Eye tracking to Support the Creative Process

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We saved Ogilvy and British gas 8 to 12 months of multivariate testing by starting with the right creative route, here’s how:

The route to creative excellence has to date been based more on intuition and gut feel that rigorous scientific pre-testing; we hope our recent agreement with Ogilvy will change the process for ever.

How the Creative Process Was

The creative agency comes up with several routes for a campaign. At a large meeting the Creative Director presents the routes and explains the motivation and goals for each one. He then sits down and looks thoughtful whilst waiting until the most senior person on the client side speaks up and says which one they prefer. There is some discussion and the route is thus chosen.

How the Creative Process Will Be

The agency comes up with several routes for a campaign. At a large meeting the Creative Director presents the routes and explains the motivation and goals for each one. She also presents how each route was actually engaged with by consumers who were eye tracked on each one. The eye tracking shows if two key goals were met:

1. Did the creative get attention?

2. Did the creative deliver the intended message(s)?

The client and agency then have an informed discussion about how each is performing and may select one of the routes or to choose elements from individual ones that are performing well to iterate into a new optimised design.

Simple, scientific, common sense, and you don’t have to take our word for it, see what Skip Fidura, email marketing guru at DotAgency, said,

“We first used eye tracking to indicate which of three design concepts were the best. Interestingly, the one that came out on top had not been the client’s or the agency’s favourite.

We then used these initial results to optimise the design and tested it again; further optimising the template from this second round of analysis before putting it in the field with a robust testing strategy to improve it further.

We estimate that even if we had picked the right design in the first place, it would have taken eight to twelve months of testing to get to the version that we put in the field on day one.” Continue reading

Eye tracking Proves David Ogilvy’s Work (Still) Rocks

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David Ogilvy, one of the most influential men in advertising died 10 years ago today. To commemorate this day we are proud to share some recent eye tracking research that prove his classic magazine advertisement layout (still) out performs contemporary designs.

We compared three ‘contemporary’ luxury car advertisements:

Those familiar with David Ogilvy’s work will immediately recognise that the Porsche advert is based on the classic David Ogilvy layout, like the Rolls Royce advert below: Continue reading

Visual Saliency Vs Eye tracking Heatmaps

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Visual saliency programs exist that are intended to be a cheap alternative, or preliminary step to eyetracking. The basic premise is that our visual attention is drawn to areas of high visual salience, so without testing actual people, we can figure out what people are going to look at in a visual display.

A free version of this software is Fen Gui. On their website they have a very clear explanation of the different visual elements such as contrast, colour, intensity etc. that contribute to visual saliency. Also presented is a comparison with actual eye tracking data. The similarity shown is fairly compelling, but we decided to conduct our own tests… after all if this gives the same results as eye tracking, why would anyone pay the time and expense for eye tracking?

We compared saliency heatmaps with eyetracking heatmaps across a broad range of mediums, webpages, emails, print advertising, packaging, and outdoor scenes. Not surprisingly, the mediums with text were extremely different as the saliency heatmaps do not take into account people’s motivations, but focuses just on potential visual engagement. This isn’t particularly interesting, what is more interesting is how the saliency heatmaps compare to the eyetracking heatmaps for more purely visual mediums such as packaging and outdoor scenes.

Ogilvy and Bunnyfoot Partnership

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Today we are proud to announce the partnership between OgilvyOne in Hong Kong and Bunnyfoot Asia. The partnership gives Ogilvy’s creative teams and clients actionable eyetracking research findings with a 24 hour turn around.

Rory Sutherland Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group said;

“This is tremendous news. In truth, I think many of the models and methods which underpin the advertising industry are so naive, tired and outmoded I would welcome a system of analysis based on Tarot readings as at least bringing a little variety into our lives. But to see a scientific approach of this kind is especially welcome, and in the agency of David Ogilvy, doubly so.”

The methodology first developed here at Bunnyfoot’s specialist eyetracking arm, Think Eyetracking, has been tailored to meet the specific needs of Ogilvy’s creative process and is called REAP – Rapid Eyetracking Advertising Protocol and delivers actionable results in 24 hours based on at least 30 eye tracked interviews.

REAP is affordable pre-testing methodology that optimises designs and reduces the risk in choosing which creative treatment to go with.

Rob Stevens co-founder of Bunnyfoot said;

“We have been working with Ogilvy for three years, in Europe, Asia and America to understand them and their client’s needs, this partnership is the culmination of a lot of hard work and we are duly proud!”

Why task is important in eye tracking research

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This is something that is very familiar at academic eye tracking conferences in fact every other paper refers to it, but I don’t ever recall seeing it in the commercial sector.

In 1967 Yarbus eye tracked people viewing the painting “They did not expect him” by Repin. The instructions given to the participants varied from, among other, free examination, to the people’s ages, and how long the visitor had been away.

In the gaze plots below, you will see significant differences depending on the instruction given.

At this point, probably needless to say, when using eye tracking in market research, it is very important to give appropriate instructions to the participants, and when analysing heatmaps to know what instruction was given.

In our ThinkPack eyetracking  test for the FMCG and CPM market, we show participants two planograms, but give them different tasks with each one as we are investigating two different shopping experiences and elements of the pack performance. With the first planogram we are interested in the customer’s free shopping behaviour to see how well the product stands out on the shelf: Do people notice the product? With the second planogram we are interested in how easy it is to find the specific product: Do people confuse the product with another one? Does the product branding stand out?

In the first heatmap below, participants were asked to shop for deodorant. They were to take a look at the shelf and click on the product they would choose to purchase.

In the second heatmap, participant were again asked to shop for deodorant, but to buy “Formula 1 Performance” deodorant as their friend had recommended it. You can see two very different heatmaps are produced.

Just to reiterate the message here; when designing eye tracking research be careful what task you give to the participants, and when drawing conclusions from eye tracking outputs be aware of the task given. It is not easy to control your eyes, but it is actually fairly easy to control what people look at during an eye tracking exercise simply by giving particular tasks. That said, you need to be careful that the outputs are not a result of inappropriate tasks.

Think Eyetracking at Insight Show ‘09

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For the past two days Think Eyetracking has been at the Insight Show at Olympia in London.

Our theme was “Great minds like a think” after the fantastic Economist advertisement we frequently use as an example of how eye tracking can give us insight into people’s engagement with communications. On specially designed Think wallpaper we hung portraits of great minds with some of our favourite quotes, including,

“The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.” – David Ogilvy

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half!” – John Wanamaker

“It is the new and different that is always most vulnerable to market research.” – Malcolm Gladwell

Dan White and Robert Stevens presenting TV and email eye tracking case studies

Dan White and Robert Stevens presenting TV and email eye tracking case studies

On the second day of the conference, Rob spoke with Dan White, Head of Marketing Solutions at Millward Brown, about integrating neuromarketing research techniques such as eye tracking with more traditional research techniques. The talk was extremely well attended. Many thanks to Dan for presenting with us and introducing Think as Millward Brown’s eye tracking partner. Many case studies were shared of eye tracking research we have done across many different channels including email, TV, print, pack, and web. If you missed the talk, please check back soon as we will be posting a video of it soon.

Unfortunately I have little to say beyond our experience as an exhibitor at the show as our stand was so busy, I did not get a chance to look around or watch other presentations. This year Insight was combined with three other exhibitions creating a larger event, Marketing Week Live. In my opinion this was a great format.

If you went, what did you think? Are trade shows worth it in these times of economic downturn?