The objective here was to increase advertising performance by matching creative to personality type. A beauty retail client joined forces with VisualDNA to increase advertising driven sales by serving creative and messages aligned to the personality traits of their customers. Additionally, the client wanted to improve their understanding of who their customers really are and understand how personality influences the way customers respond to adverts, and subsequently go on to purchase.

Targeting personality traits through creative & messaging-VisualDNA focused on two personality traits in collaboration with our psychology partners at Cambridge University: openness & extraversion. Underpinned by the Big-5 personality model, (OCEAN), we created a bank of 20 ads to appeal to different personality traits. Aligning the message of the ad to the audience's personality, we tailored images & messaging to reassure & persuade personalities reluctant to stray from the tried-and-tested, & others to appeal to thrill-seeking, trend leaders open to try & buy new things.

The client saw a 56% performance uplift across the whole campaign. An aggregate ROI of 381% from ads targeted based on personality, against the baseline of 244% ROI without targeting. A 130% improvement in sales for one personality trait alone, with an ROI of 562%.

Informing future campaigns, the client developed a deeper understanding of their audience, with insight into how their motivations to buy can be influenced by advertising designed to appeal to who they are.