Neuroscientific Analysis of Calvin Klein Commercial: MRI Results, Lack of Clarity, and Gender Differences

The proponents say that Calvin Klein always uses celebrities and that just works well. The fact that the ad is not about anything other than underwear on a tight body is refuted by the statement that fashion and fragrance campaigns never have a ‘story’. The opponents think they know that you should sell the ‘sizzle’ and not the ‘steak’. Where is the benefit of the product? You won’t get a six-pack from CK underwear. And also Jeremy as a role model would not work in these times of body positivity.

A commercial is good if it stimulates sales or improves brand value. Both are a response to mainly unconscious processes in the brain over which we have little control with our consciousness, as we know from numerous scientific studies. Speaking in neuroterms, more positive than negative emotions must be generated for a commercial to lead to the desired behavioral intention. in this case wanting to buy underwear or appreciate the brand better. First of all, the reward system needs to get working. For the second you need a commercial that is ‘engaging’, the viewer must become involved with the brand. And because such emotional processes mainly take place in the deeper parts of our brain, we investigate campaigns with MRI scanning, including this Calvin Klein commercial.

In this study, respondents in the MRI scanner were shown this video in addition to our benchmark commercials. With MRI we measure 70 times per minute all emotions relevant to a behavioral intention that are consciously but especially unconsciously generated by the commercial. This is how we measure lust, desire, expectation, trust and value. But also fear, danger, anger and disgust. The combination of all those emotions determines whether we are going to do something or not. Whether we like something or not. And therefore ultimately whether the commercial is good or not.

As is known, the outcome of a brain measurement is much more reliable than a survey in which people are asked for their opinion. This does not alter the fact that what people have to say about it can be interesting or even valuable, especially because we can also quantify the interpretation of the brain analysis with a survey.

The MRI results

To get straight to the point; This commercial performed poorly in the test. In the quadrant system (fig 1) we see a combination of the neural networks that we measure in the fMRI study. On the Y-axis the ratio between positive and negative emotions. The higher the score, the more positive emotions are activated, the more value the message has. On the X-axis we see the degree of Engagement. The more involved, the further to the right. A score in the upper right quadrant would therefore be optimal: more positive than negative emotions and an above-average involvement with the message. As you can see, the commercial scores in the lower left quadrant. This means that the commercial evokes more negative than positive emotions. And there is even a negative score on Engagement. It can hardly get any worse. There is no involvement with the Calvin Klein brand. And no purchase intention is generated. We can see how this all comes about in the spider where we see the activation of the individual emotions depicted (fig. 2).

A lot of attention, but for what?

The spider (fig. 2) shows the commercial’s score on the thirteen emotions and dimensions relevant to behavior. It is noticeable that the commercial attracts a lot of attention. We asked what exactly attracts attention in our online panel (fig.3). We do this with a psychological trick, by asking what other people think. We humans are better at predicting other people’s behavior than our own behavior.

Unsurprisingly, the man’s muscular body attracts attention, aided by familiar music and images of New York. In the timeline below you can see exactly which images in the commercial attract the most attention. But what is also immediately noticeable is that the attention slowly fades away during the screening.

Lack of clarity due to the lack of brand & context

The spider (fig. 4) shows that attention is mainly paid to negative emotions such as fear (Fear), irritation (Anger) and disgust (Disgust). Fear in this context is an exponent of ambiguity. We again asked the online panel where this lack of clarity comes from.

There are several moments in the commercial where ambiguity arises. In the beginning the actor takes off his clothes, but it is not clear to the viewer why he does this. For example, people wonder:

“Why the hell train in your underwear?”

When we zoom in on Jermey’s face around the 15 second mark, one wonders why they are looking like that and whether the music fits the images:

“Why the strange facial expressions in this one advertisement”

Of mystical context

The lack of clarity also comes from the lack of context. Because it is not clear to many what it is about, the actor’s actions are not well understood:

“What they want to show…, city, sofa, socks”

“Unclear which brand”

“You have to pay close attention if you want to know what this commercial is about.”

“I’m a bit lost as to what exactly they want to make clear”

Almost naked arouses disgust

The negative emotion Disgust is an emotion associated with literally turning away from something. We often see this as a moment when we are zapped away. If we ask the panel, which consists of more than 300 respondents, what causes others to have feelings of disgust when seeing the commercial, we get interesting quotes:

OkIt is we really need to see all thisn?!”

“Not very attractive to see a man always walking around in his underpants”

“Why an undressed man in commercial.”

“Genitals clearly visible through underwear”

“Man with strange facial expression coming towards you. Terrifying!”

“Intense, annoyingly unclear, because I don’t know who owns this commercial I’m watching”

But who wears their pants at home?

The above results come from the ‘average Netherlands’ sample. We hear you thinking: “yes, I believe that men will react negatively to this, but surely women won’t?” Good point, but the question is: who is this commercial intended for? A small online search confirms the idea that women often buy the underwear for their son, husband or boyfriend. In fact, more and more women are buying men’s underpants for themselves (nice and warm and comfortable).

That is why we have made a division by gender. Figure 6 shows the difference between men (blue) and women (green). And yes, the commercial activates a significantly better balance of emotions in women. It activates both higher positive emotions: Lust and Desire (we don’t have to explain that, right?) and lower negative ones. The commercial arouses more fear in men (are they worried about something?). But the positive emotions among women are still only average. And although there is lust, there are also negative emotions that are activated more strongly than average among women.

Conclusion

It is clear from the number of views and reactions that the commercial is successful in its own way. And all this attention will most likely lead to more sales, as we saw in previous impactful campaigns. Whether he also builds on brand values ​​remains to be seen. We do not think that people would want the associations made here to stick to the brand. A commercial like this – expensive and international – deserves to be tested at concept level.

An MRI study revealed the above results at an early stage. We saw that the brand link was not good, that the context needed to be clearer and that sometimes the imagination of something beautiful works better than the image of something beautiful. The most important lesson here is that advertising should make ordinary things special, not special things ordinary.

You can find an extensive analysis of this commercial on our site. www.neurensics.com

2024-01-26 10:51:01
#Calvin #Kleins #underwear #fun #work