Category: Uncategorized

It really is all about attention

If brand building is all about setting up relatable, repeatable patterns that communicate value and relevance, advertising is about breaking all the rules (with authenticity).

I promise it’s not as dry as it sounds, but the key here is expectation violation theory. It’s what happens when you consciously become aware of something, in short, it’s what you notice.

In general, “expectation violations” are defined as events that are incompatible with one’s situation-specific prediction and that should contribute to a change in expectations.

Frontiers Scientific Platform
Expectation violation is what you notice

Every send, our brains receive, interpret and filter huge amounts of information. And, on a very simple level, deem it to be useful or useless. And if it’s useful, it alerts our conscious brain to that particular piece of data.

Expectations and reality

We walk around with certain expectations of how the world around us behaves. That’s how we know that stepping off a really high cliff, or into a really busy road is a bad idea. We don’t have to have experienced it ourselves, or even witnessed someone else doing it.

We’re constantly filling in the gaps. Taking what we know about how things, in our experience, ought to work… and making up the rest! Did you know each of your eyes has a blind spot where your optic nerve attaches to the retina? Here are some fun tests you can do to find your blind spots! When I get a migraine, my brain stops filling in the gaps, and the blind spots become more and more obvious. Strange!

The philosopher Daniel Dennet says that our brains are in essence anticipation machines – that a fundamental aspect of cognition is the necessity of forming expectations, based on direct or indirect experience, for how things are in the world

Faris

So when we’re just going about our business, interpreting all this data, happily filling in all the gaps, and correctly predicting what’s about to happen in our little bubble of a world. We don’t really notice anything. Ever have the feeling of arriving at your destination and having no recollection of how you got there? Not a single expectation was violated. Well done brain, you did it!

When something does violate those little old expectations you can have a positive or negative reaction (that’s called the violation valance, in case you’re interested).

The evaluation of the violation is based upon the relationship between the particular behavior and the valence of the actor.

Wikipedia

Humour and comedy often rely on eliciting a positive valance to an expectation violation. The old set up and punchline is exactly this. The set-up creates the expectation, the punchline violates it, and you (hopefully) have a positive valance – you laugh.

Postal service jokes don’t need much setup

It’s all in the delivery

It’s also the reason that people are right when they say you should under promise and over deliver. When you under promise, you lower expectations, and therefore you elicit a positive valence when you violate that expectation by doing better than expected. Rather than just telling them what you’re going to do, and doing it.

In our System 1 brain (the part that does most of the day to day thinking, and is very instinctual) this is when they wake up the more cognitive System 2 brain to help them out and de-code the message.

Expectation violation and advertising

So what does that all mean for your next advert?

We all know the old AIDA model (attention, interest, decision, action), so something similar. Well, you first need to catch someone’s attention before you can knuckle down to telling them about the awesome benefits of your latest widget.

And this is most effectively done through violating expectations, particularly those around people, and cultural or societal norms. The book Unlocking profitable growth (again, not as dry as it sounds) reccomends a balance of 80% familiarity, with 20% new or innovation.

We have so many demands on our mental processing, that we don’t respond well when our “cognitive load” is stretched. So for advertisers, that means priming our ad to the gills with the familiar (our distinctive assets, our cultural associations, familiar words, images and sounds – things that reinforce our image of the world), and then dropping that attention-grabbing, novelty or innovative moment in.

Innovation wrapped in a cloak of familiarity

For me, one of the adverts that does this best is Always #LikeAGirl campaign. The set-up has a sense of familiarity. It’s playing back to us a truth about the world we live in.

And then it drops a new idea.

That Like A Girl is not an insult. That girls are strong. And brave. And sporty. That with our stereotypes and slurs, we’re harming the girls of the world. Harming people we love.

In the works of Unlocking profitable growth; it is a kernel of novelty combined with extreme familiarity, which is one of their successful advertising combinations.

How can you use expectation violation theory to help improves the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? What brands do you think do this really well?

Be brave.

Feel stupid.

Pop over here and have a read

Pop.

Such a little word.

  • Pop the kettle on and have a cup of tea.
  • Gorgeous scarf! Gives your outfit a pop of colour!
  • Nah, I’m not really into Pop Music.
  • You can’t get a pint for less than £5 a pop these days!
  • Why’d you take a pop at me? I’ve not done anything.
  • Grab me a bottle of pop from the shop would you?
  • I even have a friend who calls me Sallie Pop 🤷🏻‍♀️

You get the point.

Pop commands

A recent blog post on tips for new teachers from Jonathan Porter, Deputy Head at Michaela – a “free school doing things differently” – many people were introduced to the idea of “pop commands” for the first time. I heard about them from one of my favourite podcasts, The High Low, where they were undecided as to their merit. See what you think.

So what is a pop command? It’s a soft way of telling someone to do something, and I would imagine pretty British. That very first example of mine is a pop command: pop the kettle on.

It’s a flexible word, that’s for sure. And it’s generally unthreatening. It doesn’t leave much room for manoeuvre, but it also doesn’t give you a reason not to do what’s being asked of you.

‘Pop your shirt in for me, Tom’ or ‘Pop yourself over there, Jerry’. They’re imperatives, so it’s clear that what you’re asking is not really negotiable, but it takes out some of the sting of ‘Tuck your shirt in!’ or ‘Sit down!’ It’s a command that doesn’t sound like a command, which is just how you want it.

Or, as Helen Rumbelow put it in her recent article in The Times:

“Pop” has stealth power, turning any speaker into an indomitable northern matron, calling to “Pop the kettle on, love.”

The when and whys of pop commands

Tone is something we talk about a lot in branding. It’s less tangible than a visual style, more subjective. To bring it to life, we use characters, possibly famous people. “We talk as if we’re Olivia Pope in Scandal”, or “We’ve got a Great British Bake Off communication style”. It helps us conjure up what words we might use, and how we might communicate.

And we also talk a lot about the magic acronym, CTA, or Call to Action, “an instruction to the audience designed to provoke an immediate response” (thanks Wikipedia).

But how many people really like being told what to do? And by an advert no less.

The idea of a pop command interests me because, sure, it’s an imperative and gives an action, be it’s not exactly telling you that you have to do something.

Pop this blog post over to a friend who might enjoy it, now won’t you?

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Triggers & emotions: an exploration

Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

In a world with more and more connections, we feel less and less connected. In a world brimming with data, we feel less and less sure of what we know. In a world of more and more people, we feel alone.

Humans have evolved to crave companionship and connection, which we create through storytelling, sharing emotions and practicing empathy.

So, it’s no wonder companies with emotive marketing do better than those that compete on more rational grounds.

Emotional advertising versus rational advertising

Just a few examples of research that shows the impact of emotional advertising, versus rational advertising.

Within a fifth of the time it takes your cognitive brain to process information, your emotional mind can analyse your feelings and tell your gut what you should do. 

Steve Harvey

The original advertising planning guide from JWT is a good place to start with any journey in this arena, so I’ll pull out a few useful strands below (paraphrased).

A brand’s appeal must be built up over time using three different types of appeal:

  1. Sensory appeal
  2. Emotional appeal
  3. Rational appeal

Some appeals are very effective in motivating people to buy, but if they are common across many products in a category will be very much less effective in encouraging a purchase of a particular brand. There for a brand’s blend of appeals must be distinct and motivating.

It is not the advert or communication itself that matters, but the response of the receiver. And so, taking the appeals above, when setting objectives for a campaign, consider:

  1. Response from the sense – what do we want people to notice about the brand?
  2. Response from the emotions – what do we want people to feel towards the brand?
  3. Response from the reason – what do we want people to believe about the brand?

Our emotions drive our purchases. The No. 1 reason people share an ad is intensity of emotion. Great emotional ads are all highly shared and important because they drive brand recall—and all of these things are what retailers want.

Devra Pyrwes, U.S. marketer at Unruly Group

Get triggered

Photo by Elijah O’Donnell on Unsplash

In the last year or so I’ve learnt a lot more about emotions than in the previous 30. I’ve been actively practicing noticing them, feeling them, sitting with them. I’ve talked to them. I’ve written them down. I’ve named them. I’ve ignored them. I’ve felt them in my body. I’ve thanked them. I’ve let them go.

Emotions are our internal guidance system. On a basic level they go “hey! take notice! something is happening and you need to take notice!”. And that something could be big or small, good or bad.

A “trigger” is “a psychological stimulus that prompts recall of a previous experience”. Most often when people refer to a trigger, they’re talking about a “trauma trigger” which recalls a previous traumatic experience. But here, I’m using it in a more general term as something that triggers an emotion inside me.

Learning to love triggers

The biggest part of this journey is learning to listen to and love my triggers. It turns out that they’re actually really helpful, and can answer many of life’s big questions. Who knew?!

They can tell you that this is a situation that you actually really don’t want to be in.

They can tell you all about what it is that you actually want in life.

They can event tell you if you’re in love. Weird huh?

In recent talk for Bloom Scotland, my other passion project, tech for social good advocate Jenny Bjorkman, encouraged attendees to “listen to your jealousies”. We were talking about career planning, and understanding what we actually want to achieve in our life, and she said to look out for what other people have that you want. Listen to yourself.

Using triggers in advertising

So, we know emotional advertising is effective thanks to the advertising effectiveness’s biggest advocates Les Binet and Peter Field. We know from JWT’s planning guide that it’s not the advertising that matters, but the recipients response.

So how do we use this to land our message?

In a post on empathy marketing a few months ago, I shared a quote from a personal hero of mine, Brene Brown.

Empathy is connecting to the emotions that underpin an experience.

We must use out empathy to connect with the emotions that underpin the experience of someone responding to our advert.

According to Wikipedia a trigger can be anything that provokes a memory or emotion, commonly:

  • certain times of day – for example, sunset or sunrise
  • certain times of year or specific dates – for example, autumn weather that resembles the affected person’s experience of the weather during the remember moment
  • sights – for example, a fallen tree or a light shining at a particular angle
  • places – for example, a bathroom, or all bathrooms
  • a person
  • an argument or conversation
  • a particular smell – such as freshly mown grass, or the fragrance of an aftershave product
  • a particular taste – such as the food eaten during or shortly before the experience
  • a particular sound – such as a helicopter or a song
  • a particular texture
  • a sensation on the skin
  • the position of the body
  • physical pain
  • emotions – such as feeling free or overwhelmed, safe or vulnerable
  • a particular situation – for example, being in a crowded place

A word of caution

Whilst the ASA advertising codes prevent advertising from causing unjustifiable distress, I encourage all in the business of advertising to consider just how they use emotions and emotional triggers to persuade their audience of one thing or another.

Anxiety and stress disorders are rife. And to be candid, we’re not helping. Advertising is designed to change the way you think, feel or act. Right? So why not use that incredible power for good. This is a topic that interests me deeply, and I have written about before, and no doubt will do again.

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Empathy marketing

Empathy marketing was always going to be a trend for 2020. The green shoots of this has been building for a few years, before I’d ever heard the words coronavirus or COVID-19. We had no idea what the new Roaring Twenties would bring us, and I’m sure very few would have expected a global pandemic leading to global lockdown. 

But here we are.

Do you remember when all you heard about was how entitled and self-obsessed millennials are? Well fortunately, over the past few years their image has done a total 360, and they are now viewed as much more collectivist than their individualist generational predecessors.

What was once seen as arrogance is now being viewed as an unwillingness to put up with that they see as wrong, unfair or unjust. One might call them principled. And not afraid to stand up for what they believe in.

This shift in perception, and a recognition that millennials now account for a third of the population, created a boom in brand purpose. A solid product and a “cool” brand was no longer enough. They needed to stand for something.

The phrase “experiences over possessions” is now a nearly cliched target audience insight, but it remains no less true, according to Experian, especially for the millennial population.

We’re in a landscape of increasing community values, we’ve all spent a year rallying behind Greta, we want to save the planet, mental health awareness is on the up and up. This all already paints a picture of a gentler, fairer society. And so naturally, brands must fall in line with this global cultural shift in order to stay relevant.

Marketing in 2020

So, enter stage left… 2020 and all that it has brought… so far.

After an initial total panic and meltdown, leading to mass stockpiling and shortages of essential items, supermarkets had to enforce limitations on how many packets of certain items people could buy.

This display of selfishness and chaos was like the start of every apocalypse movie, leading to a widespread fear that this may actually be the end of days.

However, as the days and weeks rolled on, we was mass displays of love, kindness, support and community spirit. From the rainbows in windows, and weekly clapping for the NHS, to companies, crafters and individuals creating PPE supplies.

Vast amounts of content being live streamed, from PE classes to bake alongs to huge broadway musical hits.

Grassroots hubs sprouted across the country offering supplies and help to those who needed it, well before the Government suggested creating such a network. People were shielding the most vulnerable well before the Government decreed it so.

To the small acts of checking in on neighbours, people routinely signing off emails “Stay safe” instead of the usual “Kind regards”.

And brands are responding. They are now “here for us”. They are playing up heritage, community, their efforts for the greater good. People over profits. People first. Bringing people together. 

But how sustainable is that? And how true and authentic is that? How are brands going to build on these messages for years to come? And are they going to be able to put their money where their mouth is.

My sense is that we’re in a place where brands are totally over promising, and going to spend the next few years backpedaling. But perhaps that’s just the cynic in me.

What I see is people waking up to the power of companies. For the force for good that they can be, should they wish to. We’ve seen companies, huge companies, pivot their business in a matter of days. We’ve seen overhauls of complex systems to allow working from home. We’ve seen companies do the impossible, and the improbable. 

I think we’ll see consumers voting with their money. Making a stand. And not falling for the company line when questioned.

During the past month (how has it only been a month?!) we’ve seen a huge amount of advice and guidance on how brand should be navigating these choppy (and what feels like shark infested) waters. From celebrating their worked for carrying on working (safely), to jumping on the NHS-cheering bandwagon, to pivoting manufacturing to keep up supplies, to the “we’re here for you” cliche, and many, many more. 

My counsel to brands is now is the time to stop and take stock.

Stand and stare

In 1911 a poet from near my hometown in Gloucestershire wrote a poem warning that the hectic pace fo modern life has a detrimental effect on the human spirit.

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

W.H. Davies

More than a hundred years later, we are yet to heed this warning. I’m sure we’ve all felt the world hurtling forward; a societal Moore’s Law.

And now, today, the world has had the brake well and truly put on. So let’s all take advantage of this fact.

The question that has been running through my mind is: Will we come out of this collective experience as a more gentle and empathetic society, or will we inevitably spring back to the individualistic society that has been in a boom and bust cycle for over a century?

I may have given away my feelings on the subject in the phrasing of the question, but I would love for that not to be the case.

Empathetic endeavours

This goes broader than marketing and deeper than brands. This is about the importance that we put on people and planet.

Making money is all good and well, but at what cost?

So how can we create this Brave New World?

  1. More brave leaders. If you’re looking to lead a group of people, a company, a team, a Cub Scout pack; read Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead. These are the people that we want in charge. Be one of them.
  2. More brave brand leaders. Brené’s book is aimed at people, but the learnings for brands come through loud and clear.
    1. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.
    2. Integrity is choosing courage over comfort.
    3. Clear is kind.
    4. Brené even provides a list of values.
  3. Vote with your wallet. Companies can’t make money if consumers won’t give it to them. Don’t agree with Dyson’s stance on Brexit? Pick a Shark next time. Feel sad about all the plastic in the ocean? Get your shampoo in a plastic free bar form from Lush. Don’t like the employee care standards in Amazon warehouses? You get my point.
  4. Vote with your heart. If you want to protect the NHS and save lives, get out on polling day and vote with your heart. You know what I’m saying.
  5. Be excellent to each other. We hear things like “How would you feel if that was your sister/mother/father/brother?” We don’t really need to have a familial connection to another person to empathise and do the right thing by them. We just need to practice. Let’s all just practice.

How are you counselling your clients to be brave and play in a more empathetic space? Do you think the world will spring back? Or do you think we’ll see a permanent shift towards kindness?

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Advertising can save the world

Do you ever just sit there and marvel at the wonders of the human body? When I think about it, I’m pretty amazing. Without a conscious thought or effort I digest my breakfast of pancakes and orange juice into microscopic nutrients that I then use to grow and heal, convert into energy to run and jump and type this post.

Sure, sometimes these systems don’t work perfectly. I know that when I’m in a place of intense anxiety, I shut down many of my senses, for example. I’m not listening. I’m not hearing. The world around looks flat. My movements are heavy and stiff.

Fight, flight, freeze

If you read my previous post Reboot in Safe Mode, you’ll know this is my body’s reaction to feeling unsafe. In a freeze state, when fight or flight aren’t options.

What’s all this got to do with advertising?

Well, when the body’s in an unsafe state (fight, flight or freeze), no amount of clever targeting, witty wording or attention grabbing visuals will break through and communicate your message effectively.

Not only are we getting better at blocking out marketing messages, but we’re actually increasingly not in a “safe” enough space to receive your message at all.

Neuroception

Neuroception, distinct from perception… is detection without awareness. It is the subconscious process whereby the nervous system, through processing sensory information, then works out via neural circuits if a person or experience is safe, dangerous or life threatening.

Dr Stephen Porges

The question our bodies and minds are trying to work out every second of every day is: am I safe?

And I have a hunch that most advertising messages do not contribute to a person’s feeling of safety. They aim to manipulate. Control. Exploit. Create a threat. Make you feel like an Other. An outsider.

And by doing so, they drive our nervous system away from a feeling of safety (a place where they can be receptive to your brand and your message) into an unsafe state.

That doesn’t sound like a good communication strategy does it?

What if…?

What if advertising was used as a mass communication to help reduce the anxiety of the world?

That’s a huge statement, I realise. But in purely commercial terms, it actually makes sense. What if brands aimed to help people live in thrive state? To be the best version of themselves?

What if brand personality statements read: Approachable, Trustworthy, Safe.

How can you help your target audience move to a feeling of safety?

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Taxi drivers: the latest marketing channel

After attending my first TEDx event last week, I had so many ideas buzzing around in my brain. I’m still letting some of them percolate away, but there’s one I’m going to share. And interestingly, it comes from the organisers, not the speakers.

At the start of one of the sessions, this video was played.

TED is known for ideas worth spreading. Now, as the event organisers, they have control over part of that (the ideas), but the rest is up to the audience (the spreading).

In Buenos Aires TED came up with an innovative marketing channel to help those ideas spread: taxi drivers.

It’s a really interesting case study on the flow of information around a city. It challenges the way I view marketing. It has elements of viral marketing, word of mouth marketing, and is 100% not digital.

Next up: hairdressers.

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Holmes, Poirot, Bale?

I have a bit of a thing for Sherlock Holmes. I’ve read (or at the very least listened to) most of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings about the character. The keen observations. The flair for the dramatic. The flagrant disregard for the rules. What’s not to love.

It often strikes me that ad planning is not so different from solving a crime. You start with a client. And they have a problem. They do not have the necessary skills to solve said problem. So they need a professional.

Enter Holmes/strategist. Listen to the problem. Dig around for additional information they may have missed. Detect for untruths. Agree payment and timescale. Exit client.

Holmes/strategist inspects scene of mystery. Consults previous case studies of similar instances. Analyses necessary facts. If necessary creates additional data points by speaking to people.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four (1890)

This is, of course, an extremely simplified view of the world. But it does make me wonder if there is some framework for investigating a crime that may be able to help us as planners to systemise our thinking, and streamline the ad planning process?

Be brave. Feel stupid.