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Decoding P&G’s Emotional Branding: A Multimodal AI Analysis of "Thank You, Mom”
Procter & Gamble excels at emotional branding, forging deep connections through powerful storytelling and relatable narratives that resonate with consumers. As brands grow, understanding the emotional impact of their products becomes essential for sustained success. With AI-driven multi-modal emotion recognition, businesses can analyze how their products evoke emotions across video, audio, and text—offering deeper insights into consumer engagement and brand emotion appeal.
What is Multimodal Emotion Recognition?
Multimodal emotion recognition analyzes emotions from different modalities—video, audio, and text—to provide a comprehensive understanding of human emotional responses. It examines facial expressions, vocal tones, and speech patterns to capture emotional nuances across various forms of communication.
Users can access emotional data for each modality separately while also receiving an aggregate analysis that combines insights from video, audio, and text in real-time.
How does Multimodal Emotion Recognition Enhance Brand Analysis?
Through our multi-modal emotion recognition, we explored P&G’s branding strategies to uncover how they evoke emotions and build brand loyalty.
With our Emotion AI tool, we analyzed P&G's Thank You, Mom campaign, one of its most powerful Olympic-themed campaigns. We quantified the emotional engagement these campaigns generated, by examining facial expressions, body language, voice tone, and even transcripts from the commercials.
The Thank You, Mom series highlights mothers' unconditional love and the silent sacrifices they make to shape their children's success. By showcasing the behind-the-scenes role of mothers in raising world-class athletes, P&G positions itself as an enabler of everyday heroes—not just through storytelling but also through the everyday products that support these moments.
Let us look at the Emotion AI analysis of P&G’s Thank You, Mom campaign with interpretations from our in-house psychologist, offering a comprehensive psychological perspective on its emotional impact.
Imentiv AI dashboard showing the video emotions in real time
Its psychological impact stems from a blend of subtle facial expressions, evocative audio, and strong personality traits, all working together to create a powerful emotional experience.
Facial Emotion Analysis
Throughout the video, the actors’ facial expressions remain largely neutral during moments of training, hardship, and perseverance. However, this neutrality does not indicate an absence of emotion; rather, it conveys determination, focus, and resilience.
Key moments introduce brief yet meaningful expressions of sadness, exhaustion, and relief—especially in interactions between athletes and their mothers. These microexpressions add emotional weight to the narrative.
Despite the ad’s strong emotional appeal, it relies more on context than exaggerated facial cues to convey its message. This approach mirrors real-life emotional experiences, where deep emotions are often internally processed rather than overtly displayed.
Audio Emotion Analysis
The background music plays a crucial role in shaping the ad’s emotional tone. The combination of sadness and monotony in the audio may arise from slow, repetitive melodies with minimal variation, evoking endurance, waiting, and persistence—key elements in an athlete’s journey.
Imentiv AI’s audio emotion analysis experience
The sense of "boredom" in the music is not literal disengagement but rather a reflection of the long, grueling process before success.
Additionally, the use of silence or soft instrumental music at key moments heightens emotional tension, directing the viewer’s focus to the visuals and deepening the impact of the message.
Personality of the Video
The ad strongly embodies two key personality traits—agreeableness and openness—which enhance its emotional connection with the audience.
- Agreeableness: Themes of gratitude, sacrifice, and emotional warmth reinforce this trait. The portrayal of mothers as nurturing figures and the deep, unspoken bond between them and their children amplify the ad’s prosocial message.
- Openness: The storytelling approach, metaphorical visuals (such as falling down and getting back up to symbolize resilience), and emotional depth—rather than heavy dialogue—reflect high openness. This invites viewers to connect through empathy and personal reflection.
Psychological Impact on the Audience:
By combining neutral facial expressions, emotionally layered music, and an uplifting narrative, the ad creates a cathartic effect. Viewers may initially feel sadness, nostalgia, or even monotony due to the slow-building sequences.
However, the emotional payoff arrives in the final moments—when the athletes succeed and reunite with their mothers—offering a deeply satisfying resolution.
This structured emotional arc, building tension before release, makes the ad highly effective in leaving a lasting impression. By balancing subtle facial cues, an emotionally complex soundtrack, and a universally relatable theme, P&G crafts ads that feel authentic, deeply moving, and emotionally resonant.
Now, let's take a broader look at our multimodal emotion analysis of four ads in series, which reveals distinct emotional patterns across video, audio, and text, highlighting how P&G crafts an emotionally compelling brand narrative.
You can explore the ad analysis firsthand on our dashboard:
https://imentiv.ai/video/s/77e1df03-10b5-4677-bbea-9fe13e8b87e5/
https://imentiv.ai/video/s/43c260da-cab8-427c-94a2-a16a758ddc32/
https://imentiv.ai/video/s/88f0d460-4c1d-4343-b7ff-beeb90a2c8c9/
https://imentiv.ai/video/s/73f55bcc-667b-4d72-8024-0c058adf87a7/
1. Dominant Emotional Trends in Video
Across all four ads, neutral emotion was the most dominant in the video analysis, averaging above 39%, with a peak of 44.1%. This suggests a restrained yet impactful storytelling approach, where visual elements allow emotions to unfold naturally rather than being overtly exaggerated.
While neutrality remained the top detected emotion, happy and sad emotions surfaced as secondary emotions, reinforcing moments of joy and struggle in the narrative.
2. Audio Emotion Analysis: Boredom and Sadness as Key Emotional Cues
The audio emotion analysis revealed boredom and sadness as the most dominant emotions across the campaign. The first ad’s audio showed boredom (31.03%) and sadness (28.18%), while another ad had an even stronger dominance of sadness (42.44%).
The high presence of these emotions in the audio suggests a slow, reflective tone, possibly incorporating soft narration and background music that emphasizes struggle, nostalgia, or perseverance—aligning with the campaign’s overarching theme.
3. Transcript Emotion Analysis: A Balanced Blend of Caring, Optimism, and Pride
The transcript emotion analysis across the four ads in P&G’s Thank You, Mom series reveals a diverse yet cohesive emotional pattern. Rather than centering around a single dominant emotion, the ads evoke a range of emotions—caring, curiosity, optimism, and pride—each shaping the narrative in a distinct way.
While one ad strongly emphasizes caring and remorse, another leans toward curiosity and optimism, reflecting an element of discovery and hope.
Similarly, an ad dominated by optimism and realization suggests a focus on perseverance and growth, whereas another ad, with pride and neutrality as the leading emotions, underscores achievement and composure.
This varied emotional appeal indicates that P&G is not relying on a singular emotional hook but rather crafting different emotional experiences within the same overarching theme. By doing so, the campaign resonates with a wider audience, ensuring that its message of parental support, resilience, and success is deeply felt across different personal and cultural perspectives.
4. Personality Traits: Agreeableness and Openness in Brand Messaging
The campaign also reflects strong personality traits, with agreeableness detected in three ads and openness in one. Agreeableness aligns with themes of warmth, care, and support—qualities essential for an emotionally driven brand like P&G. The presence of openness in one ad suggests elements of inspiration and acceptance, possibly appealing to broader perspectives and diverse experiences.
How P&G’s Emotional Branding Works?
P&G’s Thank You, Mom campaign strategically blends neutral visuals, emotionally weighted audio, and uplifting text to create a compelling emotional journey. The ads build a subtle but powerful narrative, using reflective tones in sound and visual restraint while delivering an uplifting message through words. This emotional balance enhances relatability, making the campaign deeply engaging and effective in reinforcing P&G’s brand values.
P&G Creates Emotionally Engaging Brands
- Distinct Brand Emotions – Tide evokes trust, Pampers nurtures love, and Olay empowers confidence. Each brand triggers specific emotions.
- Storytelling That Resonates – Pampers celebrates parental bonds, Gillette challenges masculinity norms. Campaigns shape perceptions.
- Multimodal Impact – Ads like Thank You, Mom blend facial expressions, music, and context for deeper emotional engagement.
- Trust Through Innovation – Reliable products, emotional marketing. P&G balances innovation with lasting consumer trust.
This analysis isn't just about P&G—it’s a playbook for businesses looking to enhance their branding. By leveraging Emotion AI, companies can gain deeper insights into audience reactions, refine their messaging, and create more impactful brand experiences–just as P&G has perfected over the years.
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