We detected 3 dominant emotions throughout the commercial: happy, surprise, contempt. As we have seen with the Symbid explainer video, contempt is not always a bad thing as long as it is tied to the storyline and intended. Let’s start with looking into happiness:

The first peak occurs at ~10 seconds in, when the Mercedes wiper clears the screen of the text, which is very well received. The other strong peak start at 54 seconds and last until 1:10 minutes. At that moment the explainer shows how much surface area can be cleaned with one set of wipers, without losing any quality. The next one is at 1:30 minutes making clear that the wiper blades are not only of high quality but economically also the best choice.

There are 3 different emotional responses shortly after one another starting at 38 seconds until 42 seconds. Happiness is followed by surprise and contempt. After looking closer these responses are all to the same information, the amount of wiping cycles these blades can handle. To understand what happens here exactly let’s look into the eye tracking analysis to see what viewers looked at.

The eye tracking shows exactly what viewers attended to while they felt the way they did. The heat map shows the amount of attention. The scale goes from blue (little attention) to red (a lot of attention). In the first image below you see the heat map during which viewers were happy and surprised. These are positive responses to this information. The second image shows when the contempt sets in. Here the same information is seen again but this time it is displayed on the truck itself. The third image shows what viewers attended to when during the happiness spike at 58 seconds. This part of the explainer is well received and also attention is at places where it should be.

The heart rate monitoring shows other points of excitement. At 30 – 35 seconds we see the first substantial peak. At that point in the video the robustness of the blades is shown. The next peak comes at 1:30 – 1:36 minutes, which is similar to the moment happiness sets in. This provides even more evidence that the economical benefit of the Mercedes wiper blades is very well received. However, it is important to note that excitement remains low around baseline after 35 seconds until 1:30 minutes, which is 55 seconds in total.

This explainer delivers all the necessary and important information about the original Mercedes wiper blades. All information backing up the quality of the blades is seen by the viewers. However, there are only few that spark emotional responses being: wiping cycles, the cleanable surface area, and the economic benefit. How could this explainer be improved? 

The viewers directly responded well to the wiping effect at the beginning and all the information that was provided in a creative way. The explainer should have been shorter to keep emotion and excitement high. Next, the information should be provided mainly using the animated parts of the explainer. Those were best received by the viewers!