This also goes back to the idea that you only advertise if your product is in trouble. It's great to make an emotional connection with your customer, but if you make that connection but fail to make a sale, then what good is it? I think your client would rather be counting his money than closing the doors but feeling good about all of those emotional connections.
Can you show us any ads that sell an oven cleaner like it was a perfume?
@Howard: That example wasn't meant to be taken literally. It was one of those literary contrivances in which you take something to its logical absurdity. You're a client, right?
Hello,
I enjoy reading your blog. It's one of the smartest things out there and cuts through the swamp of dumb very nicely. I enjoy your opinion and, unlike a lot of advertising blogs out there, I actually learn stuff. Brilliant. I'm a creative working in London. Every day, two things happen to me. Every day I lose a fucking pen and every day have to sit and listen to some dummy jabbering bullshit about something I stopped listening to after 10 seconds (it used to be 30 seconds). They make that dunce from Syzzzzzzzzzgy you blogged about look like a hovering prophet with an almighty intelligence (he got fired by the way*. I read it this morning. He's going to 'pursue other interests' like cry-wanking himself into submission.
So I'd just like to say thanks. That's it. Just thanks. It's not often you find people you'd actually like to work for one day.
Onwards
Yunoito
(this is not my name)
Most awards, even those that pertain to be about effectiveness, help cement the notion that anything that "sells" must be crap. I'm personally not a great admirer of Oxyclean's advertising, (may the spokesperson rest in peace nonetheless), albeit a consumer of the product. So the advertising apparently worked. And it never won an Effie?
Bob,
You're saying that about practical things like bread, shoes, lawn mowers.
For Art( my field, painting actually) what practical words come to your mind that speak to your point here.
Don't laugh, I am really asking. Cause I think there is a practical side to my field.
Well, laugh. but I really would like to know. 
Oops, updated my site address. Here's the right one. 
Offering someone a "logical" reason to try a product usually involves an emotional appeal, right?
I mean, you're solving a problem, highlighting a benefit, relieving somebody's pain point...
All of which generate an emotional response.
I think you've created a faux gap between "logical" and "emotional."
After all, all buying decisions really are emotional (how else do you explain George Bush).
Cigarette ads are banned in Canada, and--in Quebec, at least--cigarettes aren't allowed to be sold out in the open at corner stores or grocery shops. Yet they still sell like nobody's business.
Not a great product to push, but perhaps a lesson to be learned in there somewhere...
>>Cigarette ads are banned in Canada, and--in Quebec, at least--cigarettes aren't allowed to be sold out in the open at corner stores or grocery shops. Yet they still sell like nobody's business.
...but not all purchases directly involve emotions.
An ad for Oreos might bring back nostalgic childhood memories of twisting them apart with your father on a rainy afternoon in the backyard - but if you've never had an Oreo you may not connect so vividly with that brand, therefore opening you to purchasing other brands or even generics. At that point it's just a cookie.
Another excellent post, in which I agree with everything except one point: booze. I drink whisky. Specifically Jack Daniels. Not because of its heritage or cachet, but I realized a long time ago that cheap booze equals bad hangover. Now if JD could advertise that it gives you a nice mellow buzz without a bad hangover, it would be a logical connection that I would get emotional about!
Also, ditto Yunoito. Thanks.
@Rob - Jack Daniels is now a brand that is a surrogate for quality for you. Sure people by things “because they … work better, taste better etc” but when the consumer has trouble figuring out “why” are product is better then the brand becomes a surrogate for quality.
The “perception” might be that a Sanyo TV is better quality than a Telefunken but how the hell would the average consumer know? They don’t. Instead they use the brand name as a surrogate for quality.
Hence advertising plays an important role. Even on a subconscious level those brands that advertise tell the consumer that they are successful enough to be able to afford to advertise. Then when the consumer is in front of a wall of TVs they will recognise brand names and (not saying it is a logical conclusion) but they imply quality.
"Most products are bought for specific, concrete reasons -- they taste better, work better, look nicer, are more convenient, or cost less."
The reason branding works in every single product category is because this assertion is patently wrong.
Harleys were sub-par motorcycles for a long time, but people didn't buy them for practical reasons.
Jeeps and Land Rovers get terrible ratings from J.D. Power and Consumer Reports, yet people who will never leave dry pavement buy them every year for totally emotional reasons.
Purdue Chicken and Morton Salt gained customer preference through the emotional power of their brand images, even though they were absolute commodities!
(Does anyone really believe that a fast food chain with a better tasting hamburger or a faster drive-thru will bring down McDonald's?)
Building a better mousetrap will not have the world beating a path to your door. For those who don't believe this, just spend 30 days in a direct marketing agency and see what generates greater response -- emotion or logic. (Hint: One of them wins over 80% of the time.)
I don't think it's not a question of either or. It's a question of how you present both logic and emotion.
When I work with direct marketers they beg and scream for logic--as if they can prove their way into inducing someone to buy. They also believe it's OK to scream, shout and use bad type if it creates a sale. I would argue that an immediate sale is fine for certain throw-away products. But it doesn't create a brand-or a lifetime consumer who feels loyal to it.
When I work with pure brand zealots, they seem to want to ignore logic and create art. Which, while is sometimes entertaining, break thru and influential to a customers buying process-- is more often than not garbage.
I think the sweet spot is not stopping short at information. Provide rationale benefits in the idea, but it must move from information to the higher order of persuasion. And that takes more than features.
I think Mr. Bellina has something there. Every advertiser understands features and benefits.
Features are facts. They're logic-based.
Benefits explain how those features improve the consumer's life in some way. They're typically emotion-based.
And every good ad has both. There is no either/or. There is no versus.
TAC - I wasn't prodding to be a pain in the ass. I was curious if to know if you'd actually seen such a thing. It would make a good SNL piece.
@Howard: Sorry I was snotty. I was in a bad mood.
Every great copywriter from David Ogilvy to Herschell Gordon Lewis to Denny Hatch understands that emotion is the basis for every sale. In fact, they've quantified these emotions into a list that every decent copywriter has taped to his or her cubicle wall:
1. Fear
2. Greed
3. Hope
4. Exclusivity
5. Anger
6. Flattery
7. Guilt
How Bob can be in the ad business and not know this is beyond me.
I am finding that clients prefer to harp on about emotional connection and and all that babble because it's easier than looking at, and fixing/improving their products. Creating some delusional emotional connection is the magic bullet that drives sales or lets them charge exhorbitent prices for shit products.
Hey Contrarian,
I think you're creating an either/or situation that doesn't exist. It's both. Our brains have an instinctual center, an emotional center, and a logical center.
And as can be appraised by any halfway honest review of human behavior our instinctual and emotional centers are by far dominant.
People rationalize decisions that are driven by their emotions and instincts.
But yes, some rational facts are often necessary to get people to try your product.
My boss Bruce Turkel puts it this way - "Hearts Then Minds." You make an emotional connection so that your consumer becomes open to the logic of your offering.
There's a bigger point to be made about the use of emotions in communications that goes beyond the product category you're trying to promote. The human brain is hardwired to respond to and remember emotional signals much better than rational signals. The way our brains are organized forces us to process those 'hotter' signals before even bothering to decide if we'll sit still for the logical explanation. Author and Biologist John Medina made this point very well, backed up by extensive research, in his book Brain Rules.
I've found this to be true in virtually any category of business. Once, by bucking the trend in a technology niche and focusing on the emotional benefits of a company's solution, we were able to stand out in a crowd of left-brain messages and help this company achieve their goal of growing their sales and being acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars.
The real trick, though, is that the emotional benefit must be tied to rational benefits in a relevant way, so prospects can justify buying what you're selling.
There is a vast virgin territory waiting to be exploited in marketing. It's currently populated largely by marketing managers who operate under the illusion that if they lead with a good, sound logical argument for their product, then people will be motivated to buy it. That's about as likely to work as using a logical argument to pick up a woman at a bar.
Good stuff Bob.
I heard this radio commercial last week and tracked it down on youtube when I didn't hear back from anyone from the company. I wanted to find out if it was produced by an agency or in-house. It seems like a cool product, but is stupidly almost retro in its reliance on pure fact. I liked the retro feel, but I wondered if they were consciously going for that.
It's almost post-modern in its corniness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q...h?
v=QzpX_LtTy54
@Ann:
Sounds like it was written by an eye doctor.
The are two sets of reasons emotion beats logic in advertising. There's all the neuro-science stuff (see Claxton, Calne, Lehrer etc.) about the way our brains receive, process and store information. Then there are benefits arising out of what I call the logic of mass communication. Rationality has no chance in a straight fight with emotion in the mass media because the latter is more inclusive, intrusive, because it provides infinite scope for differentiation and because it makes direct comparisons more difficult. It is also harder to legislate against and bears repetition better than a straightforward statement of fact.
The downside of all this is that although emotional connections are reliable and easily made, they can become anachronistic. My granny was denied fruit throughout the war and still thinks bananas are impossibly exotic. You get the picture.
This is why brands inhibit the ability of markets to adapt to changing circumstances. If you look at categories such as processed foods, automobiles and consumer credit, respectively responsible for record levels of obesity, environmental degradation and bankruptcies, all are dominated by brands that cannot afford to let go of their entirely anchronistic and regressive brand values.
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