CrowdEmotion Case Study: The Science Of Engagement

Steven Mulvey
2 min readSep 9, 2016

Using our facial coding software and psychological testing, the BBC set out to understand the emotional impact of content-led marketing and demonstrate its effectiveness. This groundbreaking project won an IAB Europe award in the Consumer Attitudes and Behaviour category.

So How Did We Do It?

In the first wave of the project, we asked 5,153 digital consumers of English language international news across 6 countries to view content on bbc.com. Our software recorded facial movements and then coded this information into six emotions: happiness, sadness, puzzlement, fear, rejection and surprise. This allowed us to uncover the user’s true attitudes towards the presented content, rather than simply relying on traditional, less precise analytics.

Results

The results showed, when clearly labelled, content-led marketing can be persuasive in quality environments. Most of all, content-led marketing has a powerful emotional impact on the brands involved.

So in conclusion…

  1. Transparency is Key — 64% were happy to read content-led marketing as long as it was clear which brand it was presented by
  2. Labelling is Key — In the facial coding study, rejection for labelled brand-presented content was 7% below the average benchmark, while rejection for non-labelled content was 18% above the average.
  3. Quality is Key — 63% of respondents were happy to see the content as long as it mirrored the quality of the provider’s editorial content. In addition, 59% found the content informative and 57% said they would share it. Hence placing content in a premium environment, such as the BBC, will give your content credibility and allow it to flourish.

Content led marketing must educate users, be clear about what it aims to achieve, and match editorial quality.

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