This year at Cannes Lions Festival, international toy brand Toys “R” Us presented their brand-new commercial that focused on the creation of the Toys “R” Us brand and their beloved mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. Touted as the first advertisement to be created with Open AI’s Sora, this AI-generated ad appeared to have generated (for lack of a better term) some mixed reactions among viewers.

The ad, co-produced by Toys “R” Us and Native Foreign, reportedly went through hundreds of prompt iterations when solidifying the storyline and visuals and used VFX for visual corrections, and an original music score composed by Aaron Marsh.

From our previous foray into the world of AI-generated videos, our team at Affectiva tested ads that used generative AI for both specific elements (e.g., scripts or visual components) and videos that were completely created with AI. The bottom line is that while generative AI may be beneficial in the creative process, there must be constant iteration, a human touch and pre-testing with real people’s feedback taking place prior to launching a campaign. But even with human involvement, the AI-generated content from Toys “R” Us had a range of middling to negative responses and reviews.  This made us interested in testing this advertisement through our Emotion AI technology to explore further. 

With the assistance of our Affectiva and Smart Eye’s Friends and Family AI Advancement Group, we tested this advertisement to discover their emotional responses and their attitudes towards the brand and of generative AI.  

Bikes and toy cars and a giraffe, oh my! 

The ad begins talking about the Toys “R” Us founder, Charles Lazarus, as a young boy being the son of a bike shop owner.  As Charles falls asleep, he becomes transported into a dream with a plethora of toys surrounding him, and there he sees Geoffrey the Giraffe (the brand’s beloved mascot), who gives him a toy car.  The ad wraps up saying how this was the dream of Charles Lazarus, showing a photo of him with Geoffrey, ending with the final branding.  

With the tone and visuals of the content, we believed the intent was for the ad to evoke a sense of nostalgia, happiness and surprise that comes from being a “Toys ‘R’ Us kid” and having your dreams come true.  When looking at the aggregated data of overall emotional engagement (Expressiveness in blue), we see that the moments driving most of the emotional response are the ones with the imagery of Geoffrey the giraffe and the final branding moment with Charles Lazarus, showing a photo of him with Geoffrey.

While there were some slight smiles predominantly in response to Geoffrey the Giraffe, any sense of sentimentality was overshadowed by consistent Brow Furrow which is typically associated with higher concentration but also signs of negativity. This is a testament to having strong emotional brand cues used by Toys “R” Us for 76 years.  And although some of this imagery utilized AI, the original idea of Geoffrey and the Toys “R” Us original branding is human created.

GenAI and the emotional journey 

In the study, we did not prime respondents to let them know they were watching AI-created content.  Instead, we asked them a series of survey questions after the video exposure to analyze whether respondents were consciously aware of the usage of AI in the ad.  In total, 61% of respondents did not realize that GenAI has been utilized to create the content.

If we look at the emotional response among these two groups, emotional engagement is significantly stronger among those who recognized the use of AI, while for the others the ad struggles to connect emotionally. We have already seen in previous research that people who claim to notice AI usage tend to engage more strongly in response to their amusement of AI capabilities. Therefore, what we witness for this Toys “R” Us ad suggests that viewers here are most likely more emotionally engaged in response to GenAI being used as a tool rather than the brand narrative.   

Is GenAI created content a dream come true?  

The quality of AI-generated videos will be set at a new level as the technology keeps improving.  But alas, despite the creation of nostalgic imagery and storyline, this Toys "R" Us ad did not quite hit the mark in emotionally engaging audiences.  Instead, the ad indirectly raised debates about the future of ad creatives and the importance of generative AI literacy.  

In our previous work, we concluded that while AI has the potential to enhance and optimize the creative process and become a beneficial tool in the hands of content creators, a consumer-centric creative idea and human input in the execution are essential to create standout content.  

Generative AI is here, and it is here to stay. The challenge is how to learn and adopt these technologies to enhance existing processes instead of losing creative ingenue.  As the industry continues to wade the waters of GenAI and all the tools out there, it will be even more important to pretest creative content with consumers. Understanding ad performance will bring valuable insights to advise your creative and media strategy and greatly improve its ROI.