The Tiger and the Buffalo: The Ad Announcing the Rebranding of Facebook to Meta
Happy New Year 2022!
As a third video of Feelin’s new weekly format, ‘ad of the week’, we have chosen a topic most of you might already be aware of and on which the discussion will certainly continue this year: Facebook and its recent rebranding to ‘Meta’ which was also announced through an ad titled ‘The Tiger and the Buffalo’.
In the first place, we were inspired by the article of a Belgian journalist from the Libre Belgique, Fréderic Bouchart, whose eye the new Meta ad obviously could not catch. A quick search on Google in English shows us that he might not be the only one (no examples will be given here but try yourself and see!).
Do you think Meta did reach to pass the message to the audience it wanted to pass? What were the reactions to this ad, inspired by a French artist’s, Henri Rousseau, painting ‘Combat de tigre et de buffle’ from 1908?
If you have still not seen this video (below), watch it first and let emotions invade you!
Also, if you missed our previous ad of the week analyses, no worries, you can read them here: Christmas magic is all around us (Coca Cola Christmas video) and What do you expect from the New Year 2022? (McDonald’s Belgium Christmas video).
Is the use of comments on the video disable on Meta’s YouTube Channel?
No problem, members of Feelin Community have also watched this video! You can read an analysis of their reactions below.
If you don't have enough time to read the whole analysis: Check out the main results below × Dismiss alert
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People living in France and Belgium watched the video on their smartphones
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Men
0
Women
Emotional impact
reacted 28%
showed positive emotions 45%
Attentional engagement
stayed fully engaged throughout the video 76%
Post video survey
liked the video 68%
Emotional Analysis
In this section, we will look at the emotions the audience felt when watching the video.
The results show that 28% of the audience reacted when watching Meta’s ad, which means that it produced 11.08% more emotional reaction than the average (16.7%).
Good news, no?
Well, Meta’s ad did not leave anyone indifferent, that is for sure, but in fact, we need to go further in the analysis to get the full picture:
The 28% of the audience that reacted, felt mixed emotions throughout the video with 45% showing positive emotions ( -4% compared to the average). The emotional peaks mostly occurred when certain animals and people appeared more closely on the video, as well as in context of Facebook’s logo.
There were differences between men’s and women’s reactions although the heatmap video we use to see at which elements the audience is looking during the video, show that both men and women were focusing on the same elements.
The main differences are the following:
Men experienced negative emotions from the very beginning and in general, their emotions were more mixed during the whole video in comparison to women who did not experience any emotion reaction during the first seconds until they saw the paintings in the museum (at 0:04). After that, women did not react expect for a few occasions (Who says that women are always more emotional?);
Both men and women reacted positively to some animals that appeared on the ad; men in particular to the parrot (at 0:24) and to the weird animal at 0:44 (maybe at that point they had finally discovered what it was?) and women to the tiger and the buffalo at 0:20 (that men did not like!);
Men reacted negatively to certain people who appeared closely on the video (at 0:34 and 0:50) compared to women who either reacted positively (at 0:34) or did not react at all (at 0:50) (hmmm not very nice of you, guys!);
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Men reacted positively to the text saying, ‘It is going to be fun’ (at 0:53- 0:54) whereas women did not react at all;
Finally, when Facebook’s logo appeared at the end of the video (at 0:56), both men and women reacted negatively, especially the women;
Men’s reactions stayed negative until the end of the video whereas women’s reactions changed into less negative (but not positive either!).
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Tips from Feelin:
The type of emotion that people are expected to feel obviously depends on the intention of your company and the message you want to deliver to the audience. Perhaps Meta’s intention was indeed to raise mixed emotions amongst its audience to stimulate discussion – if so, we can say they reached the goal. However, in general, it is best to avoid conveying emotions that you do not want to convey.
Do not underestimate the impact of positive emotions and pay attention to the moments emotional peaks occur. Positive emotions can have a great impact on your brand and product recognition, in particular when they occur at the end of your video or when you present your product.
Attention retention
In this section, we will look at the proportion of people who watched the video until the end.
Emotions are, however, not everything. If you want your ad to be successful and to maximise the understanding of your message as well as the brand attachment, you need to make sure your audience is sufficiently engaged in the video, i.e. they will watch it until the end.
Sounds easy in theory, no? In practice, it might be not simply as that, though…
As you can see from the table above, Meta’s video succeeded in keeping 76% of the audience remaining engaged in the content until the end (-5% compared to the average video tested).
Here again, some differences between can be seen between men and women:
The retention score of the men dropped at the very beginning and then stayed pretty much stable until the end with a final score of 81%;
The retention score of the women dropped after the first two second and continued through the video on a regular basis. Certain women also stopped watching the video after Facebook’s logo appeared on the ad (at 0:56), the final score being 64%.
Tips from Feelin:
Attention can decline fairly quickly; in Meta’s case, the general retention score dropped at the very beginning. It is therefore important to vary the tone and the pace to keep the audience’s attention throughout the video. Do not forget the music, which is a powerful attention grabber!
Facebook’s logo, which changed into Meta’s logo, only appeared at the end of the video. Would the retention score have been higher if the logo had occurred earlier on the video? People expect to see your packshot at the end anyway, so you should also try to get your brand noticed earlier by placing it at other points in the video. See our blog for further recommendations.
Survey results
This last section is all about the outcome of the message of the ad: Did the audience like it? Will they share it with their friends, via social media etc.? Are at least some of the audience now so interested in the product/ service in question that they will potentially buy it in the near future?
In Meta’s case, interestingly, despite the mixed emotions felt throughout the video (or perhaps just because of them), the audience did like the ad, with a likeability score of 68%, which is beyond the generic benchmark of 63%.
Same goes for all the aspects on which we ask our audience to give their opinion after having watched the ad in question – i.e. shareability (62%), arousal (64%), purchase intent (62%), and interest (68%). The results show that Meta’s ad succeeded in going beyond the benchmarks in all those aspects.
Not bad results at all, no?
In particular, the score of shareability is much higher than the benchmark of 51%, as well as the interest score for which the benchmark is 59%. These scores may be explained by the prevailing position and the huge impact of Facebook – or now, Meta – on the market, which imply that many people around the world are interested in knowing what is going on with it. One can even doubt whether the real message of the ad was made on purpose so unclear: to make people curious by raising their interest in knowing more about the rebranding and the new vision of Meta? To make people share the video as much as possible?
Conclusion
Although the final survey results are good, Meta’s video could have been improved, especially concerning the message and the placement of the logo.
If your company is not as known as Facebook – or now, Meta – with such a prevailing position and impact on the market, it is better to test your ads beforehand than try your chances by publishing a bizarre ad, the message of which is rather unclear until the end. Actually, you need to do some additional research if you want to know that the new Meta (which in Greek means ‘beyond’) aims to reflect Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse, which he sees as the future of the internet (where people could use a headset, instead of a computer, to enter a virtual world connecting all sorts of digital environments).
This could have been avoided with the help of a tool, such as the one developed by Feelin.
If you found the analysis interesting and meaningful, feel free to visit our online platform to discover more use cases and explore all insights.
You can also book a demo to have a fresh start for the new year!