The Bastard Child of Social Media

I wrote a piece for The Punch that was uploaded today. The conversation that follows is more interesting than the actual article.

Insight is over-rated: Why 'why' is less important than 'how'

It's about why 'why' does not have all the answers.

The Obsession With 'Emotional Advertising' is Missing the Point

Recently Millward Brown put out a white paper titled "Should my advertising stimulate an emotional response?" I applaud Millward Brown for trying to answer such a question - and the article is a good read, concluding unsurprisingly with 'yes' we should encourage an emotional response. However, to be frank, I think asking a different question would prove to be more useful.

Lately, the advertising industry has been obsessed with 'emotional advertising' and building an 'emotional connection'. However, more progressive agencies are leaving the quest for emotional advertising behind - at a rate of knots. As Alex Bogusky puts it when talking about advertising - "Create something so funny, charming or useful that I can't live without it". In other words the gold bar is no longer 'emotional advertising', but something more meaningful to the consumer (or person).

We now live in a world where there is so much more available to us within the communications framework. Rather than just 'emotional' or 'rational' advertising - we can:

• Make products (e.g. iphone applications) that act as communications.


• Put on experiences (e.g events) that act as communications.


• Provide useful content (e.g. a traffic or finance reports) that acts as communications.


• Create games that act as communications (e.g. The Beatles game to sell more Beatles records).

Though technology, ideas and insight, all communications can now be useful, and worth interacting with - rather than just passively receiving it. And all communications can, if good enough, evoke a direct behavioural response. So why just let people passively receive an emotional message when we can encourage interaction with our brand. Or better yet, give people something of genuine utility that makes their lives better in some small way.

The focus should be on a behavioural response, not an emotional response. the question therefore could become

"Should my advertising stimulate a behavioural response".

Then once you've answered 'Yes' to this the next question is:

"How do I use my advertising to stimulate a behavioural response".

Then, the next question is:

"How do I use my advertising to stimulate a behavioural response that builds my brand?"

It's much harder to create advertising that stimulates a behavioural response, and do this in a genuinely brand building way. However, it has the potential to be significantly more powerful. Once people chose to interact with the brand or message they have invested something of themselves into what you have to say / give.

We are about to see a rapid shift away from 'emotional measures' towards behavioural measures' as the research industry catches up to where (only the progressive) advertising agencies are going.

The Weirdest 'Client' I Ever Had

Just about everyone in the workforce has 'clients' of some description. I used to work for the NSW Department of Corrective Services - where my 'clients' were prison inmates. We used to call them 'clients' as we were providing a service to them, and calling them patients was apparently pathologising them (incidentally during an even more politically correct year or two I think inmates were actually referred to as 'consumers' as they were consuming services!)

Whilst at Corrective Services I remember one particular client very well. He was a young guy with a particularly weird sexual paraphilia - and he used to hang around cemeteries a lot more than he should. He was also very unstable, neurotic, and had an extremely explosive temper.

One time I was interviewing him, and he was becoming increasingly agitated. Half way through the interview he stood up abruptly, walked around my desk, approached me, and then punched a huge hole in the wall right next to my head. Shaken, I told him that he was scaring me. The poor chap then unexpectedly put his head in his hands lurched backwards and burst into tears. He fell into his chair and repeatedly cried how sorry he was, and that he 'always scares people'.

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I believe he really hated the fact that he scared (and probably hurt) people - myself included. However, he hadn't learned the ability to control his own behaviour.

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I'm not sure of the purpose of the anecdote but it's something along the lines of this.... people act to the best of their ability, and sometimes - they don't have the skills to act in ways they wish they could.