“The Long Wait” is the most effective John Lewis Christmas ad, according to new emotion AI data released today by Realeyes.
With the UK retailer set to launch its highly-anticipated Christmas campaign, the tech company – which uses its face-reading AI technology to help brands such as Coca-Cola and Mars maximise the impact of their video marketing – looked back at previous festive campaigns to see which attracted the most attention and emotional engagement from viewers.
The 2011 Xmas ad, which features a young boy counting down the days till Christmas morning, was top of the Christmas tree after scoring 8.7 out of 10 for overall effectiveness, putting it just ahead of 2012 campaign “The Journey” in 2nd, with a score of 8.6.
The ad finished at the top of the pile after attracting the highest quality of continuous attention throughout and the third most emotional engagement.
The retail store’s 2016 campaign, “Buster The Boxer”, featuring a trampolining dog, bounces its way to third with a score of 8.1, while 2014’s “Monty The Penguin” was fourth (8.0) and last year’s campaign “Moz The Monster” was fifth (7.4). The ad which attracted the least emotional engagement and attention from viewers was 2013’s “Bear And The Hare”, which scored 7.0.
Realeyes’ creative effectiveness chart – John Lewis
1. John Lewis: “The Long Wait” (2011) – 8.7 (out of 10)
2. John Lewis: “The Journey” (2012) – 8.6
3. John Lewis: “Buster The Boxer” (2016) – 8.1
4. John Lewis: Monty The Penguin (2014) – 8.0
5. John Lewis: “Moz The Monster” (2017) – 7.4
7. John Lewis: “Bear and the Hare” (2013) – 7.0
Methodology
Each John Lewis Xmas ad from 2011 was tested on a sample audience of 300 people using Realeyes’ AI technology, which uses webcams to measure consumers’ attention levels and emotional engagement while watching.
Ad rankings are based on three scores:
• EmotionAll® scores – a 1 to 10 performance score which compares videos’ emotional engagement across our entire database of over 10,000 previously-tested videos.
• Attention quality score – The proportion of the video which respondents managed to keep continuously attentive for, on average.
• Attention volume – The average volume of attention respondents paid to the content.
These scores were then fed into an algorithm to determine the overall rankings. Realeyes has more than 15,000 ads in its database. The average score is 5.0.
To find out about Realeyes’ technology, download the company’s white papers on emotion and attention.