Abstract

Five successful viral ad campaigns of different kinds of food and beverages were selected on YouTube. Thirty randomly selected respondents were asked to watch the videos and rate their emotional responses to them, as well as their overall ad liking (emotional quotient). Experiments were video-recorded and then facial micro-expressions were analyzed in order to reveal emotions. The results show: a) that self-reported, cognitively-mediated emotions are substantially different than face-revealed emotions; b) self-reported surprise and happiness appeared the most relevant emotions related to the viral campaigns; and c) ad liking is significantly and positively correlated with both the ‘revealed’ and ‘stated’ happiness and is inversely correlated to disgust. We conclude with the hypothesis that surprise could be untruly reported as a stated emotion, if the respondents ‘feel obliged’ to report such an emotion after being shown video material that they had never seen before.