"The shop window is effective if it generates an emotional-attentive impact.  Conversely, without the combination of attention and emotion, it cannot fulfill its primary task. When observing a shop window, it must induce the person to linger on what is displayed, stimulating emotions."

A Andrea Lori, co-founder of Emotiva along with Andrea Sempi – a deep tech company specializing in artificial intelligence, recognition, and measurement of attention and emotions – emphasized the importance of adequate communication associated with proper product display during the event "Measuring the effectiveness of the shop window through artificial intelligence" held at Milano Home.

Intense sensation helps and, together with the impression, supports and determines the decision

"When we look at a shop window, we inevitably have a response," Sempi recalled. The same mechanism is replicated when we see an advertisement. Any stimulus presented elicits an emotional reaction. If we can understand this dynamic, we can optimize the stimulus to be a vehicle for an effective impact of attention and emotions on the public."

The American psychologist Paul Ekman scientifically demonstrated three fundamental things: "Emotions are universal, spontaneous, and measurable with a system that allows the interpretation of emotions through automatic facial movements."

 This allows not only the definition of the six primary emotions – anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise – but also to understand the emotional complexity of each person expressed through micro-expressions of the face. The mechanism is stimulus-response.

The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) devised by Ekman is a comprehensive, anatomy-based system for describing all visually distinguishable facial movements. It breaks down facial expressions into individual components of muscle movement, called Action Units.

The first issue to address, therefore, concerns attention front. When a person shows interest in a product, for the stimulus to be sustained, there must also be an emotional engagement.

"More than 90% of our behaviors are generated by emotional attraction, so first, we must activate attention by supporting it with emotions, as these are functional in determining people's behavior, including purchasing behavior. The emotional part is somewhat the balance point, because in the initial phase there is attention, while in the final phase, memory is activated. By combining these parameters, it is possible to define the effectiveness of a communication content on the public."

EmPower and Foresight: the two platforms developed by the deep tech company Emotiva to correlate attention, emotions, and memory

Focusing attention on a clear message is the first step to starting a fruitful dialogue with the customer. Emotiva has developed two tools to measure this information, two platforms that aim to correlate attention, emotions, and memory to maximize results and provide companies with the correct path to intercept buyers' desires: EmPower and Foresight.

"EmPower is the leading AI platform for validating creative campaigns. It measures the degree of attention and public reactions to marketing stimuli, offering detailed and precise information. Through the facial muscle activations of those present in the store (obtained by recording via webcams and informing the customer of the presence of these cameras), it is possible to monitor and then derive the levels of attention and emotion. An innovative tool that provides timely responses to businesses and stores, allowing them to detect which feelings the message proposed to consumers activates, verifying if it aligns with customer preferences.

The flexibility of EmPower allows it to embrace all forms of observation. It can also measure commercials broadcast on television, those conveyed through the internet, and on social media. Knowing how long a user lingers on the content allows us to detect the attention threshold."

EmPower can also be associated with market research conducted with questionnaires. This procedure inevitably faces a real problem, namely that humans often tend to lie.

Foresight is the first platform on the market capable of examining prediction from an emotional perspective

"Foresight shifts the focus to the emotional factor. It can predict, by observing content, how much it impacts people. Thanks to predictive AI, it offers accurate information capable of foreseeing the emotions evoked by the message and providing real-time information on creativity. In practice, it predicts emotions to anticipate the creative impact. The difference with EmPower is that in this case, people are not measured; instead, the content is analyzed. The goal is to obtain useful responses to observe the emotional reaction and the type of attention manifested."

Foresight is the first platform on the market capable of making predictions from an emotional perspective. There are various algorithmic models capable of reading attention points within content, but none so far can predict the emotional reaction.

In summary, EmPower measures real people. It is the ideal platform for communication content of significant economic importance.

Foresight was created as a production and support tool in the development of creativity. "It serves to align the company with the consumer's desire. It is extremely useful and effective for setting up a shop window, the store's communication tool par excellence, and is therefore functional for sales."

Today, we find ourselves in a very particular situation, with an overproduction of content on the market that makes it complex to generate attention.

"Every year, between 300 and 500 billion dollars are spent on communication campaigns. There is an almost infinite production of messages, and the majority of them are ignored by the public, do not generate attention, and in those few cases where people stop to observe, they elicit the wrong emotional response."

Richard Thaler, Nobel Prize winner for economics (2017), predicted that we would reach a historical period where content production would be extremely rich in the face of scarce attention.

Emotiva has also acted in this direction. By comparing data extracted from the analysis of the two pieces of information, "on one side, we collect implicit data – the attention and emotional part –, on the other, we obtain declared information. These two parameters allow us to have a very precise understanding of people's behavior."

A similar approach has been applied in the social context. "Even in this case, the investigation focuses on people's behavior: do they observe spontaneously? What do they feel when viewing the message? The average attention span today is 7 seconds, but on social media, it is 1.5 seconds. If I don't capture attention in this very short time frame, I have lost a potential customer."