During the Sochi Olympic Closing Ceremony, Cover Girl debuted an ad that quickly gained viral media attention. With nearly three million views on YouTube, Cover Girl’s newest, empowering ad, “Girls Can”, broke the 700 Ace Score barrier with female respondents, a first in the Cosmetics category. Cover Girl isn’t the only one breaking down walls though. TGI Friday’s ad “New Burgers” now has the highest Casual Dining category Ace Score in the Ace Metrix database. It’s hard to believe, but if you watch the ad, you’ll see why.
Ad of the Week: Category Overachiever
Cover Girl’s “Girls Can” spot earned an Ace Score of 579, which is 27% higher than the Cosmetics 12-month category norm. This is not the first time Cover Girl aired such a ‘girl power’ spot. After the 2012 London Games, it aired an ad titled “Make An Impact”, which came in with an Ace Score of 576, just three points below the new category highest ad.
It was just over a month ago that we named Ellen DeGeneres the most effective celebrity in TV advertising. This celeb-packed ad led with the lovable Ellen backed her up with other strong role models with Pink and Queen Latifah among others.
As you might assume, Cosmetics is a polarizing category—men, as a group, just aren’t that into makeup. Female consumers scored the ad 28% higher than the average female-only Cosmetics Ace Score. Additionally, as a whole, women awarded the ad an astounding 60% higher score than what men scored the ad—showing that girls, indeed, can make it happen.
While “Girls Can” garnered high component scores across the board, it is its Relevance score that is most impressive—coming in 22% above the Relevance 90-day norm. Such a high Relevance score means consumers found it, well, relevant to them.
And what, exactly, was so relevant? The ad’s message. For men and women alike, fifteen percent of survey respondents used the word “message” in their optional verbatim response. As seen in the female-only word cloud below, the ad’s significance was “very” inspiring, positive, empowering and relatable.
When consumer respondents were asked what the single best thing was about this ad, 46% responded that the message, story or characters were the best thing.
As we will reveal shortly at the debut of the 2014 Edition of the BLACKBOOK, the Cosmetics category was the lowest scoring category in 2013. The fact that this spot had the highest Ace Score compared to its category norm of any ad to debut last week speaks volumes about this ad. Great ads can be found in any category whether it is Packaged Foods, Tax Services or even Cosmetics.
Watch this 2014’s winning Ads of the Week by Category Overachievers.
Ad of the Week: Top Ace Score
Casual Dining ads often score high. Even so, this week’s TGI Friday’s ad is the highest scoring Casual Dining ad we now have in our system. Burgers have officially trumped steak. With an Ace Score 692, just shy of 700, “New Burger” is a mouthwatering 30-second spot.
Interestingly, women were especially taken by the juicy burger and fries combo, scoring the ad nearly 5% higher than what men awarded the ad.
Although 336 of the 500 consumer respondents opted to give a free response, the word cloud below looks fairly straightforward. Fifteen percent of consumers said the ad made them “hungry”, with males ages 21-35 being especially hungry.
The appealing closeup visuals, $10 deal, and various types of bottomless French fries is what attracted consumers to this ad.
Now that this ad has broken a Restaurants category record, the bar has been set a little higher. We will now be waiting for the day when a restaurant ad to break the 700 barrier.
