Memo advertisers: If you want to sell something don't beat us over the head.
Too much advertising is "utterly forgettable" says Damon Stapleton, chief creative officer of leading advertising group DDB New Zealand.
"There's a whole bunch of advertising we can park over here because it's just information - a spokesman standing in front of a camera talking at you through your television set telling you about a price or a product."
He says in ads like this there is no exchange taking place with a customer: "If you beat me over the head I'm not going to listen to you, but if you have a charming story to tell I might give you some of my time."
Stapleton and DDB's chief strategy officer, Rupert Price, say a television ad involving animals is an example of what they mean.
In it an ostrich runs across the African plains, past the rest of the flock, flaps its wings to take off but crashes, all to the strains of Elton John's 1972 song Rocket Man. The ostrich tries several times until finally taking off and soaring high above its bewildered mates.
The ostrich ad promotes Samsung's products and Stapleton and Price say it is an outstanding example of current thinking on effective advertising.
Research shows feelings and emotions drive every human decision, and that is why those seemingly abstract big-brand advertisements have a positive impact on us.
Price says the UK Institute of Practitioners in Advertising studied 10,000 examples and concluded emotionally-led campaigns which didn't have much functional information seemed more effective than those merely describing a product and its features.
"There's been a great deal of work in the last 10 years to understand emotions and how people emotionally respond to stimulus - not just in advertising - and how those emotions create memories," he says.
"When you're standing in front of the shelf choosing a product, it's those memories - whether they're conscious or unconscious - that move your hand to the right or to the left to choose the product or brand."
The ostrich ad, he says, probably demonstrates the magic formula. "They used an animal; animals are always a great shortcut for emotion. There's no dialogue, no discussion, but there's a lovely story, a very emotional high point at the end of the ad. It's all tied together with a famous Elton John track, which again can trigger people's emotional memory response."
Price likens it to letting go of logic and embracing the illogical or even fantastical; an approach he says brings quick rewards.
"Another good example of emotion over logic," Price says, "is the ad for Volvo trucks featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits."
Stapleton - who describes his work as storytelling - says many ads are forgettable because the advertiser is not actually having any exchange with the customer. He says neuro-science tells us happiness in all its forms is the most potent emotion; people respond particularly well to 'feel good' advertising, whether it uses laughter, surprise, nostalgia, heroism or other qualities.
Price and Stapleton used it in their Lotto campaigns. "There's something really powerful in the Lotto story we uncovered when we were going through the journey of what really matters to the people," Price says.
"When you ask people what they would do if they won Lotto, they very quickly start talking about others, about their family and friends, people who are close to them and what they would do for them.
"Once they get the boring stuff out of the way like paying off the mortgage or putting money aside for their kids' college fund, they very quickly start talking about helping people rather than the stuff they can buy."
Stapleton says the emotion in DDB's Lotto campaigns is all about 'imagining'. Winning Lotto is life-changing and advertising has a responsibility to match this feeling.
For Stapleton and Price, it doesn't matter whether the client is a lottery, a beer or a family restaurant: "We aim to create a lasting, positive feeling for the brand by stimulating people's hearts not their minds," Price says.
But for a recent McDonald's ad, featuring a girl sitting in the back seat of the family car, they used another emotion: nostalgia.
"For me, that's the Cinderella story retold," Stapleton says. "She's got two ugly sisters. In this case it's two ugly brothers sitting either side of her, and she's the one who's downtrodden and always gets the rough end of the deal.
"Until the end, when she gets the meal. That plays to another human response; we need a happy ending."
