A key question for any (every!) brand, is how well do you know your audience and how can you get to know it better? In this respect, the advertising and the insights industries go hand in hand and this year’s ESOMAR Global Data and Insights Summit brought to the stage new innovative examples of how this long-lasting collaboration can offer tangible results to brands within the ad industry.

Edinburgh was where two key figures in the Scottish Enlightenment – Adam Smith & David Hume – first held their series of very influential public lectures; it is apt therefore that Edinburgh played host this year to one of the biggest industry conferences globally, where advertisers recently gathered to present their work and showcase the latest industry innovations. In my opinion, here are three “must read” presentations for advertisers:

1. Brands Rock at Music Festivals!

Last year Viacom spoke to over 1.8 million kids, teens, adults, and families through research covering 79 countries around the world to find out what consumers really want at a music festival.

The three core elements of a music festival are music (of course!), production and location; however, brands are also considered a key factor. The study found that more than half of festival-goers embrace brands as integral at modern music events as they help keep prices down and quality up. When brands provide a unique moment or shareable settings and experiences, 43% of people tend to feel more positive about that brand and 25% of them look the brand up for more information…(engage, endorse, embrace!)

The hype around music festivals continues to grow, this year 200,000 tickets for Glastonbury sold out in just 30 minutes and all advance tickets for Coachella in 40. Festivals are a crowded and effective showcase for brands that want to target younger generations; companies can stand out from the crowd by providing a fun and different experience to the participants or just by contributing to the festival success by attracting better artists. Nine out of ten respondents agree that brands can make festival tickets more affordable while also improving the overall production of the event. With a bit of creativity, brands can really make an impression at festivals and benefit from the attention of the young crowd.

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2. How to Catch Real-Time Emotions?

Football matches are an emotional carousel, with peaks of engagement that have high commercial values. Brands are now able to identify those peaks thanks to Mindprober’s latest innovation which captures real-time biometrics to measure people’s engagement during live events.

Viewers simply need to place in their hand the small Mindprober sensor while watching a football match or a live show. This small tool collects electrodermal activity and heart rate information and sends it to an app shortly after the end of the viewing. The app then synchronizes the data with the program that the panelist was watching and shows their engagement level second by second.

Biometric systems are often disregarded as being too niche, or sometimes, just too expensive. However, thanks to this new system it is possible to pinpoint not only the sports, or the players that are the most engaging but also the exact moments during the match or event. Knowing these exact timings is precious information, especially for sponsors who can tailor their messages for times when they are most impactful…the challenge then is to ensure that the messages are targeted to the right supporters!!

For example, by knowing when viewers are hooked, it’s easier for brands to decide when it is most effective for their logo to appear. Post-event, sponsors can also check viewers’ emotions during a commercial to measure their advertising effectiveness.

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3. Long-Term vs Short-Term

In general, Emotional advertising campaigns tend to be more profitable in the long term, contributing to 43% of a campaign’s profit gains on average after more than 3 years. Most brands tend to use happiness as the main drive for engagement, however, Not For Profit (NFP) organizations tend to leverage sadness, resulting in in-effective campaigns. System1, in collaboration with SURF Survivors Fund, Rwanda, started a project to understand how NFP adds can be more effective.

The most common negative emotion associated with charities is sadness, however, the correlation between sadness and brand market share is marginally negative. What has been found to be the most useful emotion for NFP brands over the long-term is also happiness? A happy NFP ad builds helpful positive emotional associations for the brand, while a negative ad (which might have short-term usefulness) tends to create negative brand associations. In fact, System1 showed that the most effective SURF ad was one that sent positive and hopeful messages of a brighter future.

A mix of useful insights, innovation and creativity can help brands really step up their game when it comes to advertising. While we have always known that emotions are at the core of ads’ effectiveness, the key has been how to leverage those emotions most effectively and thanks to these new ways of gathering data, brands are able to create increasingly effective campaigns.

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