• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, May 16, 2017

A new report, Make a Lasting Impression, from Kantar Millward Brown explored the company's database of 160,000 tested ads to determine the factors which best drive engagement and can make advertising more

effective.

Advertising with high creative impact - driven by emotional engagement - delivers significant improvements in predicted short-term share, per the report.

Kantar Millward Brown also looked at post-campaign sales across 1,700 campaigns and the analysis showed that a strong focus on emotional relevance and creative engagement led to increased business.

Here are the top findings from the study. None of these will be earth-shattering to anyone who's been in advertising for more than two years but just in case:

Be meaningfully different. Advertising needs to dramatize a brand's purpose, what the brand stands for, its point of view and its values. Campaigns such as Always #likeagirl not only provide engaging content but also leave behind impressions that will support the brand long-term.

Work with the brain, not against it. Ads that engage people creatively and emotionally work better than those that deliver an explicit message, which viewers tend to filter out. Working the way people's brains do also means restricting the number of key messages delivered. Analysis of more than 1,000 ads found that where a single message is included, typically 30% will take out that key message; whereas when a campaign has three messages typically only 14% will take out the first key message.

Good storytelling leaves an impression. Stories are a key strategy for engaging consumers with the real-life power of a brand. Yet too few brands incorporate them. Kantar Millward Brown research in 14 markets
identified Kenya, USA and India as story hot spots where more than 50% of ads contained story elements. However, even where there was a story, more than half the ads still included explicit product or
service messages.

No brand means no impression. Even emotionally engaging ads need branding, particularly in digital where skippable formats give just seconds to make an impact. Kantar Millward Brown data over the last 25
years found that ads with high branding typically deliver strong sales effects - 68% deliver a short-term sales uplift compared to those with low branding where 53% deliver a short-term sales uplift.

Channel matters. Getting the channel right means more than identifying where your consumers view content. It also means identifying the places where they are most receptive and using those formats they feel positive towards. Kantar Millward Brown's AdReaction Gen X, Y and Z study found that while younger consumers watch less TV for example, they are more receptive to TV ads than they are to all digital formats.

You can download the full study here.