Welcome to the first in a four-part series in which we'll be exploring major trends in communications for 2022. In this initial installment, we're examining the concept of emotional marketing, its traditional definition, and its current state.
People have been appealing to emotions to motivate others for millennia. Aristotle himself established techniques for emotional appeals that were quite persuasive. While appealing to emotions may seem manipulative, it's usually not nefarious. Emotional marketing connects people with the things they want and need on a deeply personal level. True, some marketing and advertising campaigns play on negative feelings of fear or greed. Here, however, we're looking at how emotional marketing can elicit positive results, and why it's a major trend in communications with tremendous staying power.
What is emotional marketing?
Emotional marketing identifies and builds on an audience's emotions to market to them more successfully. Rooted in current best practices in research and behavioral psychology, today's emotional marketing requires a deep understanding of the feelings a specific audience has toward a product or service and its competitors. To work, emotional marketing has to get a good handle on an audience's vibe, and how it affects their view of the entire product genre.
A very simple example is marketing campaigns for online talk therapy providers where emotional marketing is essential to conversion. The target audience naturally includes anyone who's experiencing distressing emotions and could benefit from online mental health counseling. You don't have to look far on Twitter to see people tweeting about their struggles with mental wellbeing - and you also don't have to look far to see ads for these therapy providers in the same places.
Facebook marketing and advertising have a lot to learn from SEO, and vice versa. When integrated, Facebook and SEO strategies can be a powerful combination, though it might not be obvious at first glance. Here are some tips for synergizing Facebook and SEO to create more powerful results for your IMC campaigns.
Think Beyond Marketing Silos
Six years ago analyst firm Forrester published a report showing that 86% of marketers see an integrated campaign as crucial to their success. A siloed approach to social media, content, paid search and organic search can end up feeling disjointed. As two of the bigger components of an omnichannel approach, integrating Facebook and SEO makes sense as a marketing priority. It’s important that social media, content, and search teams are not only briefed on each other’s activities but working together. An integrated team approach will improve marketing results, and probably save you some money too.
When brands don’t connect all the different elements of their marketing strategies, they miss out on the potential to engage their audience from multiple angles. Facebook and SEO can work hand in hand when you're using communication as a basis for consistency. (If you're still planning your overall SEO strategy, there's more about SEO in 2018 here.)
Even for the biggest brands, launching a new video game can be a significant challenge. In a market where any game competes against thousands of other titles, many with long life cycles, it’s tough to get consumers’ attention – and money. And this is not a new phenomenon. As the popularity of video games has risen over the past 40 years, so have the number of titles available at any given time. Recently, one particular marketing and advertising campaign for Lego Marvel Avengers stood out among the rest as an excellent example of integrated marketing communications at work. The game’s success earns it one more accolade, our IMC Campaign of the Month.
Lego Marvel Avengers was released on January 26, 2016 by TT Games. TT Games was careful to coincide its television advertising with cartoons that targeted the key demographic – primarily younger consumers who have both an interest in Lego toys and superheroes. Cartoons presented a perfect vehicle to hitch to Lego Marvel Avengers ads. With compelling previews of game play and live action shots from the latest Avengers movie, the television spots had kids eagerly awaiting the release of the game in January.
When you think of a brand ambassador campaign, you probably think of either a) a Klout (or similar) perk that may garner no substantial reviews in return for the product or b) a disparate smattering of blog posts that become difficult to track and measure,...
"Let's turn customers' shopping carts into improvised videos." It's an idea so brilliantly quirky as to border on insane - but Jet.com's one-day branding spectacular is one of the best examples of integrated marketing communications in action I've seen recently.
The premise of the campaign, called #JetSpree, was simple but groundbreaking. One day only, during predefined hours, Jet.com asked shoppers for permission to turn their shopping carts into what they called "on-the-spot video." In essence, their purchases would be used as the inspiration for videos involving double dutch jump roping, a barbershop quartet, pantomime, yodeling, improv comedy, dancing toys and even a turtle. The videos were then shared on YouTube and social media during the event.
One of the greatest examples of integrated marketing communications is a plan so seamless and flawlessly executed that it deserves a place in the hall of fame for a completely immersive experience that didn't even feel like marketing. Who will ever forget the Smell like a Man, Man campaign , AKA “Old Spice Man?”
This particular IMC campaign heavily integrated advertising with content and social media marketing. Combining television ads with wildly viral video and above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty social media engagement, Old Spice plucked the memorable, tongue-in-cheek character of Old Spice Man, initially portrayed by Isaiah Mustafa, straight from television screens across the country and deposited him on YouTube. This was the start of pure magic.
It all started with a 30 second ad spot that was widely run and exceptionally well received. Realizing the potential reach and cost effectiveness of YouTube, particularly when marketing to a younger generation (the target demographic for their line of body washes – who were already being assailed regularly with memorable ads from brands like Axe), the Old Spice team uploaded additional videos in the campaign series online. Fans of the character could see him in action far beyond the reaches of their TV screens. As interest in the character and the ads became clear, Old Spice released additional television commercials. These were supported with continued YouTube content, one of the first and certainly most spectacular examples of how video on TV and video online can work perfectly together. But Old Spice had the smarts to not just upload ads, but to pay attention to what people were saying to the character in tweets and video responses. They added the perfect twist that accelerated results astronomically.
As someone who has become adjusted to digital marketing, having grown up with the web, it feels out of place when I begin to look around my physical settings and engage with marketing efforts since so few of them seem to reach me on the same level as I’d expect online.
As someone who has applied digital marketing strategies for various projects, it was easy to become wrapped up in the methods frequently used by others. It was equally easy to dismiss traditional marketing methods (namely… print) compared to what was possible online (thanks to flexibility, features, and tracking) until I began to realize that much of what is done in the physical space actually applies to much of what happens online (in a complimentary way).
I think of it similar to how we say “don’t judge a book by its cover."
We are quick to dismiss traditional marketing methods if we have been conditioned to the online method because of cost and efficiency.
What can traditional advertising teach us about online advertising?
[caption id="attachment_5754" align="alignright" width="300"] Credit AMC TV[/caption]
By Satish Polisetti
As more sites like Facebook, Twitter and Buzzfeed blend ads directly into a user's content stream, the future of online advertising is quickly shifting. It's a brave new world defined by content, not dimensions; mad math, not mad men. Science and data, not merely creative endeavors.
Where are we today? Currently, online ads are defined primarily by size and dimensions -- with IAB ad unit guidelines describing leaderboards (728 x 90 pixels), skyscrapers (160 x 600), and full banners (468 x 60), to name a few.
These very basic but widely accepted standards are based on the artistic perspectives of a previous generation - from the minds of creative geniuses you might see on Mad Men. These have more to do with traditional ad buys, and print ad dimensions, ones that have not really changed much in the past few decades since the swinging 60's of Don Draper. When we jumped into internet advertising, the look and feel of advertising changed, but standards failed to get with the times.
And then there were banners: