Last week, Clorox was named the Ad of the Week for its ad about fighting germs with Clorox wipes. Similarly, Purell wins our Category Overachiever title this week for an ad with another solution to our seasonal, sniffle-filled germ problem. Meanwhile, Outback brings a little sizzle from the Australian heat wave, debuting an ad featuring juicy steaks, a promotion and a smidge of humor.
Ad of the Week: Category Overachiever
Purell debuted a touching and highly relevant ad last week. “A Hand to Hold” entered our systems with an Ace Score of 604, which is over 26% above the Skin category norm. The commercial uses a balance of information, tender scenes and authenticity to convey its important message.
Being cold and flu season, it is no wonder why this spot’s score in Relevance came in nearly 22% above the Relevance norm.
This ad was especially timely for women; they rated the ad 12% higher than what men scored it. However, with scores in the high 500s and low 600s with males 21 to 49, this ad can play nearly anywhere and hit the appropriate consumer.
Consumers with children in the home rated the ad over 13% higher than consumers without children at home.
Given that two ads touting germ-killing products have been featured the last two weeks, it is relevant to note that cold and flu related products, and subsequently their commercials, are highly seasonal. Below you can see a timeline scatter plot of the various cold-fighting and germ-free related products and their ads. Did you notice the large gaps between each cluster of debuting ads? If trends continue, we should see a quick slow-down of these types of commercials debuting. Similar, seasonal trends are also found with tax-based products, which we are sure you have already noticed creeping onto our TV screens.
Watch this year’s winning Ads of the Week by Category Overachievers.
Want to look back at 2013? Watch the winning Ad of the Week Category Overachievers from 2013.
Ad of the Week: Top Ace Score
While some products are seasonal, there is at least one product that is never out of season: Steak. Outback debuted a mouthwateringly delicious ad last week. “Steak It” sizzled past all other 106 ads to air last week with an Ace Score of 669. While Outback included a number of creative aspects in this spot, they got one particularly important piece of food creative right—they showed us the steak, and then they showed it to us again and again.
Depending on how you count it, there are at least eight different shots of steaks in this 30-second spot. So it’s no surprise that the word “steak” was mentioned in 17% of the optional verbatim responses. The word “Outback” also received a high number of mentions as it was in 12% of the consumer responses.
The Desire component of the spot scored particularly high with consumers, over 12% higher than the 90-day average.
Interestingly, the 15-second version of this spot also scored extremely high. However, as you can see when comparing the two gender/age demographic charts below, younger consumers (21-35 years old) needed those fifteen extra seconds of steak shots to be hungry enough for Outback. This kind of information is critical for Outback when they make their media buys, especially for slots during younger-targeted programming.
Watch this year’s winning Ads of the Week by Ace Score.
Want a look back at 2013? Watch the winning Ads of the Week with the highest Ace Scores from 2013.
