Context

Tanishq’s Ekvatam video commercial recently found itself mired in a raging controversy, largely fueled by social media. The advertisement garnered an immense amount of attention, unfortunately for wrong reasons. Ever since the day of its launch, the ad became a point of discussion rather call it controversy, and soon netizens started the #BoycottTanishq movement on social media.

Entropik Tech deployed its Emotion AI solution – Affect Lab’s Ad Insights to decode the range of feelings and emotions that viewers went through while watching the video.  The emotion research was conducted amongst several people in varied professions and recorded their micro expressions as they watched the video.

An interesting insight from the study was how the intensity of negative emotions was higher than the positive emotions among the viewers with a variation of 8 points. Whereas, the attention level of the respondents while watching the commercial was 61.57 on a scale of 0-100, which is above average compared to advertisements on television and social media.

Besides, Affect Lab’s emotion report points out that based on industry norms and creatives tested before, every commercial has a magnitude of negative emotions as no respondent or viewer is happy every second of the narrative.

There are many ways to read the emotions, like the higher the attention, the more visually appealing the creative is. Positive and negative emotions can be interpreted based on the commercial and what sentiments it was supposed to evoke. Typically, positive emotions should be high and negative emotions should be lower.

Heat Map generated using Emotion AI

A more comprehensive way of reading that data is to understand the overall journey with the peaks and valleys of emotions throughout the advertisement.
The commercial video saw a dip in the attention level at the 23rd sec of frame when the mother-in-law walks the expecting daughter-in-law out to the venue. There is also a dip at the 30th sec of frame where the mother comments that “Keeping daughters happy is a ritual in every house”.

A consistent neutral emotion at 14.81 at the 23rd second, and 14.46 at the 30th-second mark was observed, says the analysis.

This is not the first time an advertisement featuring inter-religion faith has been the centre of such criticism. The marketing and advertising landscape is transforming, and everything is either black or white. Many commercial videos have faced severe backlash across the country over time.

Ultimately, the Tata Group makers were forced to take down the video from all the platforms and issued an apology as an immediate step to damage control. Amid the fuss, shares of Titan Company Limited, which owns the Tanishq brand, fell 2.18% or ₹27.35 per share on the BSE, to close at ₹1,229.75 per share.

The Tata Group also confirmed that it pulled the ad, and released an apology statement on the issue.

In a Nutshell

These kinds of criticism are inevitable in the current times, but using Emotion AI platforms can help brands tap into the subconscious and cognitive preferences of the consumers.

Before releasing a campaign or any visual concept as such, companies can deploy Emotion Intelligence analytics to detect, interpret, and analyze the audience’s emotions in real-time. By doing so brands can have a glimpse of the audience’s reaction they can receive after its launch.

Thus, helping them to make necessary changes in time saving the production costs as well as brand image. Emotion AI can help brands understand consumer behavior and real-time reactions, including both positive and negative.

Having said that, if the attention drops at a few seconds of the Tanishq Ad was noticed before the launch, then either making a few minor changes in those areas to make it more engaging or removing them completely would have not stirred the snowball reactions amongst the audiences. With such data-rich and actionable insights using the Emotion AI solution, a legacy brand as reputed as Tanishq by TATA Group could have steered clear of the controversy it finds itself in.

Emotion Report Metrics
Affect Lab emotion metrics includes attention that highlights the visual appeal standpoint of any creative on a scale of 0-100The emotions are also defined in broader segments like positive emotions (happy and surprise) or the intensity of the negative emotions (sad and anger) on a scale of 0-100

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