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Emotional Brand Advertising Is More Impactful than Logical Brand Advertising

In a recent study that was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics (via Neuromarketing.com), researchers from UCLA revealed some interesting findings that show how people neurologically respond to different types of ads. Using real ads, the researchers studied subjects’ brain activity as they viewed a combination of real ads based on emotion and ads based on logic.

Following are two ads from Pfizer (not used in the study) that show the difference between an emotional brand ad (left) vs. a logical brand ad (right). You can click the images to view them larger.

Pfizer smoking  Pfizer Glaucoma

According to the study, logical ads have a greater affect on brain activity than emotional ads in terms of stimulating more of the brain. However, emotional ads were found to be more impactful. The researchers explained that the brain responds in a profound way when presented with emotional ads. When study participants were presented with emotional ads, “activity was lower in areas of the brand that help us inhibit responses to stimuli.” As a result, emotional ads successfully seduce consumers to buy products rather than persuade them as logical ads do by presenting information.

What can brand managers and advertisers take away from this study? It’s time to do some testing! Experiment with logical and emotional advertising and see how each performs. As this study demonstrates, it might make sense to skip all the text, information, and logic, and appeal directly to consumers’ emotions regardless of the category where your brand resides.

Human beings are inherently emotional and our emotions affect our decisions in all aspects of our lives. That includes advertising. This data supports what marketers have continually tried to convince executives and the data-driven leaders in companies — appealing to emotional triggers works.

What do you think of these study results? Have you experimented with emotional and logical advertising for your brand? Leave a comment and share your opinion and experiences.

Apple Breaks More Records with the iPhone 4S

Apple continues to sell more iPhones, break its own records, and surpass expectations with the launch of the iPhone 4S on October 14th.

When the iPhone 4 launched, 600,000 units were pre-ordered within the first 24 hours. The iPhone 4S beat that by nearly 67%!

When the iPhone 4 launched on June 24, 2010, 1.7 million units were sold within the first three days that it was available. The iPhone 4S beat that by over 135%!

Here are the statistics for the iPhone 4S to date from Reuters:

  • 1 million iPhone 4S units were pre-ordered within the first 24 hours of its availability.
  • In the first 3 days that the iPhone 4S has been on the market, 4 million units have been sold.
  • During those first three days, the iPhone 4S was available in 7 countries — the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, and Canada. The iPhone 4 was only available in 5 countries in its first 3 days on the market.
  • The iPhone 4S was available through the 3 primary wireless carriers in the United States (Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless, and Sprint) at launch. The iPhone 4 was only available through AT&T Wireless when it launched.
  • Analysts predict that the iPhone 4S will hit 25 to 30 million units sold within its first 3 months of its availability. It will be available in a total of 29 countries by October 28th and over 70 countries before the year ends.

There is no doubt that Apple does at great job with tease marketing and building a demand for its new products by tapping into consumers’ emotions and baiting them with new features that consumers “need” to live better and be cooler. Consumers who are buying the iPhone 4S quickly cite several new features that had them lining up at the doors to their local Apple stores to get their hands on the latest and greatest smartphone:

  • Siri voice command
  • AirPlay wireless mirroring
  • Higher megapixel camera
  • IOS 5
  • 4G network
  • 2 antennas
  • Speed — faster processor, faster camera, and more

The exterior of the iPhone 4S doesn’t look very different from the iPhone 4, and there are still negative aspects of the iPhone that haven’t been addressed (e.g., the battery life is better than the iPhone 4, but not much). However, consumers cannot wait to get their hands on the latest and greatest Apple product.

With each new version of its products, Apple adds just enough new features and improvements to make them the hot new gadget to own, and the marketing push behind product launches is genius. Apple updates its products approximately once per year (or less), so there is always a great deal of anticipation around a launch. Again, Apple is the company to benchmark when it comes to emotional branding, relationship branding, and tease marketing. Whether you’re an Apple customer or not, if you’re a marketer or branding professional, you need to study Apple and learn how to leave consumers always wanting more from your brand.

Image: Flickr

Online Display Advertising Increases In-Store CPG Brand Sales

New research from comScore and dunnhumbyUSA shows that online display advertising does have a positive effect on in-store sales for consumer packaged goods brands.

According to the research, consumer products brands get a median 21% sales lift from households that are exposed to online display advertising, and 5 out of 6 online display ad campaigns boost sales for consumer products brands.

The study also found that 70% of online display ad campaigns generated double-digit sales lifts, and 40% of online display ad campaigns generated sales lifts of 30% or more. Furthermore, the research showed that targeted online display ads (from in-store buying data and online browsing data from the study sponsors) generate an in-store sales lift of 42%, which is twice as high as non-targeted campaign results (21%).

These are some significant results that further support developing an integrated marketing strategy that raises awareness and purchase intent across media channels. It’s the continuing exposure to targeted communications where audiences already spend time that increases brand favorability and sets the stage for purchase decisions and conversions at the store level. Online display advertising is just one more place where marketers can expose audiences to their messages and stake a place in consumers’ minds, so when it’s time for the consumer to make the purchase decision, the brand is top-of-mind.

There has long been a debate in business circles about the direct effects that online display advertising delivers with executives relying on click-through rates and immediate conversion percentages as the measurement stick to judge a campaign’s effectiveness. The results from the comScore and dunnhumbyUSA study provide more proof that online advertising can do far more than drive immediate sales. Just as television commercials are unlikely to motivate a consumer to jump off his couch and head to the local store to purchase a specific consumer product, neither is online display advertising meant only for that purpose.

Show the results from this study to your executives next time you need to justify your online display advertising budget. It might make them realize they’ve been very short-sighted in their vision of online advertising success in the past. In fact, staying with that old way of thinking is going to lead to missed opportunities that competitors are more than happy to take from your brand.

Image: stock.xchng

Twitter, Tweet, Trademark, and Lessons Learned

This week, Twitter settled a lawsuit to secure the trademark for “tweet.” Back in 2009, Twittad, a company that provides sponsored advertising on Twitter (e.g., a Twitter user publishes a tweet with an advertiser’s message in it), secured the tweet trademark as part of its tagline, “Let your ad meet tweets.” Twitter claimed that the term “tweet” had already become a popular term that users created to refer to their published Twitter updates, and Twittad’s use of the term would cause consumer confusion.

Until Monday, Twitter wasn’t having much success in securing the trademark to tweet from Twittad, but a confidential agreement was finally made, and Twitter should get the trademark for tweet that it’s wanted for so long.

The lesson to learn is this — always secure trademarks related to your brand, business, and company. Think big and do your due diligence. Don’t pick a brand name that another company in your industry already uses. That’s what happened to Apple when it launched the iPhone (Cisco originally owned the trademark for iPhone) and IBM when it realized a small computer company owned the trademark for Big Blue.

Trademark applications aren’t difficult to complete and the cost is minimal. It’s worth the time, effort, and money to research potential brand names for availability and any potential problems before you spend even more time and money rolling out a brand that turns out to be a trademark infringement.

It’s fairly safe to assume that Twittad received some compensation from Twitter to settle the trademark lawsuit and give the rights to the tweet trademark to Twitter. That’s what happened to Apple when it got the iPhone trademark from Cisco, and that’s a position you don’t want to find yourself, your company, or your brand.

Brand equity is a powerful business asset. You wouldn’t risk other business assets by skipping steps to protect them, and you shouldn’t skip those steps with your brand either. Step 1 — make sure you can trademark your brand name!

Walmart Launches Local Marketing Push via Facebook App

Walmart might put an end to the debate as to whether or not Facebook is effective for local marketing by global companies with its new store-level messaging Facebook campaign.

According to AdAge, Walmart will launch a new Facebook app that will allow the company to customize messaging for each of its 3,600 brick-and-mortar locations. The app will deliver more relevant information about local deals, promotions, events, limited-distribution products, and more.

Walmart already has over 9 million Facebook fans, so the local messaging the new app will provide (assuming it works correctly) should be a welcomed addition to Walmart’s Facebook presence as far as customers are concerned. For example, Walmart expects to tie local events (like sporting events) and weather-related news and trends (like upcoming snowstorms) to the messages published through the new Facebook app. The app will also integrate with mobile devices, so consumers can find real-time deals at stores near their current locations.

Walmart claims the new app is being launched based on customer input and feedback, but messages will only be published twice per week to ensure consumers aren’t overloaded with local Walmart messages.

There is no doubt that this is an important step in localized and personalized social media and mobile marketing. Marketers are clamoring to tie localization and personalization to brand campaigns, but we’re still very much in the experimental phase. The Walmart Facebook app is drawing a lot of attention and should deliver some interesting learnings for marketers considering similar approaches to reaching the social web audience in a way that’s customized to their individual wants, needs, and location.

For global brands like Walmart, this type of localization via the most popular social networking site represents a significant opportunity to turn a one-to-millions conversation into a one-to-few or even a one-to-one conversation. That’s the real trick of successful social media and mobile marketing — connecting the brand to individuals in a way that could never happen through traditional mass media marketing 20 years ago. It’s an exciting time to be a marketer!

What do you think about the new Walmart Facebook app? Could you do something similar to promote your brand and business?

Image: Walmart Stores