Want to sell more? Get emotional

Entertainment, branding, and communication.

If online marketers are to survive today’s digital audiences who have that ready option to completely tune out ads, a balance among these three elements is key to creating more engaging content, says international research firm Kantar Millward Brown in its report: “Advertising: Making a Lasting Impression.”

The report uses the analysis of Kantar Millward Brown’s database of 160,000 tested ads to demonstrate how understanding the factors that drive engagement can make advertising more effective.

The report cites data showing how most TV and social media ads still deliver an explicit product message—at the expense of emotional relevance and creative engagement.

“So should marketers forget about trying to say anything and just make ads that entertain?” the report states. “No, but they need to be a lot smarter about how they convey functional benefits and evoke an emotional response.”

The key, the report adds, is for brands to make memorable and lasting impressions through their ads.

“[This impression] includes the creative idea, what is said in the ad, the way the story is told, and the emotional tone. It’s time to stop selling product features—it rarely works. Show; don’t tell,” says Daren Poole, global brand director for creative development at Kantar Millward Brown.

To achieve this, Kantar Millward Brown’s report lists down five tips for advertising creatives:

Make a meaningful impression. “Meaningful impressions are often suggested rather than claimed,” the report states. It cites as an example the #LikeAGirl campaign by feminine care brand Always, which veered away from its usual ads showing women living life happily despite their periods, complete with product demos. In its 2016 ad titled “Like a girl: keep playing,” Always encouraged young women to pursue their athletic ambitions, based on research that 70 percent of girls drop out of sports once they hit puberty—without any mention of Always products. The ad had 28 million views on YouTube.

Work with the brain, not against it. “The uncomfortable truth for brand managers and advertisers is that people don’t care about brands or ads, so their brains filter them out,” the report states. “Ads which engage people creatively and emotionally tend to work better because they’re working with the brain, not against it.”

With this tip comes three steps in developing content recommended by Kantar Millward Brown: 1) Shoot for instant meaning, or present ideas which can be easily grasped; 2) Make people “feel” something (or bring out the hugot in your ads); and 3) Incorporate branding early in the ad, especially for online and mobile video, so that audiences won’t miss it should they decide not to watch it to the end.

Good storytelling leaves an impression. The report cites a 2016 ad by department store chain John Lewis titled “Buster the Boxer” as one with impressive storytelling. It features a little girl’s Christmas Day present, a trampoline, set up by her father the night before in their garden—which was enjoyed first by a small group of wild animals, and then by the little girl’s dog on Christmas morning (after witnessing the wild animals’ jumping spree the night before). The sight leaves the little girl and her parents slack-jawed. The ad closes with the text, “Gifts everyone will love.”

“This story works so well for John Lewis on a number of levels. It is thoroughly enjoyable, easy to understand, and differentiates the brand from other retailers. It has the ability not only to generate short-term sales but also to support the brand’s longer term equity,” the report states.

No brand means no impression. While Kantar Millward Brown notes that less explicit product messages creates better advertising, the research company also finds that “single best predictor of in-market effects for ads is branding.

“Creating an engaging film without branding won’t add value to the brand,” the report states, hence the importance of early branding in skippable content such as online and mobile videos.

Get the channel right. Finally, all ads will need to be on the right platform to be able to engage its target audience, the report says. Marketers need to understand “where people’s eyeballs are”—are they glued to the TV, online, or both?

Based on Kantar Millward Brown’s Cross Media studies, TV and online video have an effective synergy: “Digital channels offer small but helpful incremental reach over TV. However, digital does help to build frequency, and effect per reach can be more cost effective than TV.”