Well-pitched promotional marketing can cause as much excitement as looking at pornography, according to new research.

In a study by the Institute of Promotional Marketing with the University of Westminster, 50 people were divided into groups and shown packs that featured promotions and packs that didn't. The participants were hooked up to eye-tracking equipment to measure their pupil dilation and eye motion.

Emotional response and visual attention were scored from 0 to 10. Ten is associated with trauma and rarely seen, while erotic images register between five and seven, said the technology's inventor and iMotions co-founder Jakob de Lemos.

The highest-scoring promotion in the institute's study, the first in the UK to measure emotional responses to promotions, was Marmite's Horrid Henry campaign, with one consumer charting a 5.8.

Other high scorers were Cravendale's coupon campaign, which attracted 350,000 new customers, according to the IPM, and Kingsmill's Wallace & Gromit collectibles tie-in.

"It's early days but these results indicate a correlation between high emotional response to promotions and sales uplift," said IPM insight director, Colin Harper.

Most buying ­decisions were made in the first two seconds, added Acuity director Jon Ward. "If we can engage people enough to look at the pack for that long, we can probably hold them for longer," he said.

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