BBDO + Immersion

The Study

The global advertising juggernaut BBDO challenged us to predict sales bumps using neural measures. BBDO Asia Head of Strategy Andy Wilson designed a deviously delicious blinded study in which BBDO's clients had ranked ads for sales bumps, with each company using their own methodology, and BBDO withheld this information from us.

Could we predict which ad had produced the largest sales bump? There is no better way than a blinded protocol to prove that Immersion predicts sales so we readily agreed to do the study.

BBDO sent us 18 ads they had created for six clients, three ads per client. The brands were quite varied: Snickers, Cesar dog food, AT&T, Visa, Guinness beer, and Bud Light.

We recruited 61 participants to watch the ads while we collected neurologic data. Respondents, who ranged in age from college students to middle-aged adults, were balanced by gender, and had varying ethnicities and incomes.

The Results

Immersion correctly identify which ad produced the largest sales bumps for five of the six brands we tested. That means we predicted sales bumps with 83% accuracy. Of course, our ranking could have been dumb luck. The likelihood that our prediction was due to random chance was only 3.1%, a highly statistically significant result.

Here's another way to understand our findings: there is a statistically significant linear relationship between immersion and sales bumps, so as Immersion increases, so do sales.

This blinded test proved that neural signals from a modest number of individuals are able to predict what will happen in the market. A win for Immersion! 

You may be wondering which brand our forecast missed? Bud Light. Andy Wilson later told me that Bud Light had, in addition to TV commercials, sponsored live concerts, a social media campaign, and swag giveaways that affected sales; the immersion of their commercials could not take these additional sales-drivers into account. BBDO had basically thrown us a red herring, but the neurologic data did what it was designed to do: predict actions from messages.

Key Learnings

1. Our 15 years of published neuroscience research shows it is not enough to measure any neural signal. Immersion Neuroscience has shown that combinations of neural signals consistently and accurately predict outcomes.

2. Blinded tests are the gold standard of prediction. We achieved 83% accuracy in a blinded test to predict sales bumps designed by BBDO by measuring immersion in only 61 people.

3. Immersion is an effective and accurate tool in predicting an ads impact and efficacy. When you need to know what will work, Immersion cuts out the bullshit. 

4. Immersive experiences are tagged with emotion in the brain and as a result are more likely to be acted on and more easily recalled weeks later. This is how immersive ads generate sales.