A New Age for Advertising Copy Testing Facial Expression Measurement Technology. Brian Sheehan Newhouse School, Syracuse University

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1 A New Age for Advertising Copy Testing Facial Expression Measurement Technology Brian Sheehan Newhouse School, Syracuse University Age- old problems with copy testing Advertising copy testing has always been problematic. I can tell you from experience 30- plus years in the advertising business and eight years teaching advertising at the university level that copy tests are only marginally predictive of success. Everyone uses them, but no one completely trusts them. They do predict success or failure in the marketplace more often than not, but nowhere near the 90% or 95% confidence levels that one expects from other types of research. If we put 70% confidence in the results of traditional copy testing, we would definitely be stretching it. The advertising world is littered with campaigns that tested well sometimes through the roof and then bombed in the marketplace. On the flip side, some of the most successful campaigns in advertising history were the result of brave marketing directors running a campaign because they believed in it, even though it had tested studies of singularly successful campaigns that went well beyond achieving basic objectives, you see a common theme of professionals ignoring poor test results and instead, going with their gut. Apple breaks the frame Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak famously offered to use their own money to pay for the production of Apple s groundbreaking 1984 commercial, because Apple s board despised the ad. The Board found it weird, confusing, and unlike anything they had ever seen before. They had no frame of reference. It is now widely considered the greatest ad ever made. poorly. When you read a collection of case

2 While 1984 was never copy tested, I firmly believe the commercial would have fared just as poorly in consumer copy testing for the same exact reasons it bombed with the company s directors. The reaction of Apple s board members is a good indication of why advertising creative directors almost uniformly distrust copy testing results; they believe the testing often penalizes, rather than rewards, creativity. Despite the years of work on improving traditional copy- testing approaches, even today no experienced advertising professional interprets the results as anything but directional. But why is this so? People don t really know how they feel The biggest problem with traditional copy testing approaches is that they rely on consumers to tell us how they feel about an advertisement or a campaign. Unfortunately, people are bad at understanding exactly how they feel about advertising, both in the moment and when asked afterwards. They are even worse at expressing how they feel in words. Perhaps no one said it better than the estimable Clotaire Rapaille, cultural anthropologist, marketing consultant, and author of the best- selling book The Culture Code: The only effective way to understand what people truly mean is to ignore what they are saying Even the most self- examining of us are rarely in touch with our subconscious. Cognitive science explains why this is the case. Feeling is an emotional process; articulating feelings is a rational process. These functions happen in different parts of our brain and, unfortunately, those parts are not good at communicating with one another. This split brain phenomenon is a fundamental problem for interpreting reactions to advertising. Research bias and attempts to overcome it Traditional testing methods are also complicated by other psycho- social biases. In a focus group, for example, people often give responses based on what other people say (groupthink) or based on what they think will place them in the most positive light. We all like to fit in, and we like to impress others. We also like to please the person asking us the question, especially if they are paying us to do so. Whether in a focus group, a phone survey or a mall intercept interview, we all want to give the right answer even if it diverges from our gut reaction. Online surveys can help avoid a few of these problems by removing the interpersonal dynamics, but again, people like to believe they make rational decisions, and thus aren t very good at understanding or articulating how they feel. Nor are they

3 in tune with how their emotions drive their preferences and behaviors. For example, consider car purchases. When you survey people with children about the criteria for their next car, they say consistently that safety will be the biggest purchase factor, by far. But when you see what they buy, it isn t. When you ask people in an upper- middle- class suburb about the next car they will buy, the result usually indicates that luxury cars will outsell non- luxury cars in that neighborhood, but they don t. measure out of the box ideas, like Apple s It also explains why highly- paid, award- winning creative directors cringe at the thought of testing their ads. Traditional testing, reliant as it is on the rationalizing consumer, stacks the cards against true creativity, which I define in my classes as a form of problem solving using a new or unexpected combination of ideas. Unfortunately, people s brains struggle to accept things that are ground- breaking or unexpected in a positive light. This is why the most vibrant qualitative For the reasons above, traditional copy research techniques right now are testing has only a spotty record in ethnography and observational research. predicting market success and in particular People don t really know how they feel, so has been a place where revolutionary researchers resort to observing what they advertising ideas have gone to die. actually do and say in real life. However, interviews and observation are expensive Until now. endeavors, and really not practical if your Bringing Science to the Art of Advertising goal is to get to a scale that allows for Over the past few years, a merging of the statistically valid conclusions that predict well- established science of facial expression market outcomes. recognition with computer vision and deep Penalizing Creativity learning technology has created the field of emotion analytics. Dating back to the 1960s A final and important note here is that with the work of Dr. Paul Ekman, facial when you ask people for their opinion expression science has proven that certain about something they have seen, and press facial muscle movements are reliably them to explain it rationally, they can only associated with underlying emotional do so in reference to things they have seen states, and that these movements can occur before. They need a context within which to in as little as 1/25 of a second, after which place their feelings that presents them as they are often masked by the conscious sensible. This truth is why traditional copy testing has been a particularly bad way to

4 mind, especially if they are negative or socially inappropriate. The importance of this to advertisers is that facial expression recognition gives us the tools to detect the underlying emotions of the customer even when they want to hide them or would not be able to accurately articulate them. Using video cameras and cloud computing, this new technology lets advertisers get direct and quantitative information about what a person is truly feeling - in the moment they experience an ad - and get this information affordably and at statistical scale. have something potentially powerful. In contrast, with traditional copy testing there would be no counterweight to their survey responses and the concept would be branded a failure. Facing up to the Truth Emotient Inc., a San Diego- based startup, is a leader in this emerging field. Emotient s facial expression and emotion analytics software, combined with existing online survey platforms, effectively solves the problems laid out above. Now, any advertiser or marketer can actually see from people s facial expressions precisely how they feel about the advertising they are watching, overall and second- by- second. If there is a conflict between what people are saying on the survey and what their face tells us, it can be recognized, discussed and analyzed. Importantly, if their real emotions are positive, but their spoken or written responses are neutral or negative, marketers will know that they Before facial expression measurement came on the scene there was only one signal the explicit, rationalized feedback of the customer so accepting that feedback as the answer was the default option. Of course, there are neuro- marketing methods available that add biometric signals to ad testing, such as GSK and EEG, but they are invasive which can impact results and they require expensive labs; which can dictate small sample sizes. In contrast, since facial expressions can be analyzed via video so the test participants can be recruited from anywhere, and the systems are software- driven meaning they only add a small

5 incremental expense over the cost a traditional ad test panel. The facial expression overlay also helps deliver a Holy Grail of advertising research: specific demographics and survey questions) and is affordable (it costs a fraction of a focus group or interview). Precision and Validity gaining qualitative emotional insights at What gets me most excited about Emotient quantitative scale. Before this innovation, it AdPanel is its high accuracy. Above I was incredibly difficult to capture discussed the spotty record of traditional customers true emotional reaction in a way methods; in contrast Emotient detects the that is statistically valid or projectable to seven core emotions at 95% accuracy (see the market at large. the chart below). Emotient s deep learning Emotient AdPanel: A Blend of New and Traditional Methods techniques are proprietary and patented, and the accuracy improves with every version of their core engine. They released Emotient s emotion analytics technology version 4.0 in the winter of drives its Emotient AdPanel service, which is designed specifically for advertisers. It is simple to use: you design your survey and upload the test ads, and then you define the desired size and demographic composition of your panel. That s it. I mentioned upfront that one of the major faults with old, traditional copy testing methods is the lack of accuracy. Emotient s 95% accuracy level is where the advertising industry needs to be. Importantly, it is not 95% accuracy regarding what people say From there, Emotient will field the survey they feel, but rather their feelings as shown through a leading panel partner and record on their face! and analyze each viewer s emotional response to the ads. You get back reports and raw second- by- second data for attention (the person is facing the screen), emotional engagement (the person s face is displaying emotion) and specific emotions (out of the scientifically- established 7 core emotions). Armed with the confidence that these insights are not only accurate, but authentic, advertisers are at last in a position to know exactly how consumers will feel about their messages and creative before they commit their eight or nine figure media budget. Decisions about whether a single ad or a whole campaign The service delivers the data quickly (24- works, or does not work whether it is hour survey- to- result turnaround), allows good, neutral, or bad for the brand s for audience customization (you decide

6 100% 95% 95% Accuracy in Detecing Emoions EmoKent 4.0 Deep Net Engine 97% 94% 97% 94% 97% 90% 80% Anger Disgust Contempt Fear Joy Sadness Surprise business can now be made with a lot more confidence and a lot less risk. Adding emotion analytics to the mix also overcomes the creative director s resistance to formal ad testing as they can trust that nothing is hidden from view or being filtered. For example, when emotional connection is just not there, the client and the agency can move on to a new idea quickly. More importantly, when consumers rational feedback belies a strong underlying emotional connection, it allows the client and the agency to have a fruitful discussion about the potential of the idea, as opposed to mistakenly dropping it. And that is a whole new ballgame. As you can tell by now, I am a big fan of Emotient s technology and what it can mean for the future of advertising testing. For the first time, ad testing can tell us what we really want to know how people emotionally connect with the ads we create in a way that is highly accurate and accessible to almost all marketers, creative directors and agencies. As more companies use emotion analytics, the end result will be, I believe, better and more emotionally engaging advertising for all of us. About the Author Brian Sheehan is an associate professor of advertising at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He spent 25 years with Saatchi & Saatchi and nine years as chairman and CEO of Team One in Los Angeles.