"Instead of applying segmentation to the audience and people, we came up with applying it to the ads," says Henk Pretorius, managing director of Columinate-InSites Consulting South Africa. "In other words, [we focus on] how people react to advertising, segmenting the ads themselves into different categories of emotive reactions." 

Pretorius, along with the company's team lead Amone Redelinghuys, presented the new research methodology at this year's Pan African Media Research Organisation (PAMRO) conference.

"We came up with this idea of only looking at emotive reactions because there's so much work that proves that emotions are fundamental in the way that people react, respond, behave and make decisions,” Pretorius adds.

According to Pretorius, there are seven emotive advert segments that form the base of this audience advertising methodology. Adverts related to each segment have been gauged for possible advertising effectiveness.

The segments include:
  • delightful hug
  • bored yawn
  • amused smile
  • excited jump
  • accepting nod
  • inspired glow
  • blank neutral expression
"The unfortunate thing that we found is that 41% of ads didn't actually create any sort of emotive reaction and that unfortunately rings true. If you look at the way a lot of advertising is done, it's not necessarily setting out to create an emotive reaction,” Pretorius says.

The way forward for this new audience advertising methodology, according to Pretorius, is twofold. Firstly, it will become a standard part of Columinate InSite Consulting’s ad testing approach and, secondly, it is being demonstrated to agencies, so they can get a better sense of how effective their creative and advertising ideas really are.

For more information, visit www.columinate.com. You can also follow Columinate-InSite Consulting on Facebook or on Twitter.