Scientifically, who has the best Christmas ad?

“We wanted to measure, which ad created the greatest emotional response from the UK public when they watched it, whether that reaction was positive or negative, and how that influenced their brand recall and preference.”

To study the emotional response, they relied on the biometric analysis tools within their lab.

These are: Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), Electro Encephalogram (EEG), Facial Recognition and Eye Tracking.

After this Unprompted Brand Recall (a user survey asking each participant to list all the retailers they recalled seeing ads for unprompted) and Prompted Affinity Scoring (asking each participant to rate the ads in order of preference) were used.

M&S won the competition for the most positively engaging ad this Christmas.

“Not only did we see this in the level of emotional engagement seen in the audience, but more of the audience also rated it as their favourite of the five ads,” Endless Gain said.

The data indicated Aldi was the second most engaging ad, but a predominantly negative reaction was only recovered by a clever punchline.