1. The Law of Emotion (from “The 22 Irrefutable Laws of Advertising”, Wiley.)
Emotions are powerful: handle with care.
In 1983, Andrex was lost for words. It led the British toilet tissue market and was
one of the most valuable grocery brands in the country. All was not rosy,
however. A competitor had come out with a marvellously soft product, a product
that people loved when they tried it, a product that delighted the fingers and
caressed the posterior. Andrex was vulnerable, and the brand’s owners knew it.
But Andrex stood to lose a rational argument, hands down.
A look back at the television advertising for Andrex in 1983 and 1984 will show a
playful Labrador puppy running joyfully through a series of seasonal adventures
with a train of toilet tissue billowing behind it. The puppy gambols through
daffodils, frolics on the beach, and bursts through piles of autumn leaves. In the
most famous spot, he slides onto a frozen pond and plays with a goose. These
spots are off the scale on the ‘aah’ factor. Sure, the product looks as soft and
strong as ever, but the star of the show is the puppy. He plucks irresistibly at our
heartstrings.
By tapping blatantly into the emotions of the British housewife, Andrex saw off
the competitive challenge until it could launch an improved product. Instead of
slashing prices or employing other desperate measures, the brand’s marketers
sensibly decided to milk the appeal of the brand’s spokesman for all the little
fellow was worth. This worked so well that the brand’s sales were extremely
buoyant during this time of danger. What’s more, every Christmas for years
afterwards a small Labrador puppy could be seen on British TV screens, sliding
onto a frozen pond and playing with a goose….
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2. Ask any focus group about Andrex and warm emotional words will come tumbling
out. Quite an achievement for a toilet tissue. The same is true of many of the
world’s greatest brands. Even in a research situation, it’s occasionally possible to
see people’s eyes moisten slightly when they talk about the promise offered by
Nike’s vision of empowerment through sport, or Apple’s celebration of
independent thinking, or even Coke’s hilltop depiction of global harmony.
Singapore Airlines transports us into a highly evocative, long-running dream. De
Beers has made its product a potent symbol of undying love. Huggies induces
parents to coo at its endearingly happy babies.
Of course not all successful brands harness ‘big’ emotions like these. But
generally speaking they conjure up a tightly defined emotional space that is very
appealing and goes far beyond the brand’s rational story. Even a brand that
appears quite rational may be offering something deeper. The tremendous
success of BMW in Britain was built on imagery that, despite seeming cold,
tapped into powerful emotions of power, success, and control. In the 1980’s,
Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s idea of the ‘emotional selling proposition’ recognised the
importance of this emotional space.
Even science supports the importance of emotion in branding. In 2002 the
Department of Psychology at the University of California Los Angeles published a
study on how well people recognize certain words. This showed that the right
side of the brain, the emotional side, played a bigger role in processing brand
names than it did in processing mere nouns. This backs up what most marketers
know intuitively, that emotion is fundamental to the very concept of branding.
The skilled way in which modern brands use emotion is all the more remarkable
when one considers traditional corporate culture. Yes, the value of brands is
understood to a greater degree than ever before, and many companies now talk
about sustainability rather than short-term obsession with the bottom line. But the
business world is still generally more comfortable with facts than emotions. After
all, in the last decade a concept known as ‘Fact Based Management’ became
quite popular. This sounds very uninspiring, but it’s certainly easier for a CEO to
defend than ‘Emotion Based Management’. Business leaders are not expected to
behave in a highly emotional fashion – not too often, anyway. Instead, they need
to spend much of their time obsessing over quite rational things like product
quality, product functionality and product improvement. It’s only human nature
that they often wish to see the results of this dedication communicated to their
potential customers. It’s the default position, and it’s defensible in the inherently
anti-emotion culture of senior management. As Mark Twain said, “it is easier to
manufacture seven facts than one emotion.”
However, set against this are some powerful trends which favour a more
emotional approach. First, the erosion of functional product differences has been
widely documented, and even where they exist the gaps can be closed in a
matter of months or even weeks. This naturally leads many brands to attempt to
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3. build a more emotional connection that is less vulnerable to an innovative
competitor.
Secondly, emotions provide cut-through. In his book “The Power of Simplicity,”
Jack Trout pointed out that the average manager now reads a million words a
week, and refers to theories that the Baby Boomer generation is suffering
significant memory loss as a result of sheer information overload. (There might
be some other reasons, but that’s another topic.) A few years ago, the research
firm BASES reduced its predictions for the amount of awareness that could be
generated by a given advertising spend. It’s just not that easy to get noticed any
more. In an information-saturated world, there’s a lot to be said for bypassing
clogged mental highways and going direct to the heart. And there’s so much data
around that it's easy for people to post-rationalize buying decisions that are
actually grounded mainly in emotion.
Finally, the sustained success of several brands with a high emotional
component to their success has simply led to a greater understanding of the
power of emotion to deliver healthy financial returns. A fly on the wall of any
meeting room in corporate America would hear people saying they want to “do a
Nike”, or do a Starbucks or an Apple. They may not mean that they would like to
imitate those companies in every respect, but they would kill for the emotional
equity in those brands. Even a brand with a hideous reputation for product quality
can retain such emotional equity that it can be successfully reinvented: just ask
the owners of Triumph Motorcycles.
Of course many brands develop emotional equity without necessarily doing
emotional advertising. Starbucks spends comparatively little on advertising – but
its in-store experience is carefully planned to set off the right emotional triggers.
Most brands need to rely more heavily on advertising, or at least on the broad
discipline of marketing communications, to build emotional bonds. In Britain, the
IPA Effectiveness Awards have encouraged particularly rigorous analysis of the
effects of communications, and the real, hard-headed financial value of
emotionally driven campaigns has been proven time and time again by brands as
diverse as Tesco, Orange, and Andrex itself.
But hang on a minute. It can’t be as easy as that, can it? (Product a little weak
sir? Sales slightly droopy? That’s easy sir, a little emotional bonding should do
just nicely sir.) No, it’s not, unfortunately. For one thing, our competitors have
probably had the same idea. But more importantly, the real people we are trying
to influence are not always reaching out desperately for our brand’s little bundle
of emotions. Enough has been written about the sophistication of modern
consumers and their ability to decode and avoid every device of marketing,
should they so wish. This is no longer just a phenomenon of the most ‘advanced
markets’, either. Siemens launched its Xelibri phone with an ironic campaign
poking fun at modern technology mass-marketing and carrying the strapline
“That’s so tomorrow.” It generated interest not just in the expected places, but
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4. also in the leading cities of China, despite their relatively recent exposure to
modern marketing methods. And in the most developed markets, even irony is no
longer enough. The American middle-class adoption of blue-collar brands and
attitudes is simultaneously ironic and respectful: we have entered the Post-Ironic
Age.
This context has made life more difficult for brands appealing through emotion.
They are searching for connections with a more elusive consumer, through a
communication fog of irony, self-reference, and quirky humor. In a world where
much advertising was quite rational, it was easier to stand out by using pure “big”
emotions such as sex, excitement, or the cuteness of children and animals. All
these can still work, but they are received in a more sceptical environment.
Some brands have successfully reacted to this by developing campaigns, and a
personality, that do not overtly use ‘emotion’ in an easily described way, and yet
are clearly not rational either. A successful print campaign for Diesel is based on
the premise of bizarre market research conducted by the company. It uses
emotion in that it makes us smile, but the humor is carefully modulated. If we
think about it enough, we can figure out that it’s meant to make Diesel users look
like knowing, savvy people, far too intelligent to be fooled by the ludicrous
methods of the marketing world. There’s emotion there, but it’s a far cry from the
toned sexuality of Nick Kamen sitting in his underwear for Levi’s in the mid-80’s.
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5. Another development is that some brands have successfully adopted a much
less predictable approach to using emotion. Their tonality is not one-dimensional,
or necessarily consistent, but somehow still feels as if it’s all coming from the
same place. The voice of the defining modern brand is not mono, stereophonic,
or even quadrophonic: it’s polyphonic, like that new church organ-like ringtone on
your mobile phone. It’s a carefully arranged collection of emotional triggers that
keeps you engaged, and adds up to a complex personality that feels real and
interesting. Everywhere you look, there is evidence of the search for authenticity,
massively demonstrated over the last few years by the demand for retro and
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6. vintage clothing. Polyphonic brands often feel more authentic because they feel
more like real people, with a variety of moods and ways of talking.
The mother of all polyphonic brands is Nike, which has encompassed an
astonishing diversity of emotions in its advertising while still talking in an
inimitably Nike way. Raw excitement, tear-jerking inspiration, sophisticated
humour, unsophisticated humour, tranquil beauty, and sheer irreverence have all
played a part in Nike communications over the years. Yet, generally, you know
when it’s Nike talking to you and not someone else. There is a clear underlying
attitude that has been imitated by many, but never consistently captured by any
other brand.
This raises interesting questions for advertisers. How can they manage the
process of developing a powerful polyphonic brand, which generates strong
relationships by using a rich palette of emotions? The best way, of course, is if
those who work with the brand have an instinctive understanding of what the
brand really stands for. Nike’s powerful voice has not been formed by any single
brand manual that dictates the emotional tone of the brand’s contact with
consumers. Instead, there is a hugely strong corporate culture, built in part by an
amazing oral tradition, which gives people who work at or for Nike a pretty good
chance to get what Nike is about. Powerful emotional advertising for a brand
tends to emerge when people feel what the brand is about, rather than do it by
the manual. (Funny, that.)
It’s a lot easier for this to happen when the corporate culture, the emotional heart
of the company, clearly contains an essence that real people find appealing.
Otherwise we may end up, as Scott Bedbury puts it, ‘putting lipstick on a pig.’ In
recent years fewer advertising people have promised that advertising can solve
every problem, and more stress has been put on the need to develop the right
internal culture as well as the right communications. But what if the company is
still a little pig-like? After all, most companies are really not that interesting to
ordinary people, and many still carry a hint of a curly tail. Not every corporation
can be as intuitive as Nike, Virgin, or Diesel, but they still need to build strong
emotional bonds with their customers.
One response to this task is when a group of those working with the brand come
together for a session to try and capture its emotional essence. In days gone by,
this might have entailed going to a nice hotel in the countryside, decompressing,
bonding, and generally getting into a suitable state of mind. In a strict financial
climate, this can often be seen as indulgent, so many ‘offsites’ now take place
onsite, in colourless conference rooms decorated by corporate art carrying
inspiring symbols of teamwork or leadership. Part of the output of these sessions
may be a set of guidelines for the brand’s values and personality, often arranged
in a circle or a box. The list of words usually looks something like this:
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7. Honest
Confident
Contemporary
Understanding
Warm
Witty (not slapstick)
Innovative
This list is goes down pretty well internally, and may be approved by consumers
in research. It’s difficult to argue with, and that's exactly the problem. It’s
incredibly bland. Consider for a moment a brand that demonstrated exactly the
opposite qualities, a brand that was;
Lying
Timid
Old-fashioned
Uncomprehending
Cold
Humorless (despite occasional forays into slapstick)
Luddite
No one has launched this brand, or ever will (although I for one would buy it, if
only because it sounds a lot more interesting than the first one.) This reveals that
many of the words most commonly used to define brand ‘personality’ simply
don’t. They are just obvious. This often becomes apparent when the ‘personality’
gets illustrated on a video ‘essence tape’ using found footage cut together to a
rousing piece of music which no one (except Microsoft) could ever afford to use
in a real piece of advertising. The results are all too often spectacularly wishy-
washy. Personality and emotional richness have been eliminated, rather than
enhanced.
To avoid this, those working with brands need to fight very hard to weed out the
predictable or generic. We need to allow more individual, creative interpretations
of a brand’s personality to emerge, which are not driven by the need to achieve
easy consensus. We need to use visual and aural reference that feels right,
rather than just illustrating a list of words. And overall we need to allow emotions
and intuition to play a bigger part in the process, since the very thing we are
trying to create is itself emotional. All these are difficult in the normal course of
things, but the prize, a well-defined emotional brand space, is enormously
valuable.
Even if we achieve this there may still be trouble ahead. Speed of
communication, the availability of vast amounts of data on any subject, and the
constantly evolving sensibilities of the people we are talking to mean that some
level of rational underpinning needs to be available, even if it is not overt. If
there’s too big a disconnect, problems occur. At one level, the communications
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8. may simply cease to work: people may applaud the brand, and like the brand for
how it talks to them, but simply ignore it because their own experiences do not
support the spin.
More seriously, a brand which has forged powerful emotional bonds with its
audience is held up to the most stringent standards. If hell hath no fury like a
woman scorned, the marketing world hath no fury like a loyal consumer scorned.
The very power of Nike’s emotional bonds with the American public made it a
tempting target for attack over its labour practices. Direct marketers know that
some of the best customers are those who have complained and been satisfied:
the disappointment of loyal customers is equally potent. However, the power of
an emotionally-driven relationship does not dissipate overnight and, by being
seen to address those concerns over time, Nike has recaptured the lost ground.
When we say someone “is a bit emotional right now”, we mean it partly as a
warning. We are sending a message that “you may find dealing with this person
a little difficult right now.” Emotions are not always easy for people to deal with,
and the same is true for brands. It’s easy to make emotional advertising that is
patronizing, or generic, or unbelievable, or just plain nauseating. For brands,
emotion brings responsibility as well as power. So it’s easy to back off, and fall
back on advertising that appears to sell the product really well, and makes good
sense in the boardroom when presented after the quarterly budget. But then you
won’t have a puppy on your side when the going gets tough, will you?
John Shaw
Ogilvy & Mather
17th
December 2003
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