Advertising best practice, evidence and insights

What we know about new ad testing methods

Article • WARC Best Practice, December 2019

This article summarises key insights from a series of papers on new ad testing methods which are driven by advances in technology and neuroscience and must focus on consumers' rational and emotional drivers.

What we know about neuromarketing

Article • WARC Best Practice, November 2019

This article explores the emerging use of neuroscience in market research, a discipline capable of exposing the underlying motivations behind consumer decision making.

How to use neuroscience to improve your advertising

Article • Heather Andrew, WARC Best Practice, December 2018

This paper addresses the implications of this changing research landscape and, in particular, how neuroscience principles can help marketers and advertisers to:.

Neuroscience sheds light on the power of contextual advertising

Article • Shazia Ginai, WARC Exclusive, January 2020

An overview of neuroscience research into the impact of context on advertising effectiveness.

Developing brand assets

Article • Dominic Twose, WARC Best Practice, January 2020

This article explores the importance of building strong branding into marketing activity and how to develop brand assets.

How consumers respond to ads in news content

News • 06 December 2019

Consumer responses to advertising in news content varies significantly depending on the medium used, according to a study published by the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

Forum: Using neuroscience to understand the impact of premium digital out-of-home media

Article • Heather Andrew, Helen Haines and Shaun Seixas, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 61, No. 6, 2019, pp. 588-600

In this article, Heather Andrew and Dr Shaun Seixas of Neuro-lnsight, and Helen Haines from Ocean Outdoor explain how modern brain imaging technology can be applied to measure people's emotional, subconscious responses to different forms of outdoor media, from static paper and paste posters to multisensory advertising screens.

The Brand Benefits Study

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, MRS Award for Media Research, 2019

Pearl & Dean, a cinema advertising company, utilised a unique implicit testing methodology to prove that cinema is instrumental in benefiting brands in the UK.

Creativity in crisis: The implications of left-brained dominance for advertising

Case Study • MRS Awards, Finalist, Virginia Valentine Award for Cultural Insights, 2019

New work by Orlando Wood of System1 shows how cultural insight and large-scale data analysis can combine to uncover a hidden and highly significant trend within marketing and advertising.

A three-part insight strategy to optimise Tesco’s trade driving print

Case Study • MRS Awards, Winner, Jeremy Bullmore Award for Creative Development Research, 2019

Tesco, a supermarket, optimised its ads to grab consumers' attention in just two seconds in the UK.

Marketer's Toolkit 2020: The pivot back to brand (Economy)

Article • WARC Trends, November 2019

Part of WARC's Marketer’s Toolkit 2020, this chapter offers a deep dive into investment trends for brands in 2020.

What you see as an advertiser is NOT what the audience really gets

Research Paper • Dmitry Gaiduk, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

Complementing survey research with non-conscious tools allows researchers to gain a better understanding of what really drives consumer decisions: emotions, biases and stereotypes.

Multi-methods cocktail: Blending brain scanning, VR and eye-tracking to compare print with digital, TV and outdoor advertising

Research Paper • Tom van Bommel, ESOMAR, Fusion, 2019

Looks at how different types of advertising media operate and interact to sway a customer's purchase decisions towards a particular direction.

Does emotion still matter?

Opinion • David Penn, November 2019

New thinking seems to challenge the ‘classic’ marketing view of emotion. David Penn reviews the evidence and suggests a way forward – as well as explaining why Tahitians are never “sad”.

How sensorial marketing drives in-store sales

Article • Lona Meza, Event Reports, Brainy Bar 9, October 2019

Looks at neuro-research into how sensorial marketing can impact in-store sales.

Brainy Bar 9: Spotlighting women in neuroscience

Opinion • Lona Meza, November 2019

The ninth iteration of Brainy Bar, hosted by Walnut Unlimited and WARC, featured an all-female cast of speakers providing advice and expertise on the ways in which neuro is leading changes in branding, communications and research.

Applying neuroscience to influencer marketing

News • 31 October 2019

Influencers can generate a significantly stronger emotional response and higher levels of memory encoding than TV ads, according to research seeking to move the measurement of influencer marketing effectiveness beyond reach and engagement metrics.

New Frontiers in Behavioural Science: Beyond mugs and wine – Expanding our understanding of the endowment effect

Article • Crawford Hollingworth and Liz Barker, The Behavioural Architects, October 2019

Looks at the endowment effect and what factors seem to strengthen or weaken it or whether context matters.

Do your ads talk too fast to your audio audience? How speech rates of audio commercials influence cognitive and physiological outcomes

Research Paper • Emma Rodero, Journal of Advertising Research, Digital First, October 2019

Speech rate plays a critical role in understanding speech and therefore in advertising messages. Announcers tend to speak fast in radio and television commercials.

Pre-testing animatic TV ads can be effective

News • 25 October 2019

Pre-testing animatic television spots that have not yet finished the production process can be as useful as testing the final ad if the correct methodology is employed, a study in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR) has argued.

Building brand affinity at scale: Establishing the powerful interplay between broadcast content and OOH advertising

Article • Emma Jeffers, WARC Exclusive, October 2019

Reveals insights and findings from Ocean Outdoor and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s research into the impact of digital out-of-home (DOOH) as a broadcast channel and how live broadcasts and pre-scheduled content drives brand affinity and engagement.

The science of influencer and its impact on influencer measurement

Article • Ian Forrester and Shazia Ginai, Research on WARC, October 2019

Reveals the insights from a study about if influencer marketing (when done right) evokes intense emotions and creates lasting memories.

Virgin Atlantic: We wore a wire for Richard

Case Study • Account Planning Group - (UK), Entrant, 2019

Virgin Atlantic, an airline brand, increased sales globally by encouraging customers and staff to wear a wire while on board, which tracked consumers' reactions to the experience and allowed Virgin to transform its services based on the results.

Lexus: Can an AI write an award-winning paper?

Case Study • Account Planning Group - (UK), Entrant, 2019

Lexus, an automotive brand, launched a car ad that used a script created by its AI function to maximise effectiveness of the launch of its new ES model in Australia.

IKEA: The Wonderful Everyday – Six years and counting

Case Study • Account Planning Group - (UK), Gold, 2019

IKEA, a furniture retailer, renewed its market-leading position with a creative campaign that combined surreal imaginings with everyday life.