MRS Conference: Seeing Smoke, Missing Fire

A good ad appeals not just to an individual but to a social network, according to speakers at this year's MRS Conference in a Tuesday session on new approaches to ad research. Teresa Lynch watched, listened and once again, would have liked to ask the odd question.

The session chaired by Dan O'Donoghue of Publicis asked us 'Ad Research: Are emotions contagious?'

In order to illustrate the difference between the right hand side of the brain, which makes decisions emotionally, and the left hand side which makes decisions logically, we were introduced to the two speakers - David Penn of Conquest Research and Orlando Wood of Brainjuicer - twice. The first introduction in each case was of the 'logical' type including such prosaic facts as where they went to school and what they had done prior to becoming researchers. The second, 'emotional' type for both was a piece of sentimental film set to their favourite music showing personal snaps of their wives, dogs, most recent holidays. It was hard to know the point that was being made since neither introduction seemed calculated to inform or endear.

Both speakers went on to make the point that we buy with our emotions and not with our logic and that in order to appeal to us an ad has to be 'contagious' - that is appeal not only to individuals but to social networks. Both speakers pointed out that conventional measures didn't tell us if an ad was going to work or not and Penn advised us that good ads could be shelved and bad ads given a green light because 'if we look for the smoke we may miss the fire'.

Both speakers mentioned proprietary in-house methodologies which allowed them to measure ad effectiveness, however the techniques discussed seemed to be post hoc metrics and were applicable after the ads had already been produced. Both loved the Cadbury's gorilla.

Penn concluded by saying that he thought with all we were currently learning about emotional response and the social brain now was 'The best time ever to be in marketing and market research'.

There was time for very few questions although the papers had both raised a great many about how this research was used in a commercial environment. As in other sessions we were advised to try and catch up with the speakers later.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.