The Small Appliances category is home to a handful of brands selling coffee makers, blenders, vacuum cleaners and other household gadgets. The category is relatively narrow – just 13 brands have broken at least one unique ad thus far in 2014. But, what the category lacks in breadth, it makes up for in overall advertising effectiveness. The average Ace Score year-to-date among Small Appliance brands is 641, some 14% above the overall norm of 560 for all ads in the Ace Metrix database.

Small Appliances achieves higher scores than the overall norms in all six Persuasion components, with the widest gap (92 points) in the elusive Desire metric. Outperformance in all six of these scoring dimensions is a reflection of the broad appeal of the Small Appliances category. Unlike more narrowly targeted categories like Beer, Footwear & Apparel or Cosmetics, Small Appliances doesn’t skew sharply to any particular demographic group. In fact, the overall Appliances category, which is a roll-up of the Small Appliances and Large Appliances sub-categories, is the second-highest scoring category in the 2014 Edition of the BLACKBOOK, with Casual Dining currently ranked #1.

Small Appliance ads tend to score high overall, but it’s a category that tends to underperform in shorter-format spots. On average, the Ace Scores of 0:15’s have underperformed 0:30’s by 31 points this year within Small Appliance, vs. a 14-point deficit on average over all ads. The wider underperformance in Small Appliance is due to the challenge of highlighting product features and technological differentiation effectively in 15 seconds. In fact, Change and Attention scores suffer the most at 15 seconds, with Likeability and Information not far behind. Relevance is affected the least.

Thematic mining within the Small Appliance category sheds additional light on the component gaps between short- and long-format spots. We tagged all 88 unique ads in the category dating back to 2010 for up to six creative elements. The differences in average scores were more pronounced than we typically see in this type of exercise, with a 100-plus-point range between the highest and lowest scoring ad features. Coming out on top was the technology-focused ad (655), followed by product comparison spots (633). These types of ads tend to score well, but are difficult to pull off in 15 seconds. On the flipside, we found that the lowest scoring ads in the category are those that did not include any people appearing on screen. Lack of human interaction is a handicap, but not a surprising one given the focus on food preparation of many of the brands in this category.

The Small Appliances category performs well compared to other categories in our database. But Small Appliances tends to suffer more than do most categories when ads are executed in shorter duration spots. Digging into the data reveals the “whats” and the “whys” behind these phenomenon. Watch this space for additional category insights in the months ahead. Curious where your brand fits on the Small Appliances spectrum? Drop us a line if you’d like a deeper dive into the many dimensions of data behind overall advertising effectiveness.