Emotional Marketing

The most influential marketing campaign that I’ve seen was one of the great unsung marketing campaigns of the 80s which was the campaign that finally got North Americans to wear their seat belts. It moved away from compulsion from “You need to do this to save your own life,” and instead focused on children. This made people understand that they ought to buckle their children up and also themselves as a matter of family responsibility. It was a beautiful example about how marketing works best when it is the most emotionally salient point in an individual’s set of motivations, psyche, makeup…

Great marketing has an emotional specificity that I think is important and also, it tells a story. I’m always stunned by how the greatest Apple television commercials can actually tell a coherent and powerful story in 30 seconds. It’s more than simply creating an image, there has to be some kind of narrative involved. At least a narrative that people can build from those 30 seconds and recreate in their own hand – that’s at the core of an effective message.