It all comes down to emotion
A decade ago, emotional storytelling in advertising, and particularly in retail, was rare. Retailers used rational messages in their advertising to persuade shoppers to purchase from them – whether that was messaging about more variety, lower prices, or superior products.
John Lewis took a profoundly different approach, and it’s something that has now become commonplace across nearly all retailers at this time of year.
Instead of telling people what to think, brands benefit more from creating emotional stories that make people feel. It’s why we now see Christmas adverts really dialing up the emotion - from Disney‘s heartwarming tale of an unlikely friendship between a boy and an octopus (which we produced out of our New York office), to Tesco’s poignant exploration of grief and loss at Christmas.
People's reactions to these ads are irrational - they don’t derive any rational meaning from the commercials, but they are moved by them and become more affectionate towards the brand as a result.
You may think that emotion is a “soft” word, and that lots of these ads are the indulgent fantasies of creative directors across the advertising industry, rather than the calculated moves of business titans. I’m often challenged by my own family around the Christmas dinner table “why does that boy have an octopus on his head…that doesn’t tell me anything about Disney” or “what’s a bouncing boxer dog got to do with John Lewis”. And that’s, in part, the point.
These ads make you feel something rather than just telling you something, and we find that when we feel something, we are more likely to share it. It’s why the Christmas ad race has become one of the most talked about topics around festive tables across the nation (and now, the world), and why they feature on the likes of Gogglebox and The Rest Is Entertainment. It makes brands who can crack the emotional code, more famous, more top-of-mind for consumers, making them more likely to buy into those brands products and services.
Work from the likes of Les Binet, Peter Field and Mark Ritson, show that this approach is the most effective route that marketers can take, not only at this time of year, but more broadly too.
So, as you tuck into your turkey and relax into some belting Christmas TV, know that the excitable dragon, the cheerful carrot, or the tear-jerking gingerbread man in the commercial break isn’t just there to make you laugh or cry, but also to make you buy.
And it works.
It’s the art of advertising.
And I love it.