Petco and Amazon share the title of Retail Brand of the Year. Animals took center stage among both brands’ 2015 ad portfolios.

Petco leverages adorable creatures to not only outperform other pet store retailers, but to rise to the top of the entire retail category. Online retailer Amazon joins Petco at the top and also employed pets to tell emotional stories solved by fast home delivery.

Retail is the largest category both in terms of new ads and number of advertisers. Seventy-six brands introduced new ads this year with 45 of them qualifying for BOTY (see qualifications below). In fact, the category is so competitive that the top 4 brands are each separated by a single point. The category has the broadest range of ad performance so it’s not surprising none of the top four brands have an ad within the top 10 highest scoring, or within the bottom 25.

Approximately 10 percent of retail ads break an Ace Score of 600, yet Petco and Amazon each have 8 ads with scores above 600. Curious who followed on the heels of Petco and Amazon? Contact us to request a category discussion.

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

Retail Brand of the Year: Petco

Petco’s ads focus on the special relationship we have with our furry, feathered or gilled friends and our obligation to care for them well. While respondents identified the “Visual Scenes” and “Characters” (pets) as the best thing about the majority of ads, the creative consistently drew strong reactions to the message.

It’s no surprise, ads featuring adorable animals generate strong Likeability scores, but the ads were also frequently powered by Relevance. In fact, the message resonates well even among respondents without pets. The top-performing ad “Unique Selections” earned an Ace Score of 622 and a Relevance score of 669 (17.6 percent above the Relevance average). Among the 321 respondents to offer an optional verbatim comment for “Unique Selections,” 7 percent used the word “message” and among those respondents without pets, many offered comments about the importance of the ad.

Comments from respondents without pets:

Top Performing Petco Ads of 2015

ad title	brand	category	air date	score(s)
Unique Selections	Petco	Other Stores	02.08.2015	622
More Alike	Petco	Retail	07.19.2015	622
Healthy Dogs	Petco	Retail	05.10.2015	621

Retail Brand of the Year: Amazon

The 2015 campaigns from Amazon often used humor and, in the case of Amazon Prime ads, heartstring tugging stories to change our perception of the brand and make us say “I want that.”

Among this winner’s top performing ads, 8 of which scored above 600, is “Artificial Intelligence,” one of our first introductions to Amazon Echo (Alexa). This ad draws its strength from Desire and Change, both 21 percent above norm. Forty-six percent of respondents selected the “Product Itself” as the best thing about the ad.

Amazon Prime ads featured animals that need human intervention and a product available for fast delivery. These ads like “Buy Now,” the story of a Shetland pony having trouble making friends, are able to achieve incredible breakthrough, connect emotionally and deliver information about the service without spoken word – rather, relying purely on the visuals, characters and music to tell a captivating story.

Amazon’s top performing ad, excluded from the Brand of the Year dataset is one that debuted online on April 1^st. The ad, “Introducing Amazon Dash Buttons” was feared to be a April fool’s joke. An overwhelming 40 percent of respondents said the “Product Itself” was the best thing about this ad, expressing hope and thanks that the product was real, and achieved 85 percent Brand Recognition. The nearly :90 digital video ad drew consumers in with the promise of easy re-orders of their most commonly used products. Respondents with children at home awarded the ad an average Ace Score of 741 (34 percent above norm), versus those without children who still gave the ad a 670 (21 percent above norm).

Top Performing Amazon Ads of 2015

ad title	brand	category	air date	score(s)
Artificial Intelligence	Amazon	Retail	08.12.2015	651
Buy Now	Amazon	Retail	12.07.2015	637
Dressing Room	Amazon	Retail	12.03.2015	627

Curious how the other Retail contenders performed? With more than 1,250 video ads just this year and 76 brands within the Retail category, there are many more stories to tell.  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.