Alfers Biscuits created a new commercial with a funny twist in it. The commercial itself is not long, only 30 seconds. The question was to see if the punch line would not come too late and people would switch off before getting there.
For that reason we tested it to see how people actually react and if they perceive it as funny and how long and when the engagement will start or taper off.
ResultsTo go through the results step by step, we first need to ask what type of output is important for the type of media tested. Because this is a video commercial and things change over time in a video, we are interested in seeing:
The other metrics won’t tell us much given that this is a video that we tested.
These specific results can be found on the Summary Overview Page (explanation), which entails the result of each step already. We also need the Quadrants Video (explanation) that shows how the effect of the video was on a direct moment by moment basis.
From the overall scores of Valence (11.87 %), we can already see that the commercial was perceived positively. The elevated Heart Rate of 3.35 %, also shows that excitement went up. The emotion overview shows us also that the most dominant emotion was happy with 85.5 % compared to all others. The Emotional Impact indicates sufficient emotional engagement, which you wouldn’t see if people were bored.
All of these scores already indicate a positive impact of the video commercial. Now, we have to dig a little deeper to see how the response was at different periods of the commercial.
We get a broad overview of trends by splitting the time into a beginning, middle, and end part. It’s clear that Valence was already positive from the beginning and increased towards the end. This was driven by happiness. The Heart Rate increased the most during the middle section.
The punchline of the joke in the commercial is delivered at the end. The trend already indicates that people didn’t get bored until the end. That is also a very good sign that they’d continue watching it until the end.
The timeline itself gives us the most detailed overview of the response on a second by second basis. The trend we saw in the Sections, is also visible here. More interestingly, the Heart Rate started to increase at ~14 seconds and happiness increased at 22 seconds. Exactly when the punchline is delivered!
The earlier increase in Heart Rate tells us that the build up of the story worked. That is also the cause that the punchline worked well!
The Quadrants Video shows the timeline coupled with the Heatflow video (top left). This is the best visualization so you have side by side what testers saw and how they felt at exactly that moment.
You can see that the punchline delivered perfectly and happiness remained until the end. The Heatflow video makes it very clear that testers looked at exactly all the important parts for the joke to work.
They also paid a lot of attention to the Alfers Buiscuits themselves, which is great Brand Visibility.
These results made it clear that this is a good commercial. The story worked and delivered on all points. The increase in heart rate showed that engagement was present early on and was important to build up to the punchline.
The commercial went viral as a result of the proper setup and the testing provided enough confidence to publish it the way it was.
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