Marketers should pay more attention to the 60% of consumer decision-making that happens at the shelf

Package design, one of the least heralded aspects of marketing, is a major factor behind the most successful product launches over the last two years.

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John Lewis’ “Buster” beats Body Shop to most engaging Christmas ad

Humour scores big this year as the best performing ads steer clear of heavy emotions

London, 6 December 2016. After mixed reactions last year for being too sad, John Lewis has produced this year’s most engaging festive ad, according to an annual study which measures viewers’ emotions by tracking facial expressions.

Its Buster the Boxer ad scored 94.8% on the emotionally compelling scale, putting it top in a Realeyes/Lucid study of 65 ads, narrowly ahead of The Body Shop’s Jungle Bells (94.1%) – which is the highest scoring ad among men.

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British retail “drowning in sea” of unrewarding loyalty cards

Only Finland has more but, paradoxically, British shoppers among least likely to use them 

London – 7 December 2016. Although British shoppers are the most likely in the world to have a loyalty card, with the exception of Finland, they’re among the least likely to see or utilise the benefits, according to a Nielsen study of 63 countries.

Two-thirds of shoppers globally report being a member of a retail loyalty scheme, compared to 89% in Britain. Only Finland is higher (94%). The average British loyalty card holder has 3.6 of them, behind only Japan and Lithuania.

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New arrangements to ‘improve customer experience and compliance’ at visitor moorings on non-tidal River Thames

http://www.thamesvisitormoorings.co.uk/

The Environment Agency is to test new arrangements for managing its short-stay visitor moorings along the non-tidal River Thames.

During a 12 month trial starting today (Wednesday 16 November), Thames Visitor Moorings, (TVM) a private company run ‘by boaters for boaters’, will take over responsibility for managing bookings and collecting fees at 21 of the 22 visitor mooring sites currently operated by the Environment Agency.

The change will bring significant benefits for boaters and the Environment Agency alike.

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 Mihkel Jaatma, Realeyes’ CEO

The results are based on facial recognition technology which measured people’s reactions as they watched the ads:

• Buster scored better than 95% of the 5,700 ads ever tested by Realeyes in terms of emotional engagement, which is a combined measure of how the ad scores on attraction, retention, engagement and impact
   
• Furthermore, it scored in the highest 1% of ads ever tested among women under 30
   
• It’s the most compelling of the last six John Lewis ads (see chart below), the next best being 2011’s “The Long Wait” which scored better than 89% of ads ever measured.
   
• The scene of Buster on the trampoline is the most engaging scene ever tested for a John Lewis ad

“Initial industry opinion seems to be that Buster isn’t a ‘rockstar’ edition from John Lewis but consumer’s emotional reaction says otherwise – it’s more engaging than their previous five offerings,” says Mihkel Jaatma, Realeyes’ CEO. “Its success is very much driven by happiness, a significant departure from last year’s melancholic Man on the Moon which even John Lewis admitted may have been too sad.” 

Emotion measurement firm Realeyes measured the reactions of 1,700 people across 49 key facial points as they watched the ads via their webcam. The respondents were sourced by audience platform Lucid.