The Lincoln Project Advertising

I have been a student of brand advertising for more than 35 years. I was involved with Hallmark's award-winning Hallmark Hall of Fame commercials. And, as a consultant, I have advised more than 100 brands on their advertising. Throughout my career, I have seen more bad advertising than good advertising. And, for decades, I have been fascinated by political advertising.

I think many marketing professionals would agree with me that Republicans have always been better at labels, soundbites, slogans and advertising than Democrats have. Perhaps, this is because they are a more business-focused political party or perhaps it is because they have always tried to appeal to the reptilian brain more than the cerebral cortex. And, that is not a slam. Marketers know that most decisions are emotional decisions, not rational ones.

Which brings me to The Lincoln Project's advertising. The Lincoln Project, created by a group of conservatives, is aimed at drawing Republicans away from Donald Trump. Simply put, I think these ads are brilliant - the best I have seen in some time. Each ad focuses on one thing that makes Donald Trump seem pathetic, repulsive or weak. They play into people's fears and the images and symbolism are carefully selected as are the cinematographic styles, camera angles, framing, common graphic elements, hues and associated music. Rather than talking about each ad and what I like about it, I would refer you to The Lincoln Project's YouTube subscription page, which is here. It features all of their ads.

Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, a Donald Trump fan or a Donald Trump detractor, if you are a student of advertising, you should watch these ads, analyze these ads, think about how they make you feel, and figure out what elements in each of the ads make them powerful and compelling. As you view the ads, identify the elements that are common across most or all of them. And identify the choices they are asking the viewer to make.

My hat is off to the people who created these ads. I think they are brilliant. And I don't often say that.

One other thing is worth mentioning, these ads are examples of repositioning someone else's brand, in this case President Trump's brand.

As an update, this Politico article by Joanna Weiss was just brought to my attention. She is saying the same thing that I am only with more detail and more examples. It is worth reading.
What the Lincoln Project Ad Makers Get About Voters (and What Dems Don’t)

Brand Building Advertising

Advertising and other marketing campaigns can have many different objectives - for instance, increasing brand awareness, changing brand perceptions, increasing emotional connection with the customer, transforming customers into brand advocates, or driving sales.

However, the key distinction I want to make is between brand building advertising and advertising that sells. The latter usually includes an offer or a promotion and always includes a strong call to action. Whereas the former generally does not include any of these elements, but rather strives to do one or more of the following:

• Build brand awareness, increase the brand's popularity (most ads for new products and brands)
• Help the customer to pronounce and remember the brand's name (GEICO's gecko, Slinger's allusions to Swingers)
• Increase emotional connection with the customer (Hallmark's Hall of Fame commercials, Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign)
• Establish the brand as a badge (Apple is for smart sophisticated people, Luminox is for highly competent people, FootJoy is for serious golfers)
• Communicate key brand benefits (Liberty Mutual's accident forgiveness, GIECO can save you 15% or more on car insurance, Snickers satisfies)
• Associate the brand with strong positive emotions (Teleflora ads, Harley-Davidson commercials, many automobile brand ads)
• Give the brand a distinctive personality (Dos Equis' "The Most Interesting Man in the World" ads, Pistachio's elephant, Motel 6's Tom Bodett)
• Romance the product itself (Olive Garden ads, Cinnabon ads, Christian Louboutin ads, many food-related brand ads)

While marketing is a function dedicated to creating demand and ultimately sales for products and brands, brand building ads are designed to create strong emotional bonds with people. They are designed to make brands more admirable and endearing to people. This ultimately leads to sales, brand loyalty and brand advocacy. When a non-marketer gives you grief for an ad campaign that does not include an offer and a call to action, educate that person about the long-term sales power of creating strong emotional connections between brands and people. Some marketing campaigns should be focused on generating immediate sales while others should be reserved for longer-term and ongoing brand building.

Here is a fun YouTube video featuring heart touching commercials. Or how about this vintage Hallmark commercial? This is what I am talking about. 

Brands & Positive Emotions

Research has shown that positive emotions and especially social connectedness leads to increased health. Kindness and compassion and the sense of belonging all contribute to positive health. In her book, Positivity, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson says that data shows that negative emotions, such as fear, can close down our ability to function, whereas positive emotions open us up to possibility and the ability to move forward. 

Dr. Fredrickson's list of the top ten positive emotions is as follows:

1. Joy
2. Gratitude
3. Serenity
4. Interest
5. Hope
6. Pride
7. Amusement
8. Inspiration
9. Awe
10. Love

Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, created this list of the top twenty positive feelings and emotions:

1. Joy
2. Interest
3. Serenity
4. Hope
5. Gratitude
6. Kindness
7. Surprise (pleasant)
8. Cheerfulness
9. Confidence
10. Admiration
11. Enthusiasm
12. Euphoria
13. Satisfaction
14. Pride
15. Contentment
16. Inspiration
17. Amusement
18. Enjoyment
19. Awe
20. Love

As marketers, we know that fear is a motivator, however fear has a negative impact on people (unless there is a real danger to avoid). So, I would encourage you to consider what positive emotions your brand could evoke in people. Consider how your brand can contribute to improved health through positive emotions. While this can be accomplished through advertising, it can also be achieved through customer service and a myriad of other ways. Choose a positive emotion or two (or three) on which to focus and include its development in your brand's plan, complete with objectives, goals, strategies and tactics. 

Brands and Emotional Connection

Emotional connection is one of the five drivers of customer brand insistence as outlined in my BrandInsistence brand equity system. (The other four drivers are awareness, relevant differentiation, value and accessibility.) The consumer must first know your brand, then like your brand, and finally trust your brand and feel an emotional connection to it.

People become emotionally connected to a brand for a number of reasons:

• The brand stands for something important to them. It shares values with them.
• The brand is intense and vibrant. It connects with people on multiple levels across several senses.
• The brand is unique.
• The brand is admirable.
• The brand consistently interacts with them. It never disappoints them.
• The brand makes them feel good.

There are many innovative ways to achieve this emotional connection— from advertising and the quality of frontline consumer contact, to consumer membership organizations and company-sponsored consumer events.

Emotional connection can take your customers beyond brand loyalty to the ultimate measure of a compelling brand: brand advocacy.

It is especially important to ensure that all of your employees with frontline customer contact are like Boy Scouts—that is, that they are trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, and cheerful. Add to that list empathetic, good listeners, and reassuring. To have a quality workforce you need to establish

the appropriate hiring criteria, training, and organization culture. Remember, good service is all about creating positive feelings, treating people well, and solving people’s problems. Ultimately, emotional connection will come from positive shared experiences with the brand over time. While this trust is built over time, offering an unconditional guarantee is a quick way to reduce the risk posed by a new,

unknown brand and to generate some minimum level of trust immediately.

PEDIGREE DOG FOOD: MOVING FROM FUNCTIONAL TO EMOTIONAL MESSAGING

In 2004, Pedigree was the share leader in its category; however, it was losing share to the competition at both the high and low ends of the market. At the time, Pedigree focused its messaging on product attributes. In 2005, Pedigree’s advertising agency (TBWA) recommended changing the emphasis from functional attributes to the “love of dogs,” appealing to the customer’s hearts instead of their heads. TBWA’s chairman and chief creative officer, Lee Clow,

asked Pedigree to embrace this statement as its new brand mantra: “If you convince me you love dogs, I’ll let you feed mine.”

Today, Pedigree offers its customers a breed gallery, dog age calculator, breed match questionnaire, “adopt a dog” search, free puppy guide, “Dogs Rule” apparel, and an opportunity to donate to the PEDIGREE Foundation, which is dedicated to helping dogs find loving homes.

There are other loyalty-inducing approaches, too. For instance:

• The brand encourages frequent, habit-forming interaction (as long as the interaction is pleasant or beneficial and not against people’s wills).
• The brand finds ways to build cumulative value for customers over time, especially if the value is not transferable to the use of competitive products and services.

In his book The Dream Society, Rolf Jensen makes the case for a shift from an information society to a dream society in which imagination and storytelling become the primary drivers of value. He identifies six emerging emotion-based markets:

1. Adventure
2. Community (togetherness, friendship, and love)
3. Providing and receiving care
4. Self-expression (“Who am I?”)
5. Peace of mind
6. Standing for something (convictions)

Any brand that seeks to create emotional connection should find ways to tap into these and other underlying human motives.

© 2015 by Brad VanAuken; excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here.

Brands and Their Emotional Appeal

What is it about Donald Trump that makes him a GOP frontrunner for US president (so far)? Here is what many people say. Trump cannot be controlled. Trump knows it is all a joke. He is our way of giving the middle finger to Washington and career politicians. He says what he thinks. He has no filter. That is refreshing. He succeeded in business. Maybe he could succeed in government too. He is not politically correct. He seems real. He embodies the rage of the white middle class.

Why is Richard Branson and his Virgin brand so popular? He smiles and laughs a lot. He has fun. He dreams big. He breaks the rules. He is not afraid to take risks and fail. He perseveres. He values people and respects his employees. In a way, he epitomizes a different more refreshing approach to business development and management.

Why is Andy Warhol so popular? He was one of the pioneers of Pop Art. He showed us that art can be about common everyday items, items that are a product of our high commercialized consumer society. Art can be accessible. It doesn’t have to be profound. And it can be transient like other aspects of our throwaway society. His work chronicled popular culture from the 60s through the 80s. And they sometimes made statements on popular culture. His art was original, different and modern. And Andy Warhol really knew how manipulate the media.

What do these three examples help us understand about branding? They demonstrate the power of personality. They establish the importance of being different from everyone else. They reveal that it is important to tap into deeply held attitudes, values and beliefs.  They indicate that timing can be a factor in popularity. And they show that emotional appeal is always very important.

Brands and the Emotions they Evoke

Brands can evoke strong emotions ranging from excitement, anticipation and happiness to anxiety, trepidation and revulsion. 

For instance, if your spouse surprised you with a Maserati Quattroporte S for your birthday, how would you feel? If you won an all expense paid vacation in Branson, MO, how would you feel? If you won the same for Paris, France, how would you feel? If Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, how would you feel? If Hillary Clinton was elected president of the United States, how would you feel?

If you were told that your spouse was serving Spam for dinner, how would you feel? If dessert was Ben & Jerry's ice cream, how would that make you feel? If instead, you were going to The Capital Grille for dinner, what emotions would that evoke in you?

If you were required to watch South Park on television, how would that make you feel? If you were required to watch Downton Abbey instead, how would that make you feel? How about if you were required to watch FOX News? MSNBC? 

When I say Harley-Davidson, how does that make you feel?

How would receiving a Blackberry smartphone make you feel? How about an Apple iPhone?

What if I gave you a free carton of Marlboro Lights? How would that make you feel?

I hope I have made my point that strong brands evoke strong emotions. Do you know what emotions your brand evokes? Are these the right emotions to stimulate purchase and to reinforce loyalty? Or do they work against the brand in some way? Do the emotions the brand evokes vary by consumer segment? (The answer to this is usually "yes.")

I encourage you to determine the emotions your brand evokes for its different customer segments and then to amplify the emotions that have the most positive impact on the brand.

Pedigree Dog Food: Moving From Functional to Emotional Messaging

In 2004, Pedigree was the share leader in its category; however, it was losing share to the competition at both the high and low ends of the market. At the time, Pedigree focused its messaging on product attributes. In 2005, Pedigree’s advertising agency (TBWA) recommended changing the emphasis from functional attributes to the “love of dogs,” appealing to the customer’s hearts instead of their heads. TBWA’s chairman and chief creative officer, Lee Clow, asked Pedigree to embrace this statement as its new brand mantra: “If you convince me you love dogs, I’ll let you feed mine.” Today, Pedigree offers its customers a breed gallery, dog age calculator, breed match questionnaire, “adopt a dog” search, free puppy guide, “Dogs Rule” apparel, and an opportunity to donate to the PEDIGREE Foundation, which is dedicated to helping dogs find loving homes.

(c) 2014 by Brad VanAuken, excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition

Pre-order your copy of Brand Aid, second edition here.

Making Your Brand Likable

Ultimately, you want people to like your brand. So, what makes a brand likable? Think of a brand as if it were a person. And then think about what makes people likable. Here is my list of attributes that make people likable:

• They are secure and self-confident
• They are honest and have integrity
• They keep their promises and are reliable
• They are genuine, sincere and authentic
• They are positive, happy and optimistic
• They smile
• They are not too serious, they laugh and they make people laugh
• They ask questions and they truly listen to and try to understand the answers
• They keep an open mind
• They do not judge or condemn others, they accept them as they are
• They look for something nice to say about others, but not in an insincere way
• They can be vulnerable, they admit to their mistakes, they say “I’m sorry”
• They treat people with courtesy and respect
• They add value, they bring value to others

Brands are personifications of organizations and their products and services. Because of this, we can apply this list of attributes to brands as well as people. So take a look at this list and decide what you need to do to increase the likability of your brand. Much of this will result from the appropriate corporate culture, customer service training and procedures and employee selection and performance appraisal criteria. Some of it will result from outstanding and consistent product performance. Advertising campaigns and other marketing messaging can significantly reinforce and build upon your brand’s likability. And don’t forget that choosing the right brand personality and promise can increase your brand’s likability.

I wish you great success in making your brand more likable.

Tribal Branding

With declining trust in traditional institutions, people today are increasingly using brands and consumption to express their identity and signal their values. Tribes come together under what they imagine are a shared set of values or emotions. An astute marketer can often help the tribe to link those shared values or emotions to its brand and its products or services.

The first step is to understand what the group values, what its rituals are and how people in the group behave when they are together. It is also important to understand how the tribe views the world and their place in it. This includes uncovering their beliefs and their hopes, fears, anxieties and aspirations. This requires intense ethnographic research – interviews, observation, and even spending significant time interacting with the group. From this, you discern patterns. Once you have refined and validated the group patterns, you can then determine how your brand might be able to link to or reinforce one or more of those patterns.

Brands that have the potential to become tribal brands (or that already are tribal brands) include Harley-Davidson, FOX News, Patagonia, Star Trek, Tesla Motors and MINI Cooper. It is important for people not only to have shared values and an intense interest in using the brand to signal those values, but also to seek each other out and share at least some aspect of the brand experience with each other.

Harley-Davidson is all about the experience of freedom of the road and comradeship of kindred spirits. FOX News is for people who share a very specific conservative view of the world and of how they would like to see the US operate as a nation. Patagonia is for people who really care about maintaining a healthy environment and who are passionate about the outdoor recreation that occurs in that environment.

People use brands as badges, but more importantly, some people are connecting with brands in ways that they traditionally would have with their churches or hometowns or alma maters. The brands are important signals to their identities but are also components of their shared activities and social lives.

An important aspect of tribal branding is co-creation. Once your brand becomes tribal, you lose some element of control over your brand. You can suggest brand usage or rituals, but it will be up to the tribe to decide if those uses or rituals make sense to them.

Some brands are well on their way to going tribal in unexpected ways. Burberry was a conservative luxury brand with a country feel. Various sources talk about the brand being taken over by “chavs” and “chavettes.” It all started when people traveling for football games liked the clothing they saw the locals wear and adopted them for themselves. Similarly, rappers and hip-hop artists have adopted the Helly Hanson brand.

The bottom line is that consumers are now using brands not only to signal their identities and shared values, but (with the help of astute marketers) also as a sign of tribal membership and as an integral part of the tribe’s activities and rituals.