Attention is a Key Driver of Brand Performance for Reebok, while L.L. Bean Wins Over Consumers with Likeabilty and Relevance

For the third consecutive year, Reebok is named the Apparel & Footwear Brand of the Year, though this year the brand shares the title with L.L. Bean.

In a category that has ads from 27 brands and 9 qualifiers for Brand of the Year, these two emerge with successful video creative that delivers in different ways. Reebok commands Attention with dynamic and inspiring athlete-driven video ads, while L.L. Bean’s approach is more congenial and driven by emotive seasonal imagery. This category saw a diverse group of brands in its top 10 overall ads, with six different brands appearing. Reebok and L.L. Bean appear twice in this list, with L.L. Bean delivering the most effective ad in the category.

Brand of the Year honors are awarded to brands earning the highest average Ace Score for their 2015 body of work. See qualifications below.

Apparel & Footwear Brand of the Year: Reebok

Three of Reebok’s top scoring ads overall, “Be Better”, “Great Shoe”, and “Reebok Crossfit”, all exceed the category norm for Attention by 8 to 14 percent. For the “Be Better” ad, the “Message” was named the Single Best Thing about the ad by consumers, while for “Great Shoe” it was the “Product Itself” and for “Crossfit” it was “Visual Scenes.” It is interesting to see different aspects shine through for the brand’s most effective ads of the year.

While the top three ads exceed the category norm for Attention with all age groups tested, Reebok garners the highest Attention scores among the younger demos, as seen here:

Sample comments from 21-35 year-old consumers reveal how “Be Better” resonated with them:

Top Performing Reebok Ads of 2015

ad title	brand	category	air date	score(s)
Be Better	Reebok	Apparel & Footwear	02.01.2015	609
Great Shoe	Reebok	Apparel & Footwear	03.10.2015	593
Reebok Crossfit	Reebok	Apparel & Footwear	07.27.2015	568

Apparel & Footwear Brand of the Year: L.L. Bean

While L.L. Bean’s top scoring ads this year portrayed lovely seasonal transition scenes and themes that consumers could relate to, the brand’s ads that focused on sales and offers did not perform quite as well. “Staying Warm” was the highest scoring ad in the category overall, and also received the highest category scores for Likeabilty (720, 9 percent above category norm) and Relevance (665, 23 percent above category norm). For both “Staying Warm” and “You Become Season”, the “Visual Scenes” were named the Single Best Thing about the Ad.

The brand’s ads prove to be most relevant among current customers, though lapsed and brand considers can relate to them as well. For example, these are the Relevance scores for “You Become Season”:

As you might expect, scores for L.L. Bean ads are higher among older age groups, but as this chart shows, the only score below the category norm is among 16-20 year-olds for “Kids Way”.

Here are a few quotes to show what resonated with consumers after viewing “Staying Warm”:

Top Performing L.L. Bean Ads of 2015

ad title	brand	category	air date	score(s)
Staying Warm	L.L. Bean	Apparel & Footwear	10.12.2015	666
You Become Season	L.L. Bean	Apparel & Footwear	03.30.2015	601
Kids Way	L.L. Bean	Apparel & Footwear	07.06.2015	583

Curious how other Apparel & Footwear brands delivered on their video advertising this year?  Contact us to request a meeting.

Check out all of the Top Brands of the Year here

Brand of the Year Qualifications

Ace Metrix scores every nationally airing television advertisement and the majority of digital video ads across 24 industries, 96 categories and is therefore uniquely qualified to report a brand’s overall effectiveness across the entire video advertising industry’s body of work over a year,

as well as year-over-year. To qualify for Ace Metrix Brand of the Year, brands must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within a category containing more than 100 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands. Ace Metrix gathered more than 3.5 million responses, including nearly 2 million verbatim comments left optionally for the 6,500+ new television video ads in 2015. Each ad is scored against a unique panel of 500+ consumers, demographically balanced to the US census for age, gender and income. The Ace Score is the holistic measure of ad creative impact and includes data on attributes such as Persuasion, Likeability, Information, Attention, Change, Relevance, Desire and Watchability. Hundreds of qualitative consumer verbatim responses are collected for each ad and inform additional measures such as the Emotional Sentiment Index.