System1 JCDecaux OOH of the Month

Negative emotions play a huge part in video advertising – conjuring up sadness or anger only to resolve it by the end of the ad is a powerfully effective tactic. But can negative emotion ever play a part in static ads, where there’s no narrative to resolve? Or is it best avoided entirely?

In this month’s look at the best and most interesting Out Of Home ads we’re looking at three UK poster ads which take the risk of using negative emotions, either in a one-off ad or as part of a wider strategy. They show that negative emotions can have a place in static ads, though they’re even trickier to use.

First up is AUTOGLASS, with a poster that’s all about what the viewer can’t see. The image on the poster is a view through a windscreen with a small blindspot where the glass has been partially cracked. But partly covered by that blindspot we can see a parent pushing a baby in a buggy. Would the driver notice it too and stop in time? Or would tragedy unfold? We can’t know, but as the poster says “Some Things You Can’t Replace”.

It’s not a poster designed to evoke positive emotion, and indeed we see sadness and fear appearing in the Test Your Ad Outdoor report. But look at the “Key Associations” section of the report and you’ll see it’s certainly getting its message across, with “Repair”, “Glass”, “Windscreen”, “Replacement” and “Safety” all appearing. The ad also performs well on fluency, with 85% of viewers realizing it’s an Autoglass ad within their dwell time. So negative emotion here is making people stop and think about the brand and reminding them why it’s so vital.

Next is MARMITE, for whom negative emotion is just part of marketing life. In fact, Marmite tends to revel in negative response and emotional polarity. They’ve never tried to appeal to everyone, and that’s been liberating for their marketing. This poster shows a Marmite pizza, and if that’s making you reach for the sick-bag, that’s absolutely fine with the brand. They know just as many people will love it.

“Love It. Hate It. Cook With It.” is the tagline, promoting the use of marmite for cooking (trust us, it goes brilliantly with cheese). There’s a clever touch with the chili or jalapeño topping looking like delighted or disgusted faces. While the Test Your Ad results aren’t stellar by conventional measures, there’s plenty of emotional polarity in there, with Neutrality lower than the average for a static ad. As our Cost Of Dull report explains, the worst thing an ad can be is Neutral. And that’s doubly the case when you’ve made polarizing part of your brand identity like Marmite has.

Finally, our top Out Of Home ad of the month comes from BURGER KING and their poster for the London Marathon. It shows a woman who’s finished her race, and sits at the side of the road, wrapped in a foil blanket and tucking in to a fully deserved Whopper as her reward. We used Test Your Ad Pro’s feature allowing testing with a custom segment to rate the ad among the general population but also among Burger King’s target audience in this case, people interested in fitness.

The results were striking, with the ad landing much better among people interested in fitness – despite the fact it shows a woman tucking into junk food. The general population didn’t get it, some reacting with negative emotions, but the fitness fans were extremely positive and helped the ad to a very strong 4.3-Star Rating and 91% Fluency among that audience.

The lesson here is that for a bold ad, negative emotions don’t matter if they help you get your idea across to the people you really want to reach. The audience interested in fitness understood that if you’ve just run a marathon you can eat what the hell you like as a reward, and that made the ad land much better for them.

So negative emotions can be a friend to Out Of Home advertisers. They can exploit polarization as part of your brand identity, like Marmite. They can make people stop and give your brand a second thought, like Autoglass. And they can sharpen your appeal to a target audience, like Burger King. Using negative feeling is a risk, but for these brands, it’s one worth taking.