Does your business use emotional appeal to win the hearts of your customers? Have you ever given it a try? David Freemantle says feelings have a critical role in this regard. Yet few of any ads will make an emotional appeal. You will win with emotional appeal.
Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced.
– David Freemantle
Steve Jobs liked to say that it’s not enough to kill bad ideas, you have to kill good ones too. That’s because a good strategy is about making choices and it takes more than intelligence or even instinct, it takes discipline, one of Jobs’ most overlooked qualities.
Marketing strategy is particularly difficult because, as I’ve noted before, the rules have changed. A generation ago, brands mostly strove to create buzz and “drive awareness,” now they need to build compelling experiences that keep consumers engaged.
However, the old tasks have not gone away. We still need to run TV ads and in-store promotions, man conference booths, and hand out brochures, but now on top of that, we have a whole new world of algorithms, apps, and devices to master. To meet the new challenges, we need a new strategic approach, a new mindset, and new organizations.
You should try to amuse and dazzle more than touch the heart. Which factor do you feel is most effective in drawing attention to your advertisements? There are many to choose from, aren’t they?
This is a critical missed opportunity in our view. We have studied and evaluated commercials for more than 5 years. Our focus is somewhat unique; we aren’t interested in entertainment value, we are interested in business impact. We study each spot and evaluate its power to build the business and to build the brand.
While emotional spots are not common, they are some of the most effective we have seen. Consider these emotional spots:
Guinness
In this commercial, Guinness uses an inspiring story to convey its emotional influence. Like great stories, it has a beginning where sympathetic characters encounter a complicating situation, a middle where the characters confront and attempt to resolve the situation and an end where the outcome is revealed. It does not interpret or explain the action in the story for the audience.
Instead, a good story allows each member of the audience to interpret the story and its emotion as he or she understands the action.
This is why people find good, emotional stories so appealing and why they find advertising that simply conveys facts and information boring.
Here is the Guinness ad video to refresh you or for you to review in case you haven’t seen it.
Guinness’s marketing story based on emotion has flipped traditional beer advertising on its head by getting rid of the template and telling a story — a real emotional story — that connects with people.
The responses were overwhelmingly positive … customers and particularly the target customers are looking for meaningful stories. The emotion in this marketing strategy certainly is addressing this end state in our opinion.
Zillow
The family in this ad is looking for a new home using the real estate company Zillow. It eventually is able to find exactly what they are looking for. What the mother and children don’t expect is what is waiting for them on moving day.
Some of the best emotional stories effectively use the element of surprise like Zillow has done here.
Bell
Have you seen the remarkable branding video design from this South African business? The Bell’s TV commercial features a father whose intrepid spirit demonstrates just what it takes to be a true man of character. The video was created to market and build the brand.
It is a very simple story. It advocates learning to read no matter your age or status in society. To us, it creates pure magic with the story, the visuals, the music, and the emotion. It certainly finds emotional triggers
Not a real secret here. The story and music that are created, while familiar, are as distinctive as they are heartwarming. Watch the faces, actions, and passions of the people in the story and listen to the music. They draw you into the emotion.
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that the experiences are important to remember. Certainly, that kind of emotion in this story, isn’t there?
If you haven’t seen it, watch it now, it is only 2 minutes and it will inspire you. It is certainly easily in our top 5 of all time.
The bottom line
Deliver the message with both supreme confidence and self-deprecating humor. Be a man who is unafraid.
So, be bold. There is something there. Just a small observation that meant something to me and I hope it means something to you.
Content favors the bold. Bold makes you pay attention.
What we found most interesting in this concept is its simplicity. Making the simple complicated is commonplace … but making the complicated simple, awesomely simple is real creativity!
Lots of ideas are being generated and the process is definitely great at customer engagement. We believe its success will generate more business experimentation in creativity.
