Emotion: 10 

Attration: 8

Retention: 10

Engagement: 10

Impact: 10

Emotion: 10 
Attration: 7
Retention: 10
Engagement: 10
Impact: 10

 

Emotion: 10 

Attraction: 6

Retention: 10 

Engagement: 10 

Impact: 10 

Emotion: 10 

Attraction: 6

Retention: 10 

Engagement: 10 

Impact: 10 

Super Bowl Realeyes

More from Super Bowl

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +