The law of emotion

The Law of Emotion.
by John Shaw

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….

Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Plaza 309 West 49th Street New York New York 10019-7399 T 212 237 4000 F 212 237 5123

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 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 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.


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 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:

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 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


The law of emotion

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (20)

Similaire à The law of emotion

Similaire à The law of emotion (20)

Plus de Terence Ling

Plus de Terence Ling (20)

The law of emotion