I recently saw Quaker Oats’ 2024 brand ad “You got this.” It reminded me yet again how important it is as a company to make an emotional connection with your customers.
You can check out the ad here.
Big B2C brands have good reason to invest in connections that play to specific emotions. They have such a large audience that they can justify expensive productions that tell a story with cinematic quality. Films like these don’t need to be seen over and over again to be remembered because they make an immediate impact. It’s not an accident that CocaCola is the “happy company,” or that Quaker Oats emphasizes nostalgia and being cared for.
As you can see from this screen shot of System 1 Marketing's testing, the emotional responses normally tested are surprise, happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt and the absence of any these, called neutral. These emotions are called Ekman’s Basic Emotions because people make the same facial expressions for these emotions regardless of their culture. The Quaker Oats storyline built to a happy crescendo. In fact, 2/3 of the tested viewers finished feeling deeply happy.
Even though Ekman’s Basic Emotions are often used to measure ads, they are in no way representative of the range of emotions attractive to associate with a brand. Here are some of the tried-and-true positive feelings a brand can associate itself with.
Belonging (to a tribe like family or community)
Cared for
Confidence
Empathy
Freedom
Happiness
Inspiration
Nostalgia
Optimism
Safety
Status
Of course, emotional communication is not a guarantee of success. And it’s not possible to be the only company associated with a given emotion. So it’s still important to be unique and put your own company story into the narrative.
B2B marketing
Marketing within B2B companies tends to disregard working in the realm of emotions. There are lots of reasons for that, and some of them are limited by budget size and that the entire concept of emotional communication may seem foreign to a CEO who used to be a scientist or engineer or accountant. :-)
One of the most significant changes B2B marketing has gone through during my time is the realization that B2B customers don’t purchase based on logic and reason. B2B companies used to assume B2B customers were different than ordinary people. But that’s not so. People are primarily driven by their subconscious which is powered by emotion. It’s as responsible for extraordinary leaps of insight as it is to backstabbing. In our professional roles, our emotions are responsible for the “gut” choices we make, and we then look for the facts to rationalize our choices.
So if you’re working in marketing at a B2B company, chances are you won’t have a budget to make an annual blockbuster film and get it placed in front of potential customers. In fact, you may feel lucky to be able to make a few clickbait videos for social media.
I still encourage you to utilize every opportunity to put emotion into your brand. Contrary to what some may say, it is possible for “emotion” and “integrity” to go hand in hand. A few years ago, I was responsible to build a new identity for a company due to a takeover. One of the things I’m proud about with that project was that the two films that came out of that branding project conveyed emotion with integrity and told our unique story.
The first film was used at our internal launch to introduce the name and brand identity to our 500 colleagues. Typically, that kind of film is a “throwaway film” that justifies the choice the colors, font and logo. I still feel good about the fact that our film was infused with feeling. Yes, we introduced the name, logo, font, graphic element and colors. But people were moved and inspired, and we made them proud. You can see it here.
The second film was our “brand film” for an external audience. It came over a year later, where we took the very last pennies of our budget to fill the gaps with missing visuals for this new company. So with careful planning, we combined filming with collecting b-stock and still images for marketing and employee engagement. We had 3 days in two European countries and were at the mercy of the season and weather. It was the kind of budget that we knew we wouldn’t see again, so instead of producing the typical B2B brand film where we tell all about ourselves, we decided to inspire our customers and their consumers.
For sure this film isn’t seen often. But when it’s used at an exhibition or a new client introduction, it never fails to put people in the mood to want to be part of Oterra’s movement towards natural. People want to be a member of that tribe. That's what we wanted to accomplish.
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