I received a link to Tom Hopkins’ blog, Random Thoughts and Observations, which includes a couple of posts related to the book A Master Class in Brand Planning: The Timeless Works of Stephen King. I have little doubt that the book is worth reading but what I’m really interested in is Tom’s motivation for gathering such a laundry list of quotes, from King as well as others.
Most of the quotes center around one of two themes: the belief that creativity is not rational but largely due to luck, and that emotion is the overriding determinant of decision making. In the case of the latter, I think Tom is propagating a popular myth that, if taken out of context, could do harm to many brands.
In referring to the big decisions we make, concerning things like religion, sex, marriage, children, houses, and education, Tom quotes from King’s Advertising: Art and Science:
Emotion is much the largest element in making all those decisions and I can’t for the life of me see why, if all the important decisions are based on emotion, one should suddenly go all rational about soap powder.
I have to admit that comparing the mundane choice of something to get clothes clean to a major life decision seems almost ludicrous to me. You might as well compare a child’s first utterings with the sonnets of Shakespeare. The first are no doubt gratifying to the kid’s parents at the time, but the latter still touch the hearts of millions, centuries after they were written. (And by the way, on the topic of creativity, do you think Shakespeare would attribute his works to luck, or to talent expressed through hard work?)
Don’t get me wrong. I agree that emotion plays a dominant role in the big decisions in our lives. But choosing a soap powder is a much less important decision, which carries little emotional charge. There are plenty of alternatives. The process of making a selection is not overwhelming. And even the consequences of a poor choice are relatively minor. It would seem, then, that so long as you believe your chosen brand will get your clothes clean, it doesn’t matter which one you buy. The decision doesn’t seem to warrant much thought.
But paradoxically, because people like to think of themselves as rational, they want their decisions to be anchored in facts that they think are relevant to their needs. Hopkins pulled in a quote from John Treasure, from The Origins of Account Planning, which says “there is still a Puritan streak in [advertisers] which says that it is wicked for people to have non-functional values, that they ought to buy brands for function and performance only.”
I believe Treasure has it backwards. Advertisers might think it’s “wicked” to have non-functional values, but only because advertisers are people, and it is people, normal human beings, who have trouble with the idea of deliberately buying brands for reasons other than function and performance. Warm feelings and a sense of connection toward a brand can’t be bad, but just feeling good about a brand without any belief that it will do something useful for you is not going to be enough.
I think the real issue here – obscured by the abstractions cited by Hopkins – is whether you need to state or demonstrate a brand’s functional benefit in an ad. To answer that, let’s consider the Unilever campaign “Dirt is Good.” Does it explicitly demonstrate that Persil/Omo will get your clothes clean no matter what your kid does? Does it show the brand’s cleaning power in a side-by-side demonstration? No, but there is a strong implicit communication that the brand will do its job, that you can let your kids get dirty because you can trust the brand.
Speaking at a Millward Brown event in London, Richard Swaab, executive vice chairman of Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO said this:
Coke has the right to play in a world of optimism and positivity because that is what Coke has done for a very long time. You earn the rights to those kinds of things. Persil can do “Dirt is Good” because it has had years and years of “Persil Washes Whiter,” which gives it the right to make that enormously brave flip. If another washing powder had said “dirt is good” or another brand of somebody said “we want to own optimism,” it wouldn’t ring true.
In other words, brands like Persil, Coca-Cola and Dove can afford to move on to an emotional platform because they have earned permission to do so. Newer brands still need to focus on establishing their functional credentials even if their ultimate intent is to ladder up to an emotional benefit.
Overall I find it amusing that people bandy the word “emotions” around without seeming to consider the biggest overall driver of emotional response: product satisfaction. After all, it is product satisfaction that underlies the success of brands heralded by planners as the new order of marketing—brands like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Because these brands satisfied a functional need better than expected, people bonded to them and recommend them to others. Some of the most successful advertising out there succeeds because it focuses our attention on what matters most: a positive experience delivered by a product making good on its promise. I would suggest that even the likes of Persil, Coca-Cola and Dove can ill-afford to ignore their functional benefits, even if they do not need to state them explicitly.
And perhaps that is the point. What happens if we simply substitute the word “functional” for “rational”? Does it make it any more palatable to suggest people make decisions on both a functional and an emotional basis? After all, you did not choose your career solely because it was emotionally rewarding, did you? Not unless you were a trust-fund baby, anyway.
OK, over to you. As my boss, Eileen Campbell, likes to say, “Thoughts, questions, expressions of emotion, anyone?”
Tags: Millward Brown, Nigel Hollis, brands, Tom Hopkins, emotions in advertising, emotion and decision making, dirt is good
(22 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
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January 4th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Hi Nigel,
Could it be that the challenge we face is not in identifying whether the emotional is more important than the rational (or vice versa) but rather in acknowledging that the ideal balance may differ on a case by case basis? It seems clear from much of the equity work that I’ve been involved with that the ‘optimal’ combination of these two core elements is not universally fixed and can even differ for the same brand among different audiences (existing buyers or users versus those yet to directly experience a brand for example).
The problem with arguments such as the one presented is that they seek to make broad generalizations and find common patterns that are not universally proven to be there. To counter Tom’s basic assertion, I have actually seen much more evidence of folks championing establishing ‘emotional affinity’ with consumers as the answer to most brands ills than the other way round - and neither approach seems all that helpful in guiding marketing actions.
In addition, just from a personal perspective, while choice of partner, the decision to have kids, what political party you choose and what you decide to love or hate may be spurred by emotion it would seem more often than not to be styled by some pretty serious research. We’d be a pretty sad bunch otherwise wouldn’t we?
January 5th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Hi Andy,
I believe your premise that the optimal balance differs from brand to brand and from context to context is 100% correct.
I do, however, think that it is useful to have a general framework against which to judge the specific situation. All our research suggests that the strongest brands have a mix of both functional and emotional benefits and that the functional often ladder up to the emotional. To stay with the ladder analogy, all I am trying to say in the post is that you cannot get to the top of the brand ladder without successfully climbing the lower rungs first.
Have a great weekend,
Nigel
January 5th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for the link and I’m glad the quotes were interesting. Just to quickly clarify: that post was not meant to be coherent argument (!). I have two blogs: the one linked to at the bottom of this, Usable interfaces and the one I use to store useful links and quotes, Random - which you’re refering to.
All of the quotes in the post are taken from an anthology of Stephen King’s writings and the reason it includes people like Rory Sutherland is because those people wrote introductions to modern articles. They’re not supposed to be on particular theme, they’re just all the bits I marked while reading the book. Although I do think there are some gems in there.
I certainly agree that any successful product will need to fulfill functional needs as well as the more emotive ones. In fact this is something that King spends a lot of time on in the book - which I heartily recommend, you won’t find any wool in his analysis! However focus on functionality is a short-term plan and is bound to lead to market commoditisation.
In particular, you’s be interested in King’s detailed analysis of how Andrex have maintained a price differential over own label toilet papers for several decades (surely there’s no functional difference) using branding. This is certainly not a moral judgement or analysis, just an analysis of fact - which is what King is amazingly good at.
The argument I find most compelling is that the shopper simply has no time (and probably not enough information or skill) to make a rational comparison of all alternatives. The value of brands is both a promise of performance (across rational and emotional) and a chance for the shopper to express themselves. It’s a compicated business and psychologists still can’t adequately explain it.
And one thing in your post I’d seriously query is the assertion that new brands tend to look at functional performance (or ’satisfaction’) first. Every brand I can think of from the last couple of years has been a definite combination of both, with brands like Innocent distinctly favouring the emotive. Google in particular has been able to circumvent scrutiny and criticism for acts that would kill other brands by the inherent feeling their brand inspires.
January 5th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the clarification and your comments.
To your point about the shopper, and thinking specifically of frequently purchased consumer goods, I don’t think most of them make a conscious decision. Instead their purchases are largely dictated by habit and cued by recognition more than anything. However, when that habit is disrupted in some way - out of stocks, competitive end-aisle display - then I believe they do anchor their decision based on some fact before going on instinct.
I think there is a big difference between Innocent and Google but that could make a whole post in itself! Let’s see what other people have to say first.
Many thanks, Nigel
January 5th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Hi Nigel, Tom and Andy,
I think Tom is misinterpreting the new paradigm about the role of emotion in decision making. Unfortunately he then drew you into his paradigm.
The issue is not whether to be emotional versus rational. The new paradigm says that ‘it is hard to be rational if you lost the ability to be emotional’.
The way Damasio explains it: Emotion sets the background against which you are rational and out of this comes the decision. In other words both emotion and rational are inputs to the decision.
In the COMMAP models analysis we found a high positive corelation between ‘Relevant News’ and ad-liking. (Obviously also ad liking with Entertainment, aspiration, non-boring, and other emotional measures).
I agree with what you (Nigel) said.
And would like to ad to this. The perceived functional ellements mostly create the expected emotional reward one believes one gets from the brand. It is only because I believe Coke is refreshing that I believe in the emotional reward they promise of Father Chistmass drinking it. IT is only because of the functional elements I believe Mercedes delivers that I believe I will feel save, feel responsible, feel envied. It is only because of the functionality of Omo not being diputed that they can tell me its good to be dirty. Etc.
It is when the functional beliefs have been established that you can advertise the emotional benefits. If you have not established the functional perceptions then it is worth while to establish them along with the emotional benefit that they will deliver. To just, as rule for all situations, jump to emotional benefits with no substantiation seems to me to be a poor strategy and not suported by the modern views of the role of emotion in decision making.
Tom, I believe you confuse ‘habit purchase’ with ‘emotional purchase’. If this is the case then emotion has little power to change brand preference. It is true that people don’t want to waste time making long purchase decisions, but this is habit purchase, and is driven by past positive experiences - hence positive emotions.
Regards,
Erik.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:49 am
Thanks Nigel,
one small follow up in I may which is to link the excellent The Advertised Mind by your colleague Erik du Plessis, which provides research based insight into the theory of advertising and consumer decision making. In particular, he has an interesting analogy of consumer brand memories being like opening an overstocked cupboard - and all the knowledge and associations about the brand tumbling out.
January 6th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Thanks Erik,
I posted the link to your book before your post, so I’m not sure how they ended up coming out the other way around. Apologies for any confusion caused.
I very much enjoyed your book and do not doubt for a second that the experience of - or belief in - functional performance is a necessary precursor of the appeal to the emotions.
The point which I believe King was making in the quote that this is all a response to is that there are nonfunctional values and that they do affect purchase decision. I believe this has been amply supported with experiments using blind vs non-blind product tests (e.g. with coke).
I’d be very interested if you have time to hear your views on what is being attempted in Fallon’s advertising for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.
With regards
Tom
January 6th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Hi Folks,
Looks like we are heading towards vehement agreement here which is excellent.
Tom, I have put in the link to the TAM site in your previous post. Interestingly, I also sent a draft of my original post to Erik for comment. As a result of which I removed a section suggesting it was easier to be rational about choosing soap powder than a mate. And, Erik, I still think there is an element of truth in that…
Cheers, Nigel
January 10th, 2008 at 5:37 am
I’m with Tom on questioning Nigel’s assertion that “Newer brands still need to focus on establishing their functional credentials”. I’m thinking of the launch of alcohol brands, where in most countries advertising regulations mean they cannot focus on their fuctional benefits (”gets you drunk quick”). Yet there are enough examples of successful launches to suggest this doesn’t matter. I’m not sure I go for the laddering from fuctional to emotional benefits as a general principle…sure, some brands have gone this route. But, surely you arent suggesting that the old Persil “Every little thing is going to be alright” wasn’t doing both?
January 11th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Hi Dom, thanks for the comment.
Of course the best is if you can seamlessly combine the two, as in the example of the old Persil ad, but then people knew what Persil stood for, what it did. It can communicate its cleaning credentials implicitly.
With regard to the alcoholic beverage sector I seem to remember the CEO of Diageo presented a chart showing a progression from rational to emotional. I will try to find it.
Cheers, Nigel