Trends, insights and analytics have been front and center at Advertising Week Europe since it’s beginning. What broke through this year is a new initiative between Foresight Factory and Sensum, where they explore the next revolution in data-driven marketing, emotional intelligence.
We sat down with Sensum’s CEO, Gawain Morrison in London to discuss the session and this exciting new initiative in emotional data.
Sensum and Foresight Factory have collaborated for years and now they’ve combined their tool kits to create this new capability for brands. By bringing together Sensum’s implicit response techniques to gather emotional analysis and Foresight Factory’s “Future Trends”, brands are able to understand the emotional stories their consumers want to hear and engage with.
“Emotions Drive Everything We Do”
According to Morrison, emotions drive every decision and brands are already moving more toward relationships with their consumers vs. simply selling a product. Emotions are the core of a relationship and in order to understand the reasons behind loyalty, purchase behavior and even enjoyment with a brand, you need to be able to understand consumers at an emotional level.
During the session at Advertising Week Europe, the panel discussed a study from Foresight Factory on the level of emotional intelligence from automotive brands. The study indicated that brands like Nissan and Ford scored well with consumers when it came to their functional attributes, i.e. pricing, reliability, etc. However, it was, Skoda, a Czech automotive brand that showed the most emotional intelligence. Their recent ad chronicling the career of Cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins has the type of emotional impact brands should be aspiring to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzHdpSrK300
Where most brands are getting it wrong, according to Morrison is a lack of understanding how to tell a good story.
While there are many benefits to understanding consumers on an emotional level, there are also some factors brands need to remember, most importantly, the human element. A brand can have access to all the data in the world but, without someone there to interpret that data and develop the creative story behind it, there is no value.
So, where is all this headed? Morrison says, the last 18 months have already shown a change in how brands are understanding that you can capture emotional data. He sees the next few years as a time where companies learn how to apply emotional data into their creative better and more responsibly.
Watch the full panel on Replay.