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Future of TV Advertising

Is there More to Sell than Emotion at Christmastime?

Slipstream Issue 1

Bryan Hogg, Strategy Director

It has been written many times by the fathers of effectiveness - Binet & Field - and recalled many times thereafter, that emotion is a strong driver of advertising success. It’s not surprising then, that emotion is the aim of many agencies and advertisers as they craft their messaging; no time is this more apparent than Christmas.  


Led by the bastion of UK Christmas advertising John Lewis, the emotional advert is something that is replicated (to varying degrees) multiple times every festive period. In the year just passed however, there was a seed of doubt thrown into the ring.   This has taken the form of a furious debate taking place on LinkedIn by copy-testing providers, to whether emotion is a misleading factor in an already emotionally charged time of year. The catalyst being that 40% of ads tested by System 1 received a maximum (emotional) 5 star rating vs the 1% of ads all year round.  


At Bicycle we ask; with all the emotion flying around at that time of year, should it be relied upon to drive the bottom line, or is there a better way to do it?   Reach, branding and availability (as noted by Jenni Romaniuk of Ehrenberg Bass Institute) are some of the key elements that denote (more) success of advertising. Essentially we need to put the message in front of people, make it clear who it’s from and then ensure they can easily buy from us. Yes emotion is a key factor to whether we are memorable when we are needed to be recalled, but not the only factor and emotion is also multi-faceted.  ‘If I make you laugh, cry or experience some form of emotional response...that doesn't necessarily make you want to go out and buy anything in its own right. 


The key is about aligning emotions around perceptions of the brand and a relevant message they are giving’  - Aidan Mark, Media Science & Strategy Director. These emotions need to make the brand memorable when they are thinking about say; buying a present for aunty Linda.  We marketers are obsessed with metrics and emotion is currently in vogue. Aiming for any one individual metric (emotion, sales, awareness etc) usually has unintended consequences. John Lewis showed the importance of emotions in comms, now there are plenty of brands trying to replicate their success. The trouble is that relying on emotion alone negates the other factors at play. A more suitable approach would perhaps be to create emotion and relevancy.  


Then there is the element of distinction, another memory builder. ‘A lot of the Christmas ads forget that they need to sell some products, so they might be examples of emotionally charged advertising that is not especially effective. Especially so if they're competing against a bunch of similarly emotion led but ultimately homogenous communications’.  So our recommendation to you is that yes, emotion is a strong tool to use during the festive period - but perhaps an easy solution that would lack cut through against the swathe of emotion already knocking about. Perhaps you’d be best finding ways to layer in emotion as more, let’s say un-emotional times of year? After all, opportunity is found where others are lacking.   

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