Ghosts and ghouls aside, October is also known for being National Pizza Month. In celebration, we analyzed five of the most recognized pizza brands across the country and uncovered which of their ads scored the highest on our Yummy metric.
Whatever your pizza belief system is (Does pineapple really belong on pizza?), the ads analyzed below have got a topping for you. Our Yummy metric is evoked by the presence of food cravings among viewers, often as the result of product close-ups and/or sounds (e.g. bacon sizzling). From mouth-watering macro shots of stretched out melted cheese to close-ups of piping-hot ingredients, these ads reinforced the usual QSR “food porn” imagery.
The following five ads are the highest scoring from each brand on our Yummy metric year-to-date:
Combined emotional profiling of the five ads in the emo plot below reveals viewers connected most to Visceral and Crave-worthy attributes, with signal seen on metrics like Yummy and Surreal. In the case of most of these ads, our Surreal metric stems from viewers thinking there is no way the pizzas advertised could taste as good as they looked.
This emotional reporting comes from our groundbreaking approach that measures 57 different reactions/emotions in ads such as value, yummy, funny, authenticity, boring, sexist, etc. Leveraging our proprietary database of tens of millions of viewer comments, scores are passively derived from those voluntary verbatim comments using natural language processing and machine learning techniques.
The following sample of viewer verbatim comments shows just how much of an effect the ads had on viewers’ taste buds:
“Cheese sticks, cheese pizza and cheese things that are just cheesy like shown are just great to me. When I see cheese that goes that far, it shows how good it will be…” – Male 21-35 on “Cheesy Bites”
“I think that the concept is fantastic. Most like Pretzel’s and putting them together with a pizza is great! I think that the look of it was very appealing and it made me want the pizza…” – Female 36-49 on “It’s Back”
“The food looked good, and seeing people take helpings of it was a good way to show off the visual qualities of fresh food ready to be eaten. It made me hungry just watching.” – Male 21-35 on “More For Less”
The Product Itself was rated as the Single Best Thing in all of the ads we analyzed, indicating the extent of the impact the mouth-watering Visual Scenes (which followed as the second Best Thing in all five ads) had on promoting the products/brands. The only exception in the case of the second Best Thing was with “More For Less” from Domino’s, where the Deal/Offer played a more prominent role in winning over viewers.
Seeing as how deeply embedded pizza is in American culture, it’s great to see that brands are continuing to innovate and improve in competition for the Yummy throne. It turns out that in this case, the cheesier you are the more consumers will find you Yummy!
