• by Karl Greenberg , December 2, 2009

The economy is either climbing back up the cliff or taking a breather on a badly crumbling ledge. Where that leaves consumers, particularly those in the market for new cars and trucks, is out on a limb. A new study suggests that this precarious perch has altered the way that consumers respond to car ads.

Early this year, the Boston-based neuroscience firm Innerscope began noticing that ads with an economic theme, such as Hyundai's Super Bowl spot promoting its Assurance program, were engaging consumers emotionally in a way that such messages had not before.

The firm found that while consumers' overall emotional engagement with car and truck ads dropped from 2008 to 2009, some ads engaged consumers at high levels across brands and classes. And those ads had specific characteristics that were missing from ads with low engagement scores.

The study, which takes as a starting point that 75% of behavior is directed subconsciously, builds results from how people respond to ads physiologically. Subjects wear a wireless vest that monitors things like heart rate, skin sweat, motion and respiration.

"We are measuring unconscious emotional response to auto ad stimuli, and if the ads aren't relevant, you aren't going to be engaged," Carl Marci, CEO of Innerscope, tells Marketing Daily.

Seventy-five percent of behavior, including engagement, is driven by subconscious responses, per the firm. Ultimately, high engagement means that viewers watch ads, instead of going to TiVo or changing channels.

Also, ads featuring celebrities worked on raising engagement levels -- but only if the celebrity's appearance made sense. Thus, per the firm, Ford's F-150 pickup ads with Toby Keith -- which did not have much to do with his country music status -- performed worse than F-150 ads featuring Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs."

"In the ads, Keith just looks like someone selling a truck, but Mike Rowe is saying: 'I know about dirty jobs,' implicitly," says Marci.

And story lines that dealt with the emotional benefits of purchasing a vehicle did better at engaging consumers than ads that focused on a vehicle's features. "Universally, stories generate an emotional response," says Marci. "If the feature set is integrated into a coherent story, emotional engagement will be there. Listing attributes for attributes' sake isn't enough."

The firm touts Audi's A6 ad featuring action star Jason Statham, who uses the car to get away from bad guys. In the ad, the car is the supporting character but ends up being the star as Statham goes through different decades and cars from BMW and Mercedes, crashing them all but only the Audi helps him get away. "Any time product can be hero, we see increased engagement," says Marci.