Written by Dave Jansen, Connecting Plots Founding Partner & CCO
In advertising, visibility is important but overrated. We need to talk more about feeling. Deep down, gut-level feeling.
Here’s the thing: Nobody cares about a message unless it punches them in the feels. Science backs me up. Emotion is the cheat code to memory and decisions. If you’re not triggering something real, you’re just white noise.
At a recent industry event I attended, everyone was banging on about delivery and data, but nothing else was said about creativity for emotion…
It’s like everyone forgets that a perfectly targeted, forgettable ad is still a forgettable ad. Or a shit one if you will. If people don’t feel something, they don’t remember. And that’s when you’re wasting your time and your money.
This matters now more than ever.
We’ve got content coming at us from every angle and it’s only going to get worse. AI is already flooding us with meaningless, emotionless crap. Spend five minutes on LinkedIn, Pinterest or Tiktok and you’ll be inundated with spec ads and experiments that lack any of the pesky things like feeling or a plot line.
Dave Jansen
Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving the craft that AI is unlocking, but it won’t replace feeling or storytelling.
But what’s the antidote?
I think it might be in simplicity. Getting back to basics. Telling powerful stories. Tell a good story and quality or aesthetic doesn’t matter. People will always gravitate to stories. We’ve been doing it for the past tens of thousands of years.
People are simple. They don’t care about ads. And they certainly don’t care about messaging frameworks or perfectly rendered scenes made by robots.
Make them laugh, cry, get goosebumps. Anything. They’ll remember you.
Yes, messaging matters. But never at the expense of emotion.
Go and watch the ‘Ship My Pants’ ad by Kmart. Fucking brilliant.
Now try and remember the last ‘free shipping’ ad you saw. There will have been hundreds this year alone, but you’ll probably remember none of them.
That’s why now is a good time to stop talking about the pipes and start talking more about the shit that’s going in them.
Admittedly, some of the problem comes from the very agencies banging on about emotion. They’ve been slowly killing it with 100-page brand guidelines (that no one reads) packed with bullshit rules that suffocate creativity and are impossible to implement.
Mental note. If your brand guidelines are a) 100+ pages and b) don’t translate into feeling, they’re useless. Chuck them in the bin and dig up the old ones from when things felt real.
Brands should behave like characters, like a sketch show cast or a content creator. They need to be open to being shaped by their fans.
Whether it’s a 30 second ad, the tone of an EDM or a poster… Whatever it is, keep it simple. Simple works.
The best brands live in people’s heads as a feeling. Because being seen is one thing. But being felt? That’s everything.