Have you made the switch to Threads by Twitter because of a recent battle between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg ? :) Well, no brand is immune to challenging times in the world of branding. However, today our focus will not be on Twitter itself.

Recently, WWF creatively utilized Twitter's fresh new appearance for its own advertisement. This advertisement sparked a significant discussion on LinkedIn. The intriguing aspect was that WWF incorporated logos from another brand into its ad, leading to confusion among viewers, some even mistaking it for a Twitter advertisement rather than WWF's.

In this instance, we will delve into the interconnectedness of attention, perception, and branding through the lens of WWF's creative ad. This quick study was done using a CoolTool platform, where real people participated, and their eye movements were tracked through webcams while they looked at the ad.

The Sneaky Thing about Heatmaps: A Look at Attention

This ad caused doubts about its effectiveness because the WWF logo didn't seem as noticeable as Twitter's logos. That's not good for a brand trying to promote its ad, right?

Heatmaps, which show where our eyes look the most, confirmed this - they showed that people noticed Twitter's logos more than the WWF logo.

Our logo is not noticeable in our ad? Quite a critical problem, right? 

Let’s first figure out the whole picture. 

Heatmaps help us understand what grabs our attention, but they don't always tell the whole story. 

From the heatmap, we see that most people focused on one of Twitter's logos - the bird with big eyes.

People are usually attracted to faces and bright things. But does this mean people didn't notice important information? 

Maybe not. They might have quickly looked and understood the main point, which might be enough for them.

Getting the Full Picture: What Eye Tracking Tells Us

By looking at detailed maps of where people's eyes went, we can learn more. These results show that 72% of people did notice the WWF brand and its message. 

So, attention was indeed caught by the brand. But it took people almost 4 seconds to see the WWF brand. This means that when they're scrolling through social media, they could easily miss the WWF brand and only see Twitter's logos. This is definitely the red flag that highlights the wrong logo placement.

However, to deeply figure out how attention works, we need to take into account not just heatmaps.

Learning from Feedback: The Power of Comparing Data

By looking at heatmaps, user feedback, and survey answers together, we understood more about advertising and branding challenges and opportunities.

We combined the silent data from heatmaps with what users said in a quick survey. Here's what we found:

- 40% of users thought the ad was about Twitter, not WWF.
- But 80% of those who confused the brand actually noticed the WWF logo.

So people did notice the WWF brand, but they didn't think the ad was for WWF. Why?

There could be a few reasons:

- The message might have been too complicated to understand.
- Some people might not know about the WWF brand, so they couldn't remember it.

A quite high number of people (24%) didn't understand what the ad was trying to say, which suggests there might be problems in how the message was delivered. Negative feedback (26%) showed that some people didn't like the ad because they didn't understand it or because they didn't like Twitter's new look.

So, the problem with the ad isn't that people didn't pay attention, but that the visuals or idea itself were too complicated.

Getting to the Truth with Neuro Tools and Data

As you can see, heatmaps show where people look, but they don't tell everything. That's why it's important to use different tools and look at different data together.

For respondents’ gaze tracking you can use either real eye eye-tracking (with real respondents shown the content) or predictive eye-tracking(using only AI algorithms to predict which objects are the most noticeable in the picture).

A few words must be said about the advantages of real-world eye-tracking in comparison to predictive eye-tracking. Predictive eye tracking is more like a guess, but it still gives quick insights into visual patterns.  By tracking where attention goes with real users we get much deeper understanding, we learn:

- What things people noticed first, second, and so on.
- How long it took to notice certain elements
- Which things they looked at more than once.
- How long they paid attention to certain things, etc.

By testing media assets with neuro tools and surveys, you can identify the whole story: 

- At first, people didn't see the WWF logo, but later they did. 
- It took almost 4 sec to notice the WWF logo, and Twitter attracted attention immediately.
- People saw the WWF brand, but they didn't connect it with the ad. 
- Many people found the ad confusing and didn't understand the message. 
- Surveys explain all the WHY’s of respondent’s confusion.

To be safe, test your content before showing it to everyone. This way, you can fix any confusion early on. Contact CoolTool to see all advantages for your business.