Rakuten Shimmies Its Way To Viewers’ Hearts

Rakuten is taking a play out of Stephen Curry’s book with its recent ad featuring the NBA star himself — although you won’t see him breaking out the moves this time. Instead, the ad shows people in everyday life getting their groove on after receiving cash back from Rakuten. The spot does feature Curry at the end, with the playful comment “I just never dance in public.”

A few additional insights via iSpot’s Ace Metrix :

• The interesting music and dancing characters were excellent attention-getters: 22% of survey respondents said the characters were the single best thing about the ad, while 16% thought the music was the best aspect.
• The funny scenes were engaging to many viewers, with most also feeling that the ad educated well on the cash back opportunities. Across the full gen pop audience, 47% reported positive intent to visit/use Rakuten (+10 points over its recent :30 "Cha-Ching While You Sing'') after seeing the newest ad.
• Although enjoying great appeal among NBA fans (of any level), the new spot also resonated well across age/gender and ethnicity, suggesting opportunity to air it broadly beyond NBA programming
• Emotional profiling reveals the new ad connected through the humor while sparking some “curiosity”
• Gen pop viewers engaged with both Curry (and other characters) and the music, both of which were disproportionately forward vs. other discount website ads from the past year.