After 24 hours, your brand is 50% less memorable. According to a Nielsen study performed with digital video ads, the advertisements were recalled with 50% less accuracy the second day. This memory fade is related to what is known as the decay theory where unessential short-term memories, especially if not accessed often, decay over time. However, the participants’ recollection remained the same for several days after the video ads were presented (five days, to be exact). And, with some contextual clues, they were able to conjure various parts of the ad that they had forgotten. The good news is that it takes less effort to relearn something than it does to learn it for the first time.
So what does this mean for your brand advertisements? This is where some serious sales targeting comes in.
Nostalgia and personal values are two direct ways to hit the mark for your customers by planting a seed deep within the core of who they are.
Let’s examine.
#1 Nostalgia Marketing
What makes a good advertisement? For ad creation and targeted sales, If you can hone in on a memory that already exists for your customers, latch onto it like a lamprey eel, and then attach your own product or service to it, some of the work is already done for you. With a nostalgic advertisement, you don’t have to create a completely new memory from scratch, as a new memory can take exceptional effort to develop. Instead, when you create an advertisement, massage an old memory, rewrite the code a bit, and redefine it for the present to suit the needs of your business and its customers.
I recently ran across a retro advert for Nintendo Switch. The Nintendo Switch ad shows two brothers playing Nintendo’s 1983 gaming console as children. As their lives unfold, the brothers’ relationship becomes strained, and they continue to grow apart. Eventually, it is the gift of a Nintendo Switch that brings them back together. Sounds kind of hokey, doesn’t it? However, the nostalgic commercial makes it seem plausible enough, and many Nintendo customers can relate to this set of circumstances. I myself am one. Many children grew up playing video games with their siblings. Many sibling relationships become strained. This glimmer of hope via a Nintendo ad was equal parts nostalgic and inspiring.
As I write about that advert, this brings me to my next point, get your customers talking – or better yet, writing about your advertisements right away! Send a follow-up survey. Use multiple components when creating ads with a marketing campaign that includes email, digital, print, and direct mail. Printed materials produce better memory recall and can be considered a more trusted source for information. Use retargeting ads that follow your customers across the web with a soft reminder, but don’t overdo it. Follow the words of the Hendricks’s Gin advertisement and create ads with repetition, repetition, repetition…If your ad resonates strongly enough, word of mouth, blogging, and social media sharing will only help to give your ad more power.
Many companies target nostalgia in good advertisements. Some companies that use nostalgic commercials, nostalgic marketing, and nostalgic sales tactics include Coca-Cola, John Lewis, Nike, Microsoft, Apple, Target, McDonald’s, and Kia, to name a few. Think of memories from your childhood that can be translated universally – a tradition or moment that will resonate with your customers – include small details that will bring authenticity to your message. Target your customers’ five senses; the smells of autumn, the sound of wrapping paper tearing open on Christmas morning, the taste of a snow cone at a baseball game or strawberries in the springtime, the visual appeal of July 4th fireworks, the feel of a soft blanket on the ground while camping under the stars, etc.
#2 Personal Values
These days, brands have to stand for something, that’s what people want to see, and that is what they remember; what would your business’s legacy be?
Nike
Take Nike, for instance; the brand has been widely known for taking a stand against racial inequality, sexism, and more, in popular advertisements. Using former American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick in an ad was quite a risk after he took a knee during the National Anthem, as it could have ended up ostracizing certain customers. Still, it paid off, and Nike’s sales increased by 30%.
Uber
Uber stayed neutral during President Donald Trump’s executive order for a travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Their choice to remain neutral when many other companies took a stance wasn’t favored by the left or the right, and both sides looked at it as a cowardly move on Uber’s part.
State Street Global Advisors
Conceptualized by ad agency McCann New York, designed by Kristen Visbal, and funded by State Street Global Advisors (an assessment management company), the Fearless Girl statue was another example of a marketing campaign that targeted personal values. The Fearless Girl statue, who once squared off with the Charging Wall Street Bull in New York City, showed support for an equal work environment during allegations against the company for large salary gaps between men and women. The statue went up on National Women’s Day. It went on to win several awards at Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity, including four Grand Prix and 18 total Lions.
Dove and Always also have good ads to analyze and are two more examples of brands that have created successful women-positive ad campaigns resulting in increased sales.
B2B Vs B2C
Believe it or not, research shows that B2B customers are more emotionally invested in the businesses they work with than B2C customers. In fact, B2B customers are approximately eight times more likely to pay top dollar if those businesses align with their personal values. So what’s the takeaway here? Establish trust by aligning your personal values with your customers and articulate this in not just your ads but all that you do. Consider your base – and cater to them – you can’t please everyone, but not everyone will be a customer – so stop trying to. Brands that say nothing will not be remembered, and if they are, they will not be remembered fondly.
#3 Conscious Vs Unconscious
Ask someone to tell you what matters most to them, and they will consciously calculate an answer, though their unconscious mind often contradicts them.
In case you want to sound smart at your next dinner party, a simple definition of explicit memory is what we can consciously recall while implicit memory is stored in our unconscious. Episodic memory is our conscious recollection of an event or experience while semantic memory is our memory of words, numbers, or concepts.
A study by Young & Rubicam showed that when asked about their conscious values, the top answers for participants were helpfulness, choosing your own path, and finding meaning in life. However, when examined, their top unconscious values were actually security, sexual fulfillment, and honoring tradition. Helpfulness, voted the top conscious value by participants, came in last for the respondents’ actual unconscious values. Sexual fulfillment, rated third to last by participants for conscious values, was determined to be the second most important unconscious value. The conscious mind and the unconscious mind told two very different stories.
When promoting your business, keep in mind that what your customers say they want may differ from what they actually need deep down. To make a truly successful marketing campaign or perform highly targeted selling, you need to align your customers’ conscious wants with their unconscious needs. When it comes to your business and its targeting strategy, decide who you want your customers to be, then get to really know them; it’ll be the difference between making a sale or creating an ongoing business relationship. And, remember, relationships require maintenance, so stay top-of-mind and don’t lose touch because the day you do, you’ve lost a customer.
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