Creating an emotional connection with customers is essential for an advertisement or advertising campaign to be successful. This is especially true in the telecommunications industry, where consumers are looking for a trusted, long-term partner amid a confusing variety of telephone options and rate-plan choices. It seems each day new advertising touting the latest and greatest plan or upgrade only succeeds in heating up the TiVo and further obfuscating the intended target.

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	AcuPOLL Research, Inc. conducted a study that compared two recent television advertisements airing nationally during new campaigns by Sprint and T-Mobile.

Given the current competitive landscape, the lack of hardware-related differences, and the often confusing array of plan choices and hidden costs, consumers must believe the provider will assist them with meeting their individual communication objectives. The telecommunications provider is being trusted not only to provide service but also to keep the consumer connected to people whom the consumer deems important.

As part of an ongoing effort to monitor and understand trends in advertising, AcuPOLL Research, Inc., conducted a study that compared two recent television advertisements airing nationally during new campaigns by Sprint and T-Mobile. Both campaigns are focused on breaking through the clutter of competitor advertisements. However, results of the AcuPOLL study show that the two advertisements are very different in terms of appeal, communication, and, ultimately, making a crucial emotional connection with potential customers.

This is a purely objective analysis using the most advanced testing methodologies available. Both ads are fast-paced advertisements featuring parents and their children. The children in both advertisements are depicted as the primary cellular phone users.

The Advertisements

The Sprint advertisement focuses on using the cellular phone as part of a family relationship. A son who attends college is featured using a Sprint camera phone to send his mother pictures of items he needs.

The T-Mobile advertisement focuses only on the negative aspects of cellular phone use in order to demonstrate the benefit of night and weekend minutes. In the T-Mobile execution, the father is being dragged behind a horse and will not let his son call for help as it is not yet 7:00 p.m.—presumably the cutoff time for cheaper or free night minutes.

The Testing

Both advertisements were exposed to a group of 100 female consumers, aged 18-plus. AcuPOLL identified this as a subgroup more likely to consider purchasing a new cellular phone within the next six months and confirmed that this group was likely to have cellular service now and was involved in the category.

AcuPOLL researchers asked consumers to evaluate the advertisements on a variety of normative measures, some of which are seen in Table 1.

Table 1 can be viewed here: http://www.jypublicrelations.com/acupollgraphs/newphone.html.

Sprint strongly outperformed T-Mobile in several likely target groups. While both advertisements are distinctive, neither is particularly motivating. The Sprint advertisement has significantly stronger overall appeal and is more entertaining, as well as more emotionally involving.

AcuPOLL also tested how well the advertisements met several key communication objectives: affordability, reliability, understanding of family needs, technologically advanced, and hip/cool/fun.

Among this likely key consumer group, the Sprint advertisement communicates more strongly than its current image on four of the five objectives and matches its image regarding the fifth objective—reliability. In contrast, the T-Mobile advertisement only elevates the T-Mobile brand on one measure—affordability—and merely matches T-Mobile's images on the four other measures.

To view the charts depicting the communication objectives and brand images, click here: http://www.jypublicrelations.com/acupollgraphs/equality.html.

Additional key messages communicated by the Sprint advertisement include important features of the camera phone such as how it will help consumers, keep the family in touch, maintain relationships, and be affordable. T-Mobile's advertisement communicates cheaper rates, better hours, and lots of talk time—all relating to the value and leading to a strong and almost single-minded "affordability" key message.

Understanding which key messages were perceived by consumers only indicates what consumers heard, not how consumers reacted to what they heard and why. For these insights, AcuPOLL took its research a step further into the realm of emotions.

AcuPOLL's eFactor^TM, based on Robert Plutchik's^* theory that eight basic emotions are the building blocks for all human emotions, reveals not only what consumers feel about an advertisement, but why consumers feel that way. To understand the advertisements' emotional appeal, AcuPOLL took consumers through a proprietary series of questions called Unarticulated Emotional Elicitation (UEE).

The UEE revealed that Sprint's advertisement predominantly evokes feelings of trust (sample consumer comment: "Sprint's advertisement shows that parents are always there for children") and joy (sample consumer comments: "I have children in college now" and "It reminded me of my own kids").

Emotional responses of trust and joy suggest an opportunity for Sprint to develop strong, lasting relationships with consumers through this advertisement.

A pie chart depicting the emotions felt by consumers for the Sprint advertisement can be viewed here: http://www.jypublicrelations.com/acupollgraphs/sprint_efactor.html.

In contrast, the most prevalent emotion evoked by the T-Mobile advertisement is surprise, primarily expressed as confusion. Consumers indicated that they did not understand the point of the T-Mobile advertisement. AcuPOLL's research indicated that the advertisement did a poor job of selling T-Mobile; what is worse, consumers thought the advertisement communicated "danger" and "extremes" and was "over the top." On the positive side, this advertisement also provoked significant responses of joy for a variety of reasons, most of which related to the humor of the storyline (the dad and the situation).

The pie chart depicting the emotional responses to the T-Mobile advertisement can be viewed here: http://www.jypublicrelations.com/acupollgraphs/tmobile_efactor.html.

Ultimately, while both advertisements successfully generate an emotional response, we believe the Sprint ad can create a longer-lasting and richer emotional connection with customers.

* Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology, Biology and Evolution by Robert Plutchik. Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association. Dr. Plutchik is Professor Emeritus of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a renowned authority on human emotions.

About AcuPOLL:

With world headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, AcuPOLL Research, Inc., is a global brand-building research agency that uses a patented data collection system to provide companies with clear business recommendations based on thorough analyses of customized data. AcuPOLL provides the fastest, most predictive, and most accurate research methodology. Since 1990, AcuPOLL has quantitatively tested more than 30,000 new product ideas and ads, giving it the largest, most current database in the marketing industry. AcuPOLL has helped clients successfully introduce new products, services, mail-order catalog items, retail concepts, advertisements, and promotions. AcuPOLL is an internationally recognized company with offices in the United States, Asia, Europe, Mexico, and South America. More information can be accessed at www.acupoll.com or by calling 1-800-ACUPOLL.

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