Who won the Metro?

Have you ever wondered which ads placed in the national newspapers are the most effective at engaging readers? Newsline has partnered with Lumen Research to find out.

As the sun continues its long hibernation and the clouds unapologetically trample on everyone’s dreams of a hot summer, it’s no wonder Brits are looking to bugger off somewhere else year, with British Airways looking likely to capitalise on our misery.

With a full page splash of blue skies and an even bluer sea, British Airways won this month’s ‘Who won the Metro’ with standout exceeding Lumen’s norm by a massive 10%.

Breaking the 2 second engagement target, the airline’s logo was also recalled by an impressive 30% of respondents.

According to Lumen, the ad’s success can be attributed to a technique called ‘visual perception’.

“To create a visually stimulating image, you can get tips and tricks from the area of Visual Perception – a complex journey which spans biology, psychology and even physics,” explains Lumen’s research manager, Theo Litson.

“From a cognitive perspective Richard Gregory defines perception as ‘a dynamic searching for the best interpretation of the available data’. In this case, the perception of depth in the beach scene.”

According to Lumen, the brain interprets a scene by using expectations from memory and ‘visual cues’ – so in the BA ad, the brain does this to create the perception of depth on a 2D image.

“For example, when looking at an image your brain interprets the boat as actually being large and far away, rather small and the same distance as the sign,” Litson adds.

“This is based on our previous experiences telling us that boats tend to be bigger than signs and the other visual cues in the scene such as the jetty getting smaller the further away it is.

“The Ponzo Illusion shows how we get cues from backgrounds to judge size. The top yellow line appears larger than the bottom one due to the context of the railway track background, despite actually being the same size.”

So, apparently there’s more to British Airways’ sandy shores than meets the eye. However, with claims of contaminated cabin air, it might just be Ryanair’s lucky summer…