Even Women's World Cup ads knock men's into Row Z

Not only are England’s women putting their male counterparts to shame in progressing to the semi-finals of the the FIFA Women’s World Cup with relative ease, the ads which are airing during the competition are knocking spots off those played during the men’s World Cup in Qatar, too.

So says a new study from System1, the creative effectiveness platform which predicts the short- and long-term commercial impact of ads by measuring viewers’ second-by-second emotional responses to creative. It assigns ads a star rating, from 1 to 5.9-stars, based on their ability to drive market share growth.

Top of the league is ITV (UK) with “The Pride has Arrived” ad, which scored 4.4 stars, followed by Claro (Brazil) “Todas Marias” (4.3 stars) and Nike (Brazil) “Debinha I Joga Forever” (4.1 stars). Coming in fourth is Adidas (UK) with “Play Until They Can’t Look Away” (3.8 stars) with Frito Lay (US) and “Taste of Greatness” (3.7 stars) landing in fifth place.

By comparison, System1’s test of 20 ads from UK, US and Brazilian advertisers in the men’s World Cup last year found only one 4-star ad, while half the ads scored between 1 and 2 stars. The women’s tournament has already scored three 4-star ads and six 3-star ads.

In addition to surveying the general public on how they felt about the ads, System1 also conducted testing with sports fans. Recent research from System1 and Omnicom sport and entertainment agency Fuse found that sport sponsorship assets have the power to perform as well as the world’s best advertising and often achieve even greater effectiveness among sports fans, dubbed “The Sport Dividend”.

Perhaps the most widely talked-about ad of the tournament is from Orange, promoting gender equality in soccer. It scored 3.1 stars with the general public but secured a considerable increase in long-term effectiveness with sports fans, landing at 4.7-stars.

The Sport Dividend for Orange then is an impressive 1.6-stars, equating to good brand-building potential among the general public and strong brand-building potential among the mass audience of sports fans.

System1 chief customer officer Jon Evans said: “Sport as a platform has universal appeal, so there’s a lot of value in sponsorship if brands get it right.

“For the women’s tournament, many advertisers are leveraging famed athletes and celebrities, plus right-brained elements like melodic music, humour and distinctive assets that capture consumers’ broad-beam attention and drive long-term market share growth.”