Using emotions to drive the effectiveness of radio campaigns

This week’s egtabite shows how radio campaigns’ effectiveness can be improved significantly by adapting the creative to the emotional state of the listeners in the given time of the day/week.

The concept

Urban Media, an Irish media sales house, wanted to improve how they drive effective campaigns for their clients. They teamed up with a research company Amarach Research and designed a national survey among 1,612 people that analysed four live campaigns across Urban Media’s radio network for a period of two weeks using the day reconstruction method.

The results proved the effectiveness of the radio campaigns showing significant lift in unprompted and prompted brand awareness and likeliness to consider when comparing all adults and Urban Media’s listeners. The research then went a step further and looked closely into seven positive and negative emotional states of listeners (happy, relaxed, affection, in control, frustrated, stressed, tired). They tracked the levels of positive and negative emotions throughout a day over a period of a week.

The findings showed that the level of happiness or frustration correlates with the level of awareness and considerations for the advertised product. The happier people were the more likely they were to be aware and consider the product advertised in the four tested campaigns, it was similar with relaxed, in control and affectionate emotions. The interesting outcome was the huge increase in awareness and consideration for the four camapigns when mapped against the negative emotions. The rise was significant mainly for high levels of frustration, stress and a smaller one for tiredness.

Examples of campaigns

Based on these results Urban Media realised that by adapting the copy of the campaign to target and address the likely emotions of the listener in a certain time of the day/week, the campaign’s efficiency could be significantly improved. One example of such adapted copy is an ad for a car placed during rush hour. Instead of focusing on financial aspects it highlighted all the additional comforts the new car would bring to make the situation more comfortable and provide a solution to the stress. Another example is an ad for a family day at a local car dealership presented by the local radio station. When placed towards the end of a week when parents are thinking of what to do with their kids over the weekend it again makes the most of listeners’ emotions. The ad provides a solution for parents to both check out the car they might have heard an ad for earlier in the week and to entertain their kids.

Another successful case of using listeners’ emotions is ad copy for Boutique Bake that plays on childhood memories of baking at home. This campaign delivered 175% lift in brand awareness and 96% in purchase intent. More info about the campaign is available in our previous egtabite here.