During the World Cup last week, Google debuted a new ad that reminded many Americans of their love for heart-wrenching, suspenseful and enchanting movies, music and games. Interestingly, the ad, “Play Your Heart Out,” is actually a modified version of Google Play’s December 2013 ad “Play From The Heart.” Changing up some of the key visuals and voiceover from the original version, “Play Your Heart Out” earned a double win this week as both the Category Overachiever and the ad with the highest Ace Score.
“Play Your Heart Out” is a emotionally-stirring montage of visuals and voiceover (provided by none other than Scarlett Johansen). After being scored by 500 U.S. consumers, the ad received an Ace Score of 667, a staggering 40.2% above the current 12-month Websites category average.
This updated piece improved its score by 20 points over the original cut first released in December – having a significantly stronger response from Males/21-35 and Females/36-49 while dropping the 16-20 group slightly. As the graph below shows, while both ads perform well across all gender and age breaks, the changes between the earlier and more recent versions generated an ad with a slightly different audience.
The ad scored high marks across each of the six key performance components, even breaking 700 in terms of Likeability, Attention and Change. Though it’s the ad’s scores in Relevance and Desire, which are particularly noteworthy. Consumers felt the visuals, message and voiceover were especially more relatable than most ads, scoring the ad 29% higher in Relevance than the Websites 90-day norm. Likewise, Desire, which rarely surpasses 499 in this category, was 27% higher at 632.
The word cloud, consisting of 323 optional consumer comments, gives us a look at what aspects of the ad made it so powerful. Consumers used words like “attention” (5%), “interesting” (5%), “love” (6%) and “message” (4%) to describe what they liked about the minute-long spot. Particularly telling is consumers’ use of the word “heart” (7%), describing the central theme of the ad—people were definitely paying attention!
Google’s ability to improve upon this piece of creative reinforces the continued success Google has had both within the Website category and creative advertising in general. Slipping in just under the wire, Google’s ad not only takes this week’s Ad of the Week honor, but is also about to be awarded Ad of the Quarter as the highest scoring ad in the Software & Websites category – as well as the ad that outperformed its competitive set by the largest amount, 39.5%.
Watch this year’s winning Ads of the Week by Category Overachievers.
Watch this year’s winning Ads of the Week by Ace Score.
