The most important aspect to a successful advertisement is to emotionally connect with the target audience. By building an emotional connection with the audience, the message resonates and improves the chances of creating a positive mental impression for your offering. For over ten years my company, Sensory Logic, has been using facial coding to determine the emotional effectiveness of advertising. Recently, I listened to ten specific radio ads to analyze individual elements and how they would affect listeners. There are a few aspects that are crucial to delivering an effective message. Most importantly, messages need to be clear. This can be done by avoiding abstract language and ensuring that the personality of the ad does not detract from the message. Also, it is equally as important to engage the audience. This is most often done by cutting through the clutter of typical advertisements to catch the listener’s attention. The desired result of improving engagement is to ensure that the ad resonates with as many listeners as possible.
There are a number of different techniques for following these rules and working to build an emotional connection with the audience. In all advertisements it is essential to avoid confusing the intended audience. Clear, simple messages tend to translate best especially to general audiences. One example of delivering with a clear message is a radio ad by State Farm. Throughout the ad, there are three aspects that make the intentions of the ad clear to the audience. First, the narrator delivers a specific message to the audience in a clear and concise way. Second, the background music during the ad is closely associated with the State Farm brand already, which helps to solidify the brand elements. Finally, during the ad, there are a number of children who are asking difficult questions. The questions further enhance the main idea of the ad, which is that State Farm Insurance is the best source of information for difficult questions in your life.
On the other side of the argument are the overly confusing ads which don’t effectively deliver a message until long after they have been tuned out. For instance, there is a Carl’s Jr. radio ad that fails to deliver the intended message in an effective way. One problem is that the brand is not introduced until more than twenty seconds into the ad. Another is that the storyline for the ad does not revolve around the product that the ad is promoting. Instead, the listener is stuck with 45 seconds of a young man who is in heaven receiving a number of desirable items. Only one of those things is from Carl’s Jr. As a result, the ad is such that if listeners missed the short mention of Carl’s Jr. Chili Cheese Fries 22 seconds in, they would not understand what the ad is promoting until nearly 45 seconds in when the narrator first speaks. Making the listener wait this long for a payoff is confusing.
Another way of improving the clarity of a message is to carefully choose the language used in the advertisement. Ads should be concise to avoid drowning the listener in dialogue. They should also use straight-forward language that most of the audience can immediately understand and connect to the message. A good example of these ideas is a radio ad by CompUSA. The ad is driven by a narrator and a young child. The narrator does a splendid job of using very simple language to describe the offering. Meanwhile, the child is used to slow down the ad and keep the listener from being force-fed a long, non-stop narrative in a short time span. A different ad, promoting SEPTA Metro magazines does just the opposite. The entire ad is a fast-moving, non-stop narrative which uses a lot of confusing tangents in an effort to be humorous. Instead, the tangents that the narrator takes us on dilute the focus on the intended message. The result is a congested and confusing ad that few listeners could quickly digest.
Like with people, an ad without personality lacks appeal. For advertisements there is a fine line between having personality and distracting from the final offer. It is often difficult to keep the message on the right side of this fine line. One ad that succeeded in this mission was a radio ad by Car Sense. The ad profiled an older gentleman talking about shopping for cars “back in the day.” The personality of the ad is the idea that we can all relate to having to listen to a lengthy diatribe by someone older than us who is certain that the modern world is much worse than how things used to be. Car Sense did a tremendous job of using this to add humor but also to inject their brand and their offerings into the conversation as well. By creating a situation we can relate to that is mildly humorous; the listener will better retain the brand information which is also peppered within the ad. Conversely, an ad for Morton System Saver overuses personality and drowns out the intended message. This ad used a melodramatic soap opera-like tone which is very forced and hard for listeners to relate to. The tone of the ad will cause most listeners to turn off and, as a result, they will miss all of the benefits of soft water which the actors are trying (but failing) to convey. Trying too hard to inject personality into an ad can be just as damaging as having no personality at all.
Finally, engaging the listener and drawing them into the advertisement is another key to ensuring that your message gets across. Using contrast in the message can often draw in the attention of listeners to the ad. In the CompUSA radio ad mentioned earlier, the majority of the message is delivered by a narrator. However, the narrator is broken up by the voice of a young child which is a stark contrast to the deep, bellowing voice of the narrator. The role of the narrator is to give the listener a source from which they can easily receive specific information. The child on the other hand brings contrast, which will quickly catch the attention of any listeners. In opposition, some ads miss the mark when trying to engage the audience. One ad, which advocates entering the nursing field, utilizes lots of annoying noises and fast-paced phrases to emphasize the chaotic nature of the main character’s life. Although it works to get across the point that her busy 9-5 life is undesirable, it also makes the ad undesirable to listen to. Most of the audience would turn the commercial off (either literally or figuratively) before the main message is delivered about 30 seconds in.
Overall, it is essential to give the listener a reason to listen to your ad amongst the sea of different ads that they are bombarded with daily. This is best achieved by building an emotional connection with the listener in a simple and concise manner. Advertisers who successfully implement these ideas will direct more listeners’ attention to your offering and deliver higher returns on your advertising dollar.
–Dan Hill is the author of Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds and the President of Sensory Logic, Inc.
