As the new year approaches, I remember John Lewis's Christmas commercial and I think I'll dedicate an article to advertising with the emotions I've received.

Christmas and New Year, sometimes with snowflakes, sometimes without snow. Red cheeks from the cold and a feeling of pleasure from home warmth. Lighted streets, business people, quick steps and unexpected joy from colorful Coca-Cola cars.

A period when, if not everyone, then almost everyone, tries to celebrate Christmas and New Year in their ideal or close to ideal environment. To gain symbolic charm for the December holiday, people dress up as a fictional Santa and express their care and love to someone important to them. The impatience to give gifts is growing day by day, because this is a well-deserved adrenaline rush from long reflections, getting to know the wishes of the addressee and giving him pleasure. Why not? If a brand like John Levis can help us convey emotion. The Art of Attraction ad is a story about Christmas seen through the eyes of a little boy and an emotion that is hard not to translate into action.

Finding characteristics that are valuable to most people and then combining them into one small creative piece of content can make an ad attractive and special to the public. Since the starting point is a specific product, advertisers sometimes prefer to attract potential customers with humor, and sometimes the balance of aesthetic elements is crucial. They say that simplicity is perfect, but it's not easy to convince hundreds of thousands of unique people through advertising that using this particular product will satisfy at least one of a long list of needs.

Seligman and Peterson agree that curiosity is a valuable need, otherwise they would not have proposed curiosity as a subcategory of wisdom in the developed character strengths model (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Naturally, the creator of the product and the consumer have a strong desire to understand, or to know - how does eating chocolate make a lady in a cafeteria feel? Maybe the girl prefers to walk with Frank Sinatra in cool weather in the evening in new shoes? What is the familiar environment for a person who wants to try a new whiskey? By responding to the interests of similar topics, advertising becomes a concept filled with value, and research becomes a key tool to help the product developer develop a new vision based on valid and reliable data.

We can say that a study conducted on hundreds of people is a kind of insurance that the product is successfully adopted in society. This is indicated by the fact that in addition to consumer research, the researcher receives information about what may be predisposing behavior before consuming the product, what hidden messages are best used in the process of communication with the target segment, and other valuable information. Details that become so important for understanding how people communicate through advertising. Analyzing consumer behavior gives companies the ability to understand what their audiences think and feel, and at the same time find an explanation for what drives existing attitudes. The valuable components that consumer research considers are:

Market Analysis - What is the existing market doing? What is the trend?

Product content. What are the key features that differentiate the product from other similar products?

The product in the eyes of the buyer - what value does the product create for the buyer? What is the motivating factor for the consumption of the product for the target segment?

Based on the information obtained as a result of the study, companies are given the opportunity to improve communication with buyers, which is directly related to a change in buyer behavior and, accordingly, to an increase in sales.

Research companies use a variety of traditional and modern methods to uncover consumer sentiment, but the ad creation process doesn't end there. The second, no less important step is to test it on a small group of the target segment before it becomes available to the general public. At this stage, the main work is completed (the concept and communicative messages are determined), however, based on the results of the study, it is possible to make small changes to the advertisement regarding sound, music, colors and other less important details.

Advertising testing is mainly carried out on focus groups. The moderator presents the advertisement to the target group, which is estimated by the respondents - conditionally, what is the initial impression of the advertisement, how effective is the visual side, musical arrangement and voice acting, how well the main message is perceived, what is attractive to them, what needs to be improved, and so on. Based on the information received, the analyst analyzes the results and issues appropriate recommendations based on valuable “insights”. In general, the feedback received from the user is also an indicator of the eventual success or failure of an advertisement. Defining the role of advertising testing, we see the main advantages:

1. Saving resources - advertising that has passed the testing stage gives some idea of the expected reaction of the public. This reduces the likelihood of creating ineffective advertising and saves time and financial resources spent on it.

2. Increasing efficiency - preliminary research of advertising is a means of correcting its shortcomings, which, in turn, increases the chance of conveying the message desired by advertising to the consumer.

In the ACT archive, you can find studies of commercials from many successful local and international companies, the purpose of which was to test them in several ways before launching on television. The results obtained allowed companies to take into account the opinion of potential customers and bring their advertisements as close as possible to the ideal.

One of the latest successful studies in the list of projects involved testing an advertisement for a new Liberty Bank credit card. As part of this project, Liberty Bank investigated what potential customers think about the video as a whole, its music, communication messages, etc. Based on the results of the study, the bank made a specific decision to voice the commercial.

“The study was very useful and interesting for us. The proposed research design and methodology helped us make the right decisions related to the planned campaign,” Nino Beridze, Head of Customer Experience at Liberty Bank.

The process of creating compelling ads links research data to a storytelling that sometimes activates the same areas of the brain enough to convince people to use the product. By understanding consumer behavior and visualizing their views in advertising, an emotional connection is established between the audience and the product, which becomes a crucial link for a committed relationship.

“Today is December 31st. A day of feeling special gratitude for the old year. It is a strange feeling to cope with the sadness and euphoria of waiting for the new year at the same time. I'm glad. 365 days ago, I had no idea what an interesting person I could be. I was able to believe in my own abilities.”

1. When a diary is more than just a word written on paper, 2022.

Watch the Christmas Ad