If articles in digital marketing publications are anything to go by, 2011 was The Year of Data-Driven-Everything and, frighteningly, The Year of the QR Code.
It’s always The Year of Something in Digital Advertising, and over the last 12 months I haven’t been able to visit an industry publication without finding a story on the growing importance of the Agency Analyst in translating millions of user interactions into insights, or the latest brand to ask consumers to scan a code for information or reward.
However, I was surprised to notice a very different trend emerging in the panel options at the South By Southwest conference earlier this month, which made me wonder whether 2012 may be the year that emotion joined reason at the digital advertising table?
Among the presentations available to attendees were the decidedly non-techy ‘Why Happiness Is The New Currency,’ ‘Emotional Equations To Connect With Your Customers’ and ‘Customers Are Irrational – Stop Fighting It!’ Curious, I attended them all, and found myself agreeing with their theses.
The founders of Formspring, Path and Kiip spoke from a design perspective about the basic emotional motivations for participate in social media. Probing beyond the old narcissism argument of users being driven to amass the most Friends or Followers, or project the most glamorous self-image on Facebook or Twitter, Ade Olonoh, Dave Morin, and Brian Wong cited participation as engendered by basic human needs which are present on- and offline: to be heard, recognised, cared about, and to be part of conversations with others. Wong cited the familiar validation of that “eeh” moment you experience when someone retweets you.
Author and hotelier Chip Conley and CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh spoke about shopping as the buying of identity, not just the accumulation of items, and proposed products should help the customer feel they are meeting their own highest personal goals, allow them the ability to express themselves, make them feel they are part of a bigger cause, or offer something of real value they hadn’t imagined or expected. Conley cited the design ethos of his own boutique hotel The Phoenix, which was modelled on the rock ‘n’ roll mindset of Rolling Stone, attracting tattooed musicians and acid advocate Timothy Leary by appealing to their self-image and allowing them to express a sense of how they wished the world to perceive them. Above all, Conley preached “don’t lose your intuitive, emotional connection with your customer. Be an anthropologist.”
Customer Experience Consultant Colin Shaw spoke about our propensity to design rational experiences without considering humanity of the process, for example car insurance phone operators asking for car crash victim’s policy number rather than the more human response of inquiring whether they are OK. According to Shaw, little things make the difference, such as the personalisation of Starbucks asking for your name to put on your coffee, or TV delivery company drivers wiping the screen down after installation as the customer watches – small, human signals which can completely transform experiences.
These ideas are easy to nod along to, as they are nothing new. The earliest modern advertisements leveraged the emotional needs of consumers to sell them deodorant and mouthwash based on a need to be socially accepted. The very foundations of our discipline are based upon the idea that products can be differentiated by creating emotional value where a material differentiation does not exist, and that people respond to emotional prompts where reason would dictate they do the opposite. What was revelationary about these ideas was the extent to which they are often not applied to digital advertising.
Whereas millions of amateur images and videos are shared every day online, many expensive pieces of branded content are left on the digital shelf with minimal views and far fewer shares due to a lack of insight by their creators as to what need in Maslow’s hierarchy the content could fulfil for users? Where users crave the basic validation of a connection, say in the form of a response on a comment they make on a brand’s Facebook Page, they are often met with a formulaic response from a company representative – the same they have delivered to six other users that day.
At the SXSW conference itself, how many of the multitude of QR codes (they were literally plastered to every surface – including completely covering rubbish bins outside the Convention Centre) were scanned? Personally, I did not witness one single QR code scan in progress and did not scan one myself. And why would I? I had no desire to linger by an extremely well-trafficked bin, at the busiest place I’ve ever found myself in, find the right app on my phone with which to scan the code, only to be directed (if I’m lucky) to a video spruiking a start-up which has been vaguely hyped on a trash-encrusted sticker! I had panels to attend, networking to be done and free drinks to imbibe.
Of course I am not arguing that we should forsake analysis (we’d be lost without the insights of our own Senior Analyst, Dan) and neglect to exploit emerging tech. But the best advertising work has always resulted from a combination of logic and emotion, and as digital advertisers we need to reclaim our confidence in our emotional intuition if we’re going to connect with audiences.
I’m reminded of a recent Facebook advertising campaign where we were receiving a surprisingly low click-through rate on creative illustrating the chance to win an extremely appealing and easily attainable prize. Mystified, after a few minor changes we changed tack completely and tested ads which offered nothing but questions as to how users interacted with the product and immediately we saw not only an increase in click-throughs and page likes, but a stream of answers to our queries on the page wall. Logically, these ads should not have performed nearly as well as the ads with the WIN message – they were asking users to provide something with no offer of a reward. Yet there was a reward – an emotional one – where users felt spoken to, valued, and welcomed into a conversation, which was far more valuable to them than the chance to win a prize.
For all the groundwork we lay keeping abreast of new technology and analysing past campaigns and user behaviour, we need to begin asking “why” when we create strategies for connecting with consumers. Why would anyone watch this, scan this, share this? Will this interaction satisfy a deeply human need to make contact? Is it so attuned to its target audience that sharing it could it help a person define their self-image online, painting them as knowledgeable, or altruistic, or witty? Could it present to someone a validating “eeh” moment when their friend likes or shares it? Will the experience with this product be a memorable, positive one? We need to remember that through the screens and the tech and the data which separates us, we are still speaking to humans, and make sure our communication is as emotional and irrational and surprising as the human condition itself.
