Millward Brown tests advertising copy and audience reactions with facial coding technology
Millward Brown, a global leader in brand and media communications research, this week announced an Australian first in advertising copy testing with the launch of automated facial coding to read how audiences emotionally react to advertising.
Facial coding uses webcam technology to record and measure real time emotional responses during ad viewing, analysing a viewer’s spontaneous reaction to the concept.
Developed by Affectiva, the tool was integrated into Link, Millward Brown’s existing copy testing solution, by their neuroscience practice. It represents a breakthrough enhancement to the diagnostic depths Link offers on measuring the emotional response to advertisements.
Click here to download more information – MillwardBrown_Link-with-Facial-Coding.sflb.pdf
Daren Poole, global brand director for Link, said the new technology is an exciting development for the way emotional reactions to advertising are evaluated, and in conjunction with Link’s existing measures can help predict how audiences will react to the ad, impacting on its cut through, and ultimately its effect on sales.
Says Poole: “Traditional methods of measuring emotion are not always capable of capturing a true emotional response. Facial coding allows us to track how a person really responds, rather than what they claim to have felt. There’s no substitute for a real smile, laugh or frown and for the first time in Australia we can measure this all in the viewer’s home environment.
“Facial coding as part of Link can measure factors such as how well it captures a viewer’s attention, how they respond to it and ultimately provide guidance in the analysis of the ad’s impact on the brand. If a campaign is pushing the boundaries in terms or humour or controversy this is a controlled means to test how consumers really respond.”
Says Jane Ketelbey, Australian client development director: “Link has long allowed us to understand the effectiveness of creative at any stage of ad development and give recommendations for optimisation to maximise its impact. What makes this innovation truly exciting is that it allows our clients to see and measure the real emotional reaction of a large number of their consumers for the first time.”
32 Comments
Can you read my face Millward Brown?
It’s pulling an expression of disgust that you’re still leeching client dollars by claiming that creativity can be quantified.
April Fools gags work better April 1st.
I’m so glad I am no longer a creative. Holy fuck that is bad.
Surely, human emotions have to be richer and more mysterious than some fancy coloured boxes super-imposed onto peoples’ faces.
Any company that is drawn to that kind of stuff would, obviously, be really adept at tapping into consumers’ emotions in the first place. Fucking, not!
The CEO probably brings it out in team meetings to see who believes the bullshit he is spouting.
This doesn’t work.
Welcome to hell.
More beads and trinkets to fool the clients with. This is getting beyond a joke.
1. I don’t get it. It says that my face will mean that I will buy something.
2. I think the concept was better without the technology.
3. I get that you are saying that you’re innovative, but I don’t think it will mean that I will hire them in the future.
4. The people in the photos don’t really reflex me so I’m not connecting with what you are saying.
5. What a load of shit. Give me more chips and my $50 bucks.
6. I’m a client and I don’t have much production budget, this doesn’t tell me how this will impact my ability to execute any idea once the fee is taken out of my budget. I think that is important.
7. But can’t you just read the concept for yourself, judge whether it’s a good idea and back your own judgements? Fuck, that what we marketing managers are paid for. I don’t see why I should waste more money.
8. The headline could be shorter.
9. There’s no all to action.
10. The company name sounds like a fertilizer company. Possibily look at changing it.
11. You say you’re pushing the boundaries. But I don’t believe it.
12. Fuck off, what a joke.
The biggest scam in advertising.
Milward Brown is a glorious scam for marketers who lack Balls.
Creativity is not a science.
http://www.demdigest.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/clockwork_orange_3.jpg
Has anybody ever researched Millward Brown to see how succesful they are at optimising ads?
I know somebody that tried and Millward Brown wouldn’t have a bar of it.
Talk note clients.
Ahhh lovely!
Another expensive way for Marketing Heads to cover their asses!
Everyone should try to get on their panel, and then, when responding to the survey, aim their webcam at their genitalia (although this may in fact prove to me a more useful methodology)
Millward Brown if an ad got the responses you are getting here, wouldn’t you can it and say start again????
PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH.
what jason said
…and blew a $1.5 million commercial to hell by crying at the wrong time.
Any clients queuing up for this would be better advised to wait for independent confirmation that it works, before forking any ca$h over.
Cue “…but our proprietary research tools show…” speech from Millward.
Trust me, I’ve seen guys in focus groups so poker-faced that they looked dead, then becoming the loudest supporters of the ads in the discussions later. We all laugh / smile to greater or lesser extents, depending on our personalities. One man’s guffaw is another man’s twitch.
University of Common Sense.
When marketers lose the ability to react like human beings in a creative presentation, sooner or later they’ll get someone else to smile or raise an eyebrow for them.
Snake oil salesmen
It says fuck off!
Hi, Interesting this raised such emotional reactions – I’d love to see your faces! I’m an MR guy with expertise in this method and a couple of points for those who are not immediately and completely biased against any notion we should try and measure reaction to ads at all. Firstly, contrary to the release this is NOT an Australian first for MB – another respected Australian MR company has carried out studies using another software system from a Swiss company (www.nviso.ch) – lots on the method at that site. Secondly, the method is well validated (in fact it is way more scientific and accurate than the normal methods of merely asking people what they think). This kind of software is being used around the world now by some big companies and is incredibly precise.
Most importantly all the creatives I have ever shown this too LOVE it. Properly analysed direct measurement of emotion more often than not helps you demonstrate to clients WHY creative, impactful advertising matters, why it is important to build engagement and why all the little last minute changes to creative may just have a a negative effect. This is a method that can help you show clients that clever brand building ads and decent production values yield real results and are worth budget in these tight times. FYI, our work in developing this method has been supported by Ad Agencies, not just MR companies. So no matter what your initial reaction, keep an eye on this stuff – it may surprise.
This would be the same Millward Brown that have killed off numerous ads I’ve made on the grounds that the product is not seen and used in the first five seconds of the commercial.
And the same Millward Brown that gauges consumer reaction with a worm that gauges a commercial’s appeal AS IT’S RUNNING.
Fuck off.
Nice response, Alastair. You may well be right. The issue that I see is that it is a further sign of marketers getting caught up in more and more processes to make decisions. By the time an idea is every made (if!), it has gone through so much testing, analysis, research etc. that it’s rubbish.
I have a better idea. Why not use it in client presentations? How often does the client laugh and love the idea in the meeting and then hate it three days later in an email.
Why are people being so unprofessional and irresponsible here?
Im assuming that those commentators don’t know much about how advertising works and so defer to the typical research-bashing that’s probably bred in Award school, and in-between conversations about skateboarding (just after the “all suits suck” rants, and “what the fuck do planners know anyway” debate)
Research can work, and if you bothered to spend some time reading up on your chosen field – that is, understanding how people consume and respond rationally and emotionally to advertising – then you might see the positives in this news. There are heaps of evidence-based publications. I won’t try to explain what statistical significance means. Ask your planner.
I hate to spoil it for you, but whilst creativity is not a science, there is a science to advertising (the business you’re in), it’s just you don’t understand it. Also, there’s no tooth fairy or Santa Claus. Sorry.
Admittedly, I also get frustrated with the fact that decisions are made based on the assumption that people react to advertising rationally. Even the more emotional metrics rely on rationalisation of feelings in pre-testing! (yes, it’s bad, I agree)
So, Ipsos and Milward Brown have been slow to respond to the mounting evidence in favour of emotional v rational. But at least they are now acknowledging it. At the end of the day guys, companies investing millions are going to need something to assure them. The uninformed opinion of a 24 year old with a Chuck Norris T-Shirt on isn’t going to cut it I’m afraid (that’s the person I have in mind when I read “it says fuck-off” in the comments – how are you even employed?)
It’s a part of life. Learn to understand it, work with it, improve it’s interpretation.
Be a professional for a change.
I genuinely believe marketers would be better off spending their money on more ads- something that brings in revenue. eg.
$1 million on research = $0 revenue.
$1 million on a radio/print campaign = a lot more than $0.
@chizzy concept testing doesn’t work. It’s been proven not to work. By researchers like Hugh Mackay. It’s irresponsible to think it does work. And quite unprofessional.
In any other industry this sort of testing would not exist. Millward Brown is a scam.
We are not irresponsible. You are! This is a huge privacy breach and we should ban alle facial recognition and facial localisation based tech by govs and business. No we don’t wan’t you making ads manipulating our feeling and reading our biometrics.
Yo Chizzy,
“Fuck Off”. This is a blog for creatives and we never, ever say crap like – “Research can work” and “Admittedly, I also get frustrated”. ‘Statistical significance’…? Listen to yourself. So best for everyone if you slither quietly back to your pie charts and continue your scientific analysis of advertising. Your portfolio is presumably resplendent with bar graphs in powerpoint.
These goddamn ‘professional’ suit/planners are the scourge of creativity, killing advertising slowly from the inside.
Seriously, you can’t reason with these people. The chemicals in their systems make them sociopathic and only able to mutter obscenties behind pseudonyms (we can all do that), let alone incapable of understanding that their job is not about producing self-gratifying drivel that looks nice and might win a golden palm, but about selling their clients products.
If we could rely on their gut feel or that of every marketing manager, then great. However, many a colossal cock-up and demoliton of a brand has started this way. Leave them to their abusive forum and their intellectual inferiority so they can maybe start to convince themselves that their role in life is actually worthwhile and useful.
Creatives are judged on their creativity. A creative’s job is to wow their creative director. It’s a marketing managers job to sell more products. And let’s be clear that marketing managers work at a different company – planners work at ad agencies. If one wants to talk about producing drivel, have a look at the quality of ‘sales driven’ campaigns you or any of us have worked on. Without someone having a spark of an original idea, there would be no product in the first place. It’s the same with ads. Without creative, there would be no ads. Any moron can sit about and give their opinion on a piece of work and god knows suits, focus groups and planners do it all the time. The ‘Self gratifying’ quip above is a way off. Once the suits have had their go, the ad pleases nobody but client and guess what – they don’t buy the product because they’ve already got a factory full of the stuff. No creative I ever met approaches a brief thinking ‘how can I make this about me?’. What with the seventeen proof points the planner has crammed onto the brief, because they’re so frightened of a ‘colossal cock-up’, there’s no room for self insertion. The bean counters like Milward Brown and ‘gut feel’ need to have a look at what value they actually add to the process. Would you honestly rather watch the ad made exclusively by creative types or one made by the suits and planners? It’s salient to note that the folks who read this blog tend to work for an agency whose product is creativity not biscuits, washing powder or home loans.
I think there’s a number of discussions going on at once here. Pulling it back to the source of debate:
Milward Brown have now acknowledged that emotion plays a bigger role than rational, and that testing emotion is best done by observation rather than questioning.
Therefore, this is good news. It’s a move forward for creativity. Hope of more accurate emotional testing rather than false rationalisation.
What’s the point of arguing about research or no research? It’s hear to stay. It’s just good to see that it’s getting better.
In reaction to some of the latter comments:
Yo Chuck, this isn’t a blog just for “creatives”. If it was then why would they report on a new Millward Brown product, would they? or announce new MDs or planning awards?
My portfolio and awards credits is in a very good shape thanks. I also continue to take pride in my reputation for being a facilitator and defender of great work. That’s why I choose to understand the pre-testing process rather than fight it. Funnily enough, some of the better, award-winning work in on my reel actually went through testing.
(please don’t think think I’m advocating research though. I’m not. I see it as a necessary evil that’s best understood than battled with)
The pro,
I understand a lot of the work for and against pre-testing ads and concept research (there is a difference). You can’t make sweeping statement like that as methodologies vary. It’s like saying guns are always dangerous when actually they can be pretty useful if there’s a 9ft bear chasing you.
Hugh MacKay’s research can be matched with research that suggests otherwise, so you can’t make a call based on one source.
Research has its limitations and therefore needs to be used and interpreted carefully by those who are knowledgeable and experienced enough.
I wasn’t expressing an opinion on whether research works or not, and when or where it should be used. That’s a different debate.
The biggest enemy to creativity isn’t research. It’s inexperienced clients who – when they don’t have research – defer to what they believe is common sense: rational, message-based, persuasion-pushing advertising. Actually, I’ve seen that clients can sometimes relax when they use research, which benefits the creative product.
I’ll leave it there. It’s a big topic of debate. Too big for this forum.
My tip though:
Criticising the general notion of researching ideas and pre-testing executions is futile. What do you expect to achieve?
Instead, accept it, understand it and work with your planners to make it work FOR you. Help clients know how to use it, and interpret it better.
And if it really makes you angry and upset, leave the commercial creativity industry. Dedicate your life to the arts. It doesn’t pay well because it doesn’t sell very much, but you’ll be in a happier place.
It’s not impossible that clients (if any) who occasionally trundle through this blog might have had their eye caught by this entry. “Aha, this is not the standard mud those people fling copiously at each other’s ads, this might be useful to me.”
And they would, no doubt, have read the responses, and concluded that the creative community is entirely composed of emotionally immature, reactionary brats who (oddly) also suffer from God Complex. (Thanks, Chuck Norris.)
So, why do creatives hate research?
Three reasons.
a) It sometimes kills (or at least maims) their babies. Creative people have a mother’s attachment to work they’ve created. The bean counters (clients / research, and if some posts are to be believed, planners & suits) are the grim, humourless Agents Smith in their creative Matrix, are evil, and hence must be resisted. There is nothing logical about this reaction, but there ya go.
b) In some cases (not all, by any means), creatives don’t work for clients’ brands. They work for themselves. The investment that they are making in their work is not: “will this do a fair job for the client in return for the money they are paying me?”, it is rather:”what will my peers, the rabidly vicious CB blog, and award juries think about my work?”
This insecurity can also be coupled with an inflated sense of their own talent – such a creative person, in his/her own rose-tinted opinion, poops raw gold, which can then be fashioned into little lions or pencils later.
So it’s not hard to see why any process akin to research is going to hold no value for these people; their response to it can never be better than neutral (“well, at least those bastards didn’t bugger up my ad too much”) and anything less favourable triggers the inevitable hissy-fit.
(c) But not all creative people are like that, even initially, and both (a) and (b) above often pass with age / wisdom (ha ha) / the inevitable thickening of skin. Yet even at this stage, it’s possible to mistrust research, simply because there are genuine cases where research wrongly kills good creative work (read: creative work based on sound strategy, insight, and creative expression.)
Before anyone with a vested interest replies “ahhhh, then by definition it wasn’t sound, that’s why our tools have exposed the weaknesses!” let me just say (based on countless research groups attended) that a prime reason is that formal research reports (including from you, Millward Brown, yes, I’m talking to you) can be wildly inaccurate in their conclusions (at times, I cannot believe that it was in reference to the same groups that I attended) and very weak on recommendations moving forward.
The natural amplification of wrongness from marketing manager to marketing director to even higher levels of decision maker (god help you if the paperwork goes beyond borders) often leads to the agency being faced with ultimatums from clients, “based on research”, that negate the value of the work, and result in campaigns that deliver…wait for it…less bang for the client’s buck. Which is what, ironically, the research was intended to safeguard in the first place.
“Ah, well, thank god we now have scientifically developed, thus infallible, facial coding, say goodbye to human frailty!” Hmmmmm, I’m unconvinced. Their marketing blah says it will capture “disgust, surprise, smiles, confusion…etc”, presumably when delivered in exactly the grossly exaggerated facial expressions shown at the top of this page.
Whether human beings are actually ultra-hammy lab rats remains to be seen, but I’d still take my chances (because I accept that research is here to stay) on a savvy marketing manager with balls, brains, common sense and a pinch of salt ready to be sprinkled liberally on anything a research company tells him.
I think the end-game for facial coding is that it will be eventually marketed as “a useful adjunct to established forms of concept testing”, then dropped for lack of support. The great thing about research, to paraphrase that Leverhulme bloke, is that we never know which half works, And you don’t really have to worry, because it’s the agency that gets shafted when ads don’t deliver – not the research company.
Interesting thread.
Perhaps we could start by acknowledging that advertising decisions are difficult? They are difficult because of all the stakeholders involved and because there is no single model of how advertising works.
Regardless of whether we agree / disagree with this approach (or others), we have to acknowledge that good advertising decisions have less to do with the ‘intuition’ of any one person, and more to do with the quality of conversation between those who share responsibility for the end result.
Unfortunately some of those people have families, mortgages, etc and look for a little reassurance about the decision they’re about to make (even if that reassurance is symbolic rather than genuinely useful).
However, if we can’t have quality informed debate as an industry then, well, it’s no wonder that so many great ideas get destroyed by process.
Personally, I’m not a fan of testing creative (I’m a planner BTW) because the majority of pre-testing models are based on an outmoded view of how advertising works. However, what MB are trying to do here is at least push things forward a little bit (even though BrainJuicer have been using this approach for years)
BTW – this approach is based on the research of a guy called Paul Ekman. Ekman’s theories have never really been challenged, but I guess if they were we’d need to come up with something a little more considered than “This doesn’t work”.