I have a good feeling about this one.

Black Anvil Laundry, emotions and fame campaigns

“since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;”

– E.E. Cummings

As we’ve discussed before, emotional campaigns are more likely to drive sales, revenue, and profitability than rational campaigns.

Why? Emotion drives learning and memory. Marketing, as we’ve said before, is a memory game. Emotion drives attention and action. Also, people aren’t terribly rational, and most of the decisions we make are fast, emotional, instinctive and unconscious.

If your audience feels nothing, they will do nothing and remember nothing.

So, what is an emotional campaign? It’s literally a campaign that evokes any feeling and emotions — love, lust, longing, disgust, envy, anger, sadness, empathy, pity, pride, fear, joy, excitement, happiness, amusement, awe. Is that all of ‘em? Sure.

One thing to note: This is not about using emotions for the sake of using emotions. Every ad and activation of your campaign needs to feature your distinctive brand assets (logo, colors, font, tagline, mascot, sonic cue) and, ideally, a category entry point. Emotions simply do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to engaging your audience, building memories and driving business results. And what might that look like? Okay …

Let’s say you’re still the Marketing Director of Black Anvil Laundry. In case you missed the SRH Dispatch a couple of weeks back, Black Anvil Laundry is a high-end, boutique, entirely fictional washing machine and dryer brand.

Black Anvil Laundry has been around for three years. You make fantastic products. Last year was your best year so far, and you are super excited to grow. As always, your job as Marketing Director is to make Black Anvil Laundry easy to think of, easy to feel good about, easy to find and easy to buy for as many people as possible.

You’ve managed to convince your CMO to go all in on a robust, regional brand campaign. Black Anvil Laundry is about to make a serious investment in advertising. You’re thrilled. You’ve got goals. Want to meet them? Here they are …

Over the next 18–24 months, you’re aiming for a +20% growth in both revenue and sales, a bump in mental availability of 10–15%, and a dealer/retail expansion of +25%. You’re responsible for a few other metrics, but those are the big ones.

Your product and sales teams are justifiably proud of the washers and dryers you make, and they’re eager for the campaign to hammer home all the features and benefits of Black Anvil Laundry machines. You’re not so sure about that. Because your features and benefits are nearly indistinguishable from any other washer and dryer brand out there.

Black Anvil Laundry washers and dryers are powerful, dirt and stain-destroying, fabric-loving, intelligent, energy and water-efficient, pro-level and feature next-gen technology.

Don’t tell the sales and product teams, but all high-end washers and dryers have these features, and there’s not a whole lot here for potential customers to get excited about.

What about your differentiators? Black Anvil Laundry machines are beautiful, customizable, built to last for a very long time and unapologetically expensive. Is there anything there? Well …

“Beautiful” could be something. Washing machines aren’t traditionally beautiful.

“Customizable” seems like an odd idea to build an entire campaign on.

“Built to last a very long time” might be cool.

“Unapologetically expensive” is interesting. It’s somewhat similar to Stella Artois’ old “Reassuringly expensive” tagline. Though we are talking about a $12,000 washing machine, not a $12 six-pack of beer.

You need your audience to feel something about Black Anvil Laundry. And laundry. Something other than, “Ugh, it’s laundry day.”

So you take a step back and look at your brand position: Black Anvil Laundry builds stunning, heirloom-quality washing machines and dryers that last for generations of daily use.

Starting with the brand position as our single-minded idea, how do we tell that story in a surprising and emotional way? Here are a few options:

Concept 1: Forged in Fire Black Anvil Laundry evokes images of timeless craftsmanship, of men and women skillfully transforming molten iron and steel into tools, weapons and, well, washing machines. We might be able to take this idea in a few interesting directions.
Concept 2: Inheritance The words “heirloom quality,” “generations,” and “unapologetically expensive” imply that Black Anvil Laundry are the last washers and dryers someone will ever own and the first their children will want to inherit. “Inherit” is an evocative word; the phrase “dirty laundry” comes to mind, and there could be a whole lot of fun to be had here.
Concept 2: Life is messy The phrase “through generations of daily use” hints at all the milestones and moments of life that clothes are a part of, which is most of them. This idea isn’t terribly unique, and we’d have to find a new spin on it, but it could be really good if done right.

Also, keep in mind that this (completely hypothetical) campaign for your (entirely fictional) washer and dryer brand will hopefully run for a decade or more. Not that you can’t change it, but you most likely shouldn’t.

Any of these concepts could work well. We have a favorite.

Which would you choose?

Next week, we’ll show you one or two ways the campaign could move forward, including a half-assed media plan (for sure, our clients get a whole-assed media plan), and we’ll talk about the building blocks of effective ads.

See you next time!

Sources!

“The Influences of Emotion on Learning and Memory” – Chai M Tyng, Hafeez U Amin, Mohamad N M Saad, Aamir S Malik
“Emotion and the motivational brain” – Peter J Lang, Margaret M Bradley
The Long and the Short of It – Les Binet & Peter Field