'You get 2 seconds to engage consumers online': Mars neuroscientist shares key findings, including that attention is a strong proxy for sales impact (but it’s not the only criterion).
Mars, the family-owned global company behind brands like M&M’s, Wrigley’s gum, Skittles, and the like, thrives on impulse buys for many of its products. Sorin Patilinet, global consumer marketing insights director, and his team in the communications lab are investigating how to first draw attention and then create an emotional connection -- the magic formula for triggering impulse purchases. “You don't go to the store with gum on your shopping list,” says Patilinet.
His team has spent the past six months working with RealEyes and other partners to develop what it calls the “future of pre-testing.” Through anonymous facial coding, it can detect attention and emotion. The team has tested 130 digital ads across key geographies from the US to China. They’ve also tested various durations ‑ six, 15, 30-seconds and long formats on YouTube, Facebook and other platforms. This is the latest tool within one of the largest neuromarketing studies in the world, now in its fifth year. One of the biggest takeaways from it all: “Marketers would be shocked if they knew how little active attention some of their executions are getting,” says Patilinet. “They think that people watch all the 15-seconds, and then they find out that in some cases, it’s only two seconds.”
In addition to the new “future of pre-testing” tool, Mars has gathered 4,000 campaigns from which they have identified a direct sales impact. They’ve done so in partnership with Nielsen, Catalina, IRI, Kantar and GFK. Of those thousands of ads, they’ve tested 250 for various elements of the cognitive process, attention, emotion, and memory. They’ve learned from the good and the bad to develop an understanding of what a “four-star ad” looks and feels like.
The research shows that attention is a strong proxy for sales impact. But attention alone is not the answer, you need to elicit emotions. By building emotions, you can encode your distinctive assets into the consumer’s brain much better. And then those assets can be recalled. So the ultimate goal is memory encoding. That happens faster through emotions than through rational messages.
Patilinet and his team will continue to investigate how to strike the correct balance by leveraging neuroscience. “Too many ads, too much clutter on websites has created this attitude of removing ads from your life.”
Source: Hein, K. (2020, August 13). 'You get 2 seconds to engage consumers online': Mars neuroscientist shares key findings. News: The Drum.
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