Our Obsession with Rational Advertising Is Completely Irrational
Advertising is dead on the inside. Don’t worry, this isn’t a doom and gloom piece about how the industry is on life support. By dead on the inside, I mean advertising has become far too rational for its own good. If the industry went to a therapist, words like “emotionally stunted” and “distant” would get thrown around. It’s been a slow burn, but en masse, work that tries to make people feel happy, sad, envious, angry or any type of emotion at all, has been abandoned.
Imagine for a second that this matter-of-fact approach was adhered to by the gift card industry. I'm picturing a teddy bear with a heart that says “WE ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP” or a birthday cake with “YOU WERE BORN 26 YEARS AGO” written in icing. There would be indifferent shrugs all round, yet we all act surprised when wholly rational advertising gets the same result.
The irony of using some cold hard facts to back up my anti-rational point isn’t lost on me, but I’m a strategist at heart, so here goes nothing. There’s no shortage of research and data to suggest campaigns that appeal to people’s emotions are more successful, more profitable and more efficient than those that lean on rational proof points. And the IPA has a tonne of data that proves emotional campaigns are more effective on almost all business metrics. The toilet paper industry have been keeping the white fluffy kitten industry afloat for this very reason. Because cute cats are a lot nicer to think about than the rational reasons why you should pay extra for 3-ply. And let's not forget that emotion drives 80% of decision-making, and rationale drives the remaining 20%, according to Kevin Roberts former Saatchi and Saatchi chief exec. It sounds like an open and shut case in favour of emotional storytelling, right?
Apparently not. It feels like we are completely besieged with rational advertising at the moment. Every single ad I see or hear is telling me how and when a product should be enjoyed - but not in a way that’s exciting or exotic. Thank you marketing department, I had not considered putting your product in a smoothie, eating it outside on a sunny day, or packing it in a school lunch. It’s all so functional, all too rational and all so boring. When was it decided that the average Joe cares how their breakfast cereal is made? Where have the warm and fuzzies gone? With every piece of information and data we have to prove that emotional advertising works, it just doesn’t make sense that we are still investing so much time and money in rational communications.
Ultimately it might be because we, the people who work at the companies and agencies that send this work out into the world, are human, and humans aren’t rational. We are emotional beings, and those feelings are leading us to ignore the data that points us towards emotional communications. Right now we’re guilty of letting our own emotions, primarily fear and safety mislead us, and they’re bringing us to predictable and emotionless work. While it might seem much safer to tell consumers you can enjoy a product anywhere, rather than say, show an Astronaut enjoying it in the space station, every piece of data tells us that’s not true. The so-called “safe” emotionless work is what we should actually fear.
As consumers of the creative process, we need to recognise our own irrationality, stare it in the face and decide not to let it control us anymore. So how about in 2025 our New Years resolution will be to stop being irrational consumers and just trust the data? Why don’t we collectively decide to take the emotion out of the decision-making process and put it into the work where it belongs? Why don’t we do the completely rational thing and pump a whole lot more humour, fear, joy, suspense and anger into our work? Let’s let our own rationality take-over and let it guide us to a more emotive place. Surely it will be a whole lot better than where we are right now.
