Tapping into the nation’s dreams

In this short film from Thinkbox and the IPA, Marie Oldham explores the power of emotion; highlighting 2012 Effectiveness Awards winners such as John Lewis, British Gas, Nikon and Shangri La and how they have tapped into the need-states of the consumer to create really effective advertising campaigns. There are some genuinely transformative big ideas in the film and eye-catching work from abroad that you may not be aware of. Well worth a look. 

Featuring Marie Oldham, Chief Strategy Officer, Havas Media and 2012 Convenor of Judges, the film shows, for example, how Adam&Eve DDB’s John Lewis campaign put the consumer first and demonstrated their understanding of the important things in people’s lives. CHI & Partners’ British Gas campaign, Oldham points out, is not an obviously emotional paper however it was a success because the ad didn’t take a rational approach. Nikon and JVM produced an award-winning campaign by tapping into the growing image culture, recognising the need of the consumer to capture the world in images. The campaigns Marie talks about from the 2012 IPA Effectiveness Awards have all gone a bit further and tapped into the really deeper need-states that shape human beings.

All the findings say that if you can tap into something deeper you might get a bigger effect, you’re more likely to get word of mouth and advocacy, and you’re more likely to get a longer term richer effect.

Marie Oldham

Marie points out that consumers in the UK and lots of parts of the world have gone through significant changes from 2007/2008 and these have really undermined some of the beliefs that we held before then. The brands that are really succeeding are using research and using their understanding of their consumers to identify that, and to connect their brand to those changes and to the new values that consumers are focussing on.

Marie’s analysis supports findings from the IPA’s study “The long and the short of it”, written by Les Binet and Peter Field, which found that emotional advertising is twice as efficient as rational, and delivers twice the profit.