The oldest stories are the best stories when it comes to understanding what makes humans react to social marketing on an emotional level.
This was the message from Will Goodhand of Brain Juicer, a U.K. “insight agency” that has tracked how viewers respond to public service ads, as well as whether or not the ads motivated them to take further action.
Brain Juicer asked study participants to note whenever they had an emotional reaction while watching an ad and describe how they felt from moment-to-moment. From this data, the agency matched emotional reactions with participants’ intentions to act on the messages being presented.
While one may expect an overall positive vibe from an ad will be the most effective at driving behavioral change, the research showed that while an growing sense of happiness throughout an ad is needed, contrasting them with negative emotions really drive the message home.
To demonstrate, Goodhand showed a successful PSA by Sussex Safer Roads that tracked a swell of negative emotional response two-thirds of the way through its 90-second runtime but ended with a build-up to very high levels of positive emotion.
“If we go back to myths and legends, what do human beings react to as a story?” Goodhand said. “There’s somebody who tries to do something, there’s an obstacle they have to overcome, they go through absolute hell–that’s the negative emotion building–but once they reach the end of their journey, the negative emotion diminishes and the happy emotions sweep in.
“What we’re seeing is a 30-second TV [commercial] that follows the same rules as the quest of Beowulf or Odysseus actually achieves advertising effectiveness in 2011.”
Goodhand was speaking to a room of the ad industry’s top brass at this morning’s “Leading Social Change” event, a half-day session produced by Ontario’s Advertising Review Board (ARB) to encourage better relationships between government and communication agencies.
“Leading Social Change” kicked off the second day of Advertising Week in Toronto.
The ARB’s event has been increasingly well-attended over Advertising Week’s three year history. This morning’s sold-out session include showcases of Canadian, European and U.S. social marketing campaigns, and began with a presentation from Kevin Finnerty, executive director at the Communications and Information Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
Finnerty presented a number of case studies showing successful collaborations with creative agencies where difficult social issues such as cancer screening and university vaccination programs were successfully tackled.
Justin Trudeau, MP for Papineau and a longtime youth, education and environmental advocate, was to close the session this afternoon.
