TV Cheese and Memories.
Growing up, I have a distinct memory of a man in full-body tights, cape flapping in the breeze, standing atop a building. Sporting a big toothy grin and a single capital letter on his chest, you can probably guess who I am referring to. Yep, FordMan. When you couldn’t find FordMan proudly posing atop his huge car dealership building, he could be found performing many other various super-human feats, all in an attempt to save people from paying too much for their next car and thwarting evil at every turn perpetrated by the nefarious salesmen at the other dealerships. I also remember my father always reminding us that he went to elementary school with “that guy”. It was the closest thing to a celebrity encounter he’d ever experienced, I guess.
In an era of cheesy TV, this fell right in line. Yet, after all these years, I still remember it. And isn’t that the point? Hulk, Wonder Woman, The Six-Million-Dollar Man, I loved them all (Wonder Woman, perhaps a wee bit more). And although not nearly as legendary, I loved watching FordMan too. I confess, I never did buy a Ford from FordMan. But I was about 10 at the time, so there’s that.
I Wonder Who’s Watching Me Now?
To say that it’s a different world now would certainly be an understatement! With Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominating the landscape, it’s impossible to imagine what the world will look like in a few years. “Experts” will claim they have the inside track, but they don’t know either, not really. In our jobs, and our lives, the sound of the beating drum can be deafening. AI this, AI that, and if you are not constantly staying on top of it, then you’re being left behind. Thanks world, for unlocking a new anxiety-I was running out of things to worry about. It seems like AI can do just about anything. Just about.
Even before AI, technology has been driving marketing efforts for a while. The ability to collect, organize, and leverage mass amounts of customer data is a marketing weapon unlike anything we’ve had our hands on before. When a customer scrolls, searches, clicks, lingers, or is in proximity, marketers can collect that data if they choose.
The old-school in me would love to be able to point to something and say, “Well, at least they can’t track this.” But honestly, they probably can or will be able to soon. Can you say ‘eye-tracking’ software, anyone? (we should all roll our eyes now, while we still can-without being solicited by a dynamically generated ad for some new happy pill to take)
Honestly, it’s all a bit creepy…oh shoot, did I say that out loud? Love it or hate it, this information is marketing gold to any team looking for a new angle in a highly competitive, advertising-saturated society.
People are Strange.
Not only that, people are complicated. It’s not as easy to fit a human being neatly inside a proverbial box as easily as advertisers would like to believe. Think about all those personality and skill tests you have taken over the years. You know, the one that asked you twenty vague questions, then after some quick math, and much anticipation, initiated its secret formula to reveal to you who you really are. What a surprise! I couldn’t wait to enlighten my wife of 30 years! Then, remember how dramatically you changed the way you navigated life in light of this new information? Yeah, me neither. The fact is, people can’t be simplified down to twenty questions, or a thousand. But, if nothing else, you at least had a new label to add to your LinkedIn profile.
Research shows that about 95% of purchasing decisions are driven by emotion and made subconsciously. I bet if you conducted a focus group among your peers and asked them if that was true, most would probably deny it. You know why I say that? Because research also reveals that focus groups are extremely unreliable. There are a number of reasons for this. One of them being the reality that marketers can’t recreate the emotional state of the consumer at the impulsive moment of purchase. To put it simply, people will lie about what they buy and why they buy it, especially in response to social norms. Does this surprise you? I know we’d all like to think that our behavior is driven by reason and focused solely on quality. But somebody is watching Sister Wives, that’s all I’m saying. 😉
Vibes…in the fast lane.
Fun fact: Did you know that the region of your brain (the amygdala) that processes emotions works much, much faster than your reasoning center. Why does that matter? You know all those bullet points and pricing tiers that you made sure were on all your campaign pieces? It’s virtually a no-brainer for a customer to choose your product over the competition, right? The truth is, fortunately or unfortunately, that potential customer was very likely already operating from an emotional bias before their reasoning muscles were even flexed. Emotional biases are extremely binding and difficult to overcome. This is a great advantage if that first impression was a good one. Great design, captivating photography, and relatable copy still matter, folks. We’ve all witnessed the tragedy of a new restaurant open in our community, only to be given the death blow of bad reviews in social media comments in the days following because they delivered a ‘meh’ experience at best the first time their doors were opened. Such establishments will often shut those doors indefinitely not long afterwards.
Don’t be a Bot-head.
Nobody knows your customers and your community better than you. Establishing an emotional connection with your customer should be near the top of your marketing Mount Everest. Emotionally invested customers tend to be fiercely loyal. Is there a language unique to your area? Use it. Are there pain–points others outside your region wouldn’t understand? Acknowledge them, but be genuine. In an ever-increasingly superficial world, be the real deal. Apart from being incredibly complex, people are also incredibly perceptive. Manipulation breaks trust, and trust is a hard-earned, uniquely human gift . Authenticity and human creativity are irreplaceable in creating content that feels genuine and personal.
I remember when Domino’s Pizza rolled out a campaign in 2009 that basically went something like this (paraphrasing), “We used to suck. We know that now. Here’s why we’re better.” They even included actual customer complaints in their ads, if I remember right. This campaign hit home with me. Why? Because, as poor college kids back in the day, we ordered a lot of Domino’s pizza, not because it was good, but because it was cheap. In fact, it was not very good at all. In this instance, acknowledging past failures was a marketing power–move for a sinking pizza franchise. In less than 10 years, Domino’s stock increased by 4,000%. They say they are better now, and I believe them. You could say it has had a domino effect on my pizza purchases ever since. In society, vulnerability is most often associated with attributes of courage and authenticity. As shown, it can be a powerful marketing stance as well. What emotional attributes would you prefer consumers link to your brand? Are you a smart company? Are you the tongue-in-cheek cool company? Are you the empathetic company that understands? These are important decisions that you get to make about your company. You should not allow the navigation of this journey to be hijacked by a machine with an algorithm.
Grandma’s Cookies are the Best.
To be sure, AI and other technologies can be an invaluable source of information for today’s marketer, but it shouldn’t be everything. It shouldn’t even be the main thing. At best, AI is a thief, albeit a very good one. It borrows (trying to be nice here) from billions of images, articles, books, etc. created by humans to conjure up a generalized mish-mosh of what it guesses you are already expecting to receive.
To put it in terms we all can relate to, it’s the 5-minute cookbook option when you don’t have time to pull out Grandma’s homemade chocolate chip cookie recipe. You know, the one written in her own barely legible handwriting, on an old, yellowing notecard with multi-generational butter stains. The one that doesn’t even give exact measurements, but only a ‘pinch of this’ and a ‘dash of that’, ensuring that each new batch is unique but mouth-wateringly delicious. Let’s face it, you could taste the love in Grandma’s cookies. Cookies being cookies though, the knockoffs are handy in a pinch and will be consumed. Grandma’s cookies will be remembered.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s okay to use AI in advertising. It can certainly streamline a myriad of tedious tasks. It’s okay not to use it, too. In fact, it’s okay to ask that it not to be used, if you are paying others for your marketing services. The world is already drowning in a smorgasbord of AI– created content. Suddenly, every organization or business online is sporting a new flyer that looks like every other new flyer. New customer-facing communication is stripped of its personality and voice, and headlines are run though an AI-prompted filter to round off the edges, making sure it’s safe for mass consumption. It’s all beginning to look and sound the same. Go figure, that when deriving your content from predictive models, it all becomes very… predictable. Predictable is within spitting distance of forgettable. Your business risks being forgettable too. Choose to be unforgettable.
We’re Only Human After All.
I don’t pretend to be a marketing expert (maybe I should have led with that), nor do I have any ambition to be. I do take some pride in being a very experienced graphic designer. I wouldn’t say that I’m old, but I do remember when Photoshop only allowed one Undo. Let’s face it, young designers will never know that kind of pressure. You can have your Jay-Z’s, I’ll take my CTRL-Z’s, thank you very much.
For almost three decades, I have been tasked with taking the information given to me and somehow making it memorable, i.e., to make someone feel something. It can be a challenge at times. Sometimes we forget that customers don’t spend all day thinking about our products and are usually not nearly as excited about them as we are. Nevertheless, regardless of the product, platform, or technology, it has been my experience that the most effective weapon we can wield to reach another human being, is to act like a human being. AI and other emerging technologies will continue to provide limitless tangible benefits in the world of advertising. Establishing authentic emotional connection and trust with customers more often can be found dancing in the margins of the intangibles. Humanity is still in high demand, as messy as that may look at times. It might be just the thing that causes someone to remember you.
I’m thankful that I grew up in a world before AI, Internet, or, for the most part, computers. I can’t imagine how many hours it used to take to produce the cheesy effects in those old commercials and TV shows that I remember so well. I’m sure creatives back then would have loved to have access to the technology we have today. All the content created would have been smooth, seamless, and believable. I’m just not sure I would have remembered it.
When the debate arises, I will always defend Ford over Chevy. I’m don’t know why…or maybe I do.
Chris Norris, experienced (perhaps overly so) Graphic Designer
(no AI was used or abused in the writing of this article)
