This year’s winners are testament to the notion that ads that generate strong emotional responses and reactions are more likely to be successful. And emotion that is able to grab attention is the first step to advertising effectiveness.

The heART

There are many creative elements that brands can leverage in their ads to evoke an emotional response. These range from cleverly using satire, to a well landed punchline, or to pulling on our heart strings. Whichever angle a brand chooses, the key is ensuring it fits in with your brand and message.

KFC’s “Beyond the Sea” by Ogilvy South Africa (Gold winner), achieves this in many ways, but most of all, in making us smile. The brand is essential to the story being told, initiating the protagonists gruelling planning and training undertaken to get their KFC fix. We are also given the sensorial experience of their craving for KFC through their video calls back home.

The ad is an excellent illustration of consistent messaging as it extends the “Do Anything For The Taste” journey of last year’s Grand Prix winner starring Mr. Mulapo the “quality assurance inspector”.

Humour, when fine-tuned to fit the brand’s personality, is not only a great way to engage audiences but can even help to avoid the dreaded skip. According to Kantar’s Media Reactions study, humour is the main way to prevent skipping ads, ranking as the top reason in 30 of 42 countries included in the study.

Kantar’s Media Reactions 2024 - Marketers pull back on X ad spend

Kantar  5 Sep 2024

Nedbank’s “Time Is More Valuable Than Money” ad by Joe Public (Silver winner), touched our hearts through relatable life moments we often miss while juggling work and deadlines. Nedbank makes us consider time as currency, extending the realm of financial services by thinking of time as an investment.

Both assets use music to intensify our emotional response and bring the message home, highlighting another useful creative element that brands can call on to make people feel, and the narratives leverages a mix of emotional reactions, creating an emotional journey.

The science

Emotions are a cue to the brain that something is worth paying attention to. Emotional responses to advertising can help build positive emotional associations with the brand, and it is only when we make people feel something that those associations can build in the brain. Building positive associations with the brand is often one of the main objectives of any advertising, because these associations on their own can predispose people to choose the brand in the future.

Kantar uses Affectiva’s emotion AI technology to assess audience’s emotional responses to brand and ad content. Research participants opt in to being recorded via their webcam or smartphone, while they are exposed to advertising. These videos are then analysed using AI algorithms, and the expressions shown on viewers faces are identified and aggregated, to provide a moment-by-moment measurement of type 1 emotional and instinctive responses. The system covers a wide array of facial expressions and metrics, including engagement or active attention, net positivity, and specific expressions which indicate different responses such as smiles, brow furrows or indicators of surprise.

Kantar has validated that more creative attention (or some kind of emotional response) generally drives stronger outcomes. By mapping creative attention scores to short-term sales shifts, we’ve learned that active attention – an emotional journey – is more important than passive visual attention (or just watching).

Image: Facial Coding trace lines

Kantar’s analysis shows that ads that leave consumers with strong emotions are up to four times more likely to drive long-term brand equity. And building and maintaining strong brand equity in today's competitive market landscape, is essential for driving sustainable business growth.

Upon reflecting on the list of the 2024 Loeries winners, one is able to appreciate the interplay between the heart, art and science of creativity. It is at the epicentre of these constructs that marketers are able to create winning advertising.

On behalf of Kantar, congratulations to this year’s winners, to those shortlisted, and to all the marketers and agencies involved!

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