ost expensive campaign of the year: the Christmas commercial. From HEMA’s cute Siepie to Lidl’s raccoon hero and from AH’s lonely Uncle Ko to the holidaying Opa of VakantieDiscounter; they have pulled out all the stops again. Whether those invested euros will also pay off in brand growth is of course the big question…
At least, that was the question. Because Unravel also has a tradition: the annual neuromarketing research into the best Christmas commercial according to the brain, and then presenting the Neuro Christmas Commercial Awards. Which commercial is the very best according to the brain of the consumer?
The Christmas commercials, like in previous years, provoke a lot of reactions. And when Angela de Jong gets involved – in the form of an extensive analysis at RTL – then you know it’s serious. It’s nice, those subjective opinions about which commercial is the best. But we now know that grades and reviews from experts, apart from some entertainment, have little meaning.
The reason for this is that marketing expressions – and therefore commercials – are largely processed at an unconscious level. And therefore they also influence us in an unconscious way.
All 20 commercials against the neuro-measuring stick
So if we want to know what the real effect of the Christmas commercials is, we will have to take a look into the brain of the consumer. That way we can really objectively indicate a winner. That is exactly what we did at Unravel.
Last week, a total of 20 Christmas commercials were shown (randomly) to 21 consumers who were fitted with a medical grade EEG headset. This allows our research team to measure brain activity as much as 256 times per second, and see exactly which scenes make the neurotransmitters fire, and which don’t.
Various scientific studies show that EEG brain data has philippines email list 3 million contact leads considerable predictive value when it comes to behavior. And that with relatively few test subjects. For example, we previously managed to predict the number of Spotify plays of new releases with 62% accuracy. Last week we used the same metrics to determine the winners of the Christmas Commercial Awards 2023.
Best practices
To build up the suspense just a little bit longer, I’ll wait a little phygitals: how nike, dior and gucci are dealing with this new trend longer with the reveal. First, I’ll share three more learnings, straight from the 2023 Christmas commercials.
Tip 1. Children and the elderly do well
We often see that children and the elderly do well alb directory in commercials.