Tapping emotions to build virality. Does it work?
By: Karan Verma
Tags: Marketing, Trends, Emotions, Digital Marketing, Advertising

Have you been noticing how great advertisements have increasingly become more and more emotional. Some of my favourite ones in the recent past have been major tear-inducers. Give these a look to see what I mean:

Fortune’s attempt at making us cry (and buy their oil).

A grandmother (Daddi) insists on feeding her bed ridden grand son a home cooked meal while the nurse is dutiful and wouldn’t let that happen. Fast forward 5–6 iterations of the same routine with no luck yet, the grandmother brings the nurse a meal as well. The next day the nurse melts and let’s the grandmother feed the grandson, the screen then reads Fortune Oil.

My first reaction to this was, well, I could have pasted any other home cooking related food brand and the ad would have worked as well as it did for Fortune Oil. But still it did make me teary eyed.

The same happens with the Riso Ricebran Oil ad, even though this is about women living their lives on their own terms and their empowerment, see below:

A married girl, mother of one, is backpacking through her holiday talking about living each day as it comes. Walking by the river and the paddy fields, traveling by the train and visiting chocolate stores having a time of her life traveling solo. Bang, the screen reads live 100 percent and the Riso Ricebrand Oil logo appears. Could this ad not be for any product that a typical Indian lady uses at home? It surely could be.

So here’s the point that I am making. Do these ads inspire us to buy a particular brand, not so much. But do they elicit a strong emotion, very much so. So what is happening here? Do they even work?

Yes, these ads are received well by the audiences, comments on Youtube and Facebook will tell you as much. However, will they remember which brand’s ad did they shed a tear for? Most certainly not. And that is because these are one time stories that the brand chose to run and plaster their brand at the end of the story.

This is part of the trend that the industry has seen globally for about half a decade now. And it isn’t about the sad emotion only, it is rather about emotion in general. There are many to tap into, Emotions such as inspiration, care, love for parents, perseverance, etc. In the same light see how Proctor and Gamble inspires us with this powerful ad about the best job in the word.

There are a various things at play here. Let’s discuss few of these and then perhaps we could try to suggest a few to-dos for brands with respect to these ads.

How come these story-like / short film type ads are all the rage now? Many brands have given it a go. Let me show you some good ones, Google started it all with their Sofie ad in 2011, see here. The ad makers embraced it all too well in the South East Asia markets too, see here a sad ad by MetLife, another one about an unsung hero by Thai Life Insurance in 2014 and another one by True Move H about giving unconditionally.

British Airways has done a lot of them in the same stride too over the years:

see here about Helena, the air hostess falling in love with India’s hospitality (inpired by a true story),

here about Sumeet and Chetna (husband and wife) coming closer in their travels sponsored by British Airways,

here when British Airways sponsored a trip for Esme’s grand parents to Australia. Esme and her parents shifted to Australia due to work and missed being together, and another one (our last British Airways example)

here when they sponsored a trip for a Non-Resident Indian man to go meet his mother in India from the USA.

So what can we tell you about these. Let’s see.

Content itself, not an unwanted break between content.

These ads aren’t breaks in between two segments of content you watch on TV, but content itself. The brands now make short-films, run them on TV a few times and then bank on the power of sharing over digital/social media platforms. Some of the ads you see in this discussion have several million views and that is a proof of concept.

No real brand advantage. Hence creating a bond over time.

Immense competition in mostly all categories has forced brands and ad makers to look outside of just talking about product/service. In an almost commoditised state of competition in most product categories, what choice does a brand have other than trying to take the conversation away from facts and reason. See here how, Vicks, an over-the-counter medication and ointment brand takes the persuasion to the emotion of care over the years rather than logic and reason.

Science / Psychology has backed Storytelling

Reason, evidence, facts, argument etc. do not affect us as a well told story does. Our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by a story and it changes our beliefs much more effectively than reason. You should notice it on yourself. Next time when someone starts an attempt at persuasion with reason and evidence notice how you become vigilant and want to understand each and every detail. However, also notice when you start listening a story how you put your intellect-guards down and settle in for a warm and fuzzy story that melts you. And in the process you forget to notice any logical leaps the story-teller may be taking.

However, can there be better product integration

At the outset we spoke about whether or not these ads inspire us to buy a particular brand and that’s one thing that is easy to question. However, for certain product categories it may be difficult to integrate the product in a way that the ad inspires a brand preference. For instance consider these latest ads (First, second, and third) from Amazon in India. They’ve integrated their product well in the stories but couldn’t any other e-commerce brand such as Flipkart not be used to resolve the tension in the ads. This is a challenge all ad makers and brands should take upon themselves.

Millennials are digital natives

For the first time there’s been a generation that has grown up with social media, smart phones and instant access to the internet and instant messaging and sharing. This changes the game in many ways. Humor me, it has changed how people seek information and make decisions. For instance, they always have access to someone who surely would have used the product or brand in question and so word of mouth is easy to find. Similarly, detailed technical information about the product is available to all in a few taps of their smartphone screens. With all this about millennials’ lifestyle put together, it is all the more reason to take the conversation beyond facts and logic to emotion and feelings.

What can brands do:

Does it work with all brands? Well, it doesn’t always work. Just imagine this ad or this one, that google launched not too long ago to be built for another search engine say, Microsoft’s Bing. Would it have worked? I think it would not. Market leaders are better placed to connect with their customers in this way since customers already interact with the brand in the situation that the brand is using in it ads and are so used to the brand in their day to day life that the cultural intensity anyway is defused time and again by the same brand. Consistency is key. You ask so what option do the smaller or non-market leader brands have? Well, we think consistency is key. If the brand is able to align their marketing activities including their ads with the core emotion they want to elicit over a period of time then over time audiences see it as second nature to think of that brand whenever the emotion presents itself. Consider, Coke and Happiness here, Nike and perseverance here, Apple and innovativeness here and even British Airways’ example discussed earlier in how they consistently built on the emotion over many ads and stories.

Goes without saying though, that genuine corporate alignment with an emotion and vision and then showing it through consistently telling emotional stories of how the brand enhances its customers life, will work naturally and much better than telling someone else’s emotional story and plastering your brand on it.

Let me leave you with this gem of a clip from our beloved adman show MadMen, see how Don Draper’s pitch to Kodak (a client) is on point and highly emotional. Could we say then that good ads will always relate with you on an emotional level instead of a transactional level?