“Touch the heart to move the mind”Patrick Moreau
2016 was a really remarkable year in a lot of ways, but one specific thing stood out to me in a way that will stick with me for years to come. I remember sitting around with my family Thanksgiving Day after having eaten way too much food. As many people do on Thanksgiving, we watched football. I noticed when it went on commercial break, everyone picked up their phone (reason #1 why TV spots may not the most efficient way to advertise in 2017). I am not immune to this type of behavior. I began scrolling through Facebook and Instagram (a much more efficient way to spend advertising dollars for many by the way) and something caught my attention on the TV. It sounded different enough from everything else that I glanced up. I wouldn’t look away until that commercial was over.
What I ended up watching was an Apple commercial about Frankenstein. Odd right? Even more odd is that you don’t often hear the words “heartwarming” and “Frankenstein” in the same sentence, but this TV spot did something that very few advertisers are able to do – It made me feel emotional. It didn’t try to sell me a product, but it made me feel something. To this day whenever I watch that commercial, I still get a bit teary eyed. It’s beautifully shot and everything simply works.
How about the Google commercial where all you see is the famous Google search bar with text being typed into it? It starts with someone typing “study abroad paris.” Through a series of Google searches, a story is told about an individual meeting a girl, falling in love and eventually (with the last search) learning how to assemble a crib. It’s an emotional piece that tells the story of why Google does what it does.
So what exactly am I saying? Do you need to make people cry with your advertising? Not at all. But should you make someone feel an emotional connection to you? Absolutely. Let me give you an example.
The other day I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw an advertisement for a dentist office. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine dentist office and I bet they do great work. What interested me about this particular ad was the photo they chose to use. It was a photo of their building. Their building was…nice. It wasn’t the Taj Mahal, but it was a nice building, but why would I care about a building? Why does the building matter to me?
Answer? It doesn’t.
What would have been a more effective photo to use in their ad? Perhaps a photograph of the owner and a child patient smiling with beautiful white teeth. Maybe they should have used a family photo with the parents and children smiling with great teeth. Why would that have been better?
Humans are wired to care about other humans. That’s why every single movie you’ve ever watched has a human main character. We care about other humans, so they make them the main character of every movie ever. Now granted, some movies have robot main characters or dinosaurs or dogs, but why do we care about those characters? It’s because they give them human like qualities. Do cats have human like qualities? How about dogs? You are probably thinking yes but generally speaking, they don’t. We project our qualities and emotions on them because it makes us feel better and makes them feel more human like.
Use this to your advantage when advertising. When we begin the process of producing videos for clients, we always focus on people and their stories.
Let’s say Dr. John Doe approaches us about producing a video to help market his physical therapy office. We could easily go in and interview the owner and have him tell us why people should come to this specific office instead of another. But why would anyone care about that? I’ll tell you now, they won’t. So how would we do it? The story isn’t about how great the business is. The story is about how it helps people and how their services changed someone’s life. We could find a client of theirs who was unable to walk before coming to them. After therapy, they are now able to play with their children or grandchildren, go out and play sports with their friends or take that dream vacation – all thanks to Dr. John Doe’s physical therapy. After watching a video like that, you are much more likely to consider going to them for your physical therapy needs.
When advertising, connect with your potential clients on a personal level.
Touch the heart and you’ll move the mind