Empathetic Advertising

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Marketing and advertising have not paid sufficient heed to the fact that all people have two levels. One level is the one that they are consciously affecting, their mask, how they present themselves to others and to themselves. The other is so deep inside of them, most have lost touch with it, that's why it's called the subconscious.

The conscious (Freud posited a "manager" function he called the Ego) in the present world culture we call "civilization" is a reservoir of how we have been conditioned to "fit in." The subconscious -- the part that makes 95% of decisions -- is the side of us that harbors our aspirational self, who we would want to be if the world let us, if we didn't have to work at something paying us money.

If we are now bent as an industry on making our advertising empathetic, let's make it empathetic to the subconscious self, who we really are au naturel, before the conditioning to fit in got layered over those hopes and dreams. That is 95% probable to be effective because it appeals to the Deep Self that commands 95% of our choices.

Let's compare the two fundamental alternative advertising approaches:

1. Address the conscious mind
2. Address the subconscious mind

Before we proceed, let's acknowledge that there is a taboo in this area. Mind control as a tool of advertising has been a popular myth since Vance Packard. But in reality, neither of the two approaches is inherently more ethical than the other. We all attempt to persuade one another of things. What can make this unethical is if one is insincere and seeks to trick or coerce the other, or is covert, i.e. uses purposely hidden measures.

Addressing the Conscious

When one seeks to address the conscious mind, the first job is to capture their attention and maintain it while you tell your story and get them to remember who you are.

This used to be a lot easier than it is now. The first year a family got a TV set, they couldn't believe how much fun they had and didn't have to pay a penny for the programming. They had only to tolerate some commercial interruptions which were a novelty in themselves.

Now that one is constantly tempted to lift and see the little screen (btw, 70% of digital ad spend is now through mobile), and the level of acceleritis (information overload) ensures a backlog of inner distractions from recent memory the mind is eager to go back to, the present world audience is in analysis paralysis mode all the time.

Using this approach to the conscious, one is drawn into using an excusable degree of trickery by means of baiting the attention with something tangential to the brand's main point, then adroitly (i.e., without losing the audience) switching subjects to communicating a rational benefit or brand image, then making sure (all too often only at the end) to let them know which brand you're referring to.

Addressing the Deep Self

Harvard's Gerald Zaltman has published findings proving that 95% of the buying decisions consumers make are made by the subconscious mind. No one has taken issue with this as it is so self-evidently true. Simmons has shown that demographics and geographics combined account for an average of only 6% of brand adoption. The rest is caused in the Deep Self.

The Deep Self is always there, the experiencer of all that goes on within and without. The attention of the Deep Self is always looking for important things to focus upon, but in the absence of anything but the usual trivia, defaults to the Default Mode Network (DMN), which intuitively steers through stimuli whether presented internally or externally. The DMN, we hypothesize, is always in touch with a Subconscious Alarm Network (SAN), which is always scanning for threats or opportunities. The SAN is always interested in picking up on any signals which relate to the individual's driving motivations.

A brand seeking an empathetic approach will gravitate toward this method: use the opening of the spot to identify the brand, and in the audio and video tracks convey the main motivation of that individual, as identified by whatever data are used to understand that individual's deepest motivations -- not related to your product, but related to the individual's hopeful dreams about their own future life. RMT passively measures these 15 RMT motivations based on the content they consume through media. RMT detects the motivation strongest in your ad based on human/machine semantic, semiotic and kinesthetic analysis, and can then recommend the best IDs and contexts that will positively resonate with that motivation.

By signaling that motivation is what you want to talk about, the attention of the Deep Self of the viewer will be obtained.

This elevates the experience from a pitch about a mere product. This is talking about the most important stuff in life.

In straight advertising, the motivation will then need to be connected to the brand. For example, if the individual is mostly motivated by having interesting positive experiences, that will be connected with the brand.

In a branded content approach such as normally used in digital display ("native"), however in this case used in video (including on linear television in ad pods), the brand announcement at the beginning could take the form of "Brand X Presents," a leaderboard or animated logo that lets the viewer know that they are going to be seeing a bit of philosophy from Brand X. The content that follows need not mention the brand nor even the product category. The message merely establishes that Brand X is on your wavelength and might impart some suggestion that is actually helpful in achieving the outcomes that motivation wants. More than two dozen random control experiments show that true sponsorship of content without a brand pitch averages 7X the persuasion effect of the average 30-second TV commercial.

In linear TV and other non-addressable media, one is selecting vehicles based on the degree of motivational resonance between one's creative executions and the aggregate average audiences of the alternative programs, rotations and networks. One can also predict this motivational skew of the audience by use of RMT content analytics. The two methods can be used together for maximum effect.

Zooming Back to the Bigger Picture

Marketing and advertising have remnant mass marketing memes clogging their neurons. Their approach to creative strategy, with notable exceptions, is stuck in the modality of the 1950s, addressing the conscious mind, seeking to capture attention and then cause persuasion and branding before losing the audience. Like skeet shooting crossed with a tachistoscope.

Meanwhile, the culture has moved on and occasionally grunts something impolite about advertising, and about big brands lost in space and not understanding "me." Wherever they can, they depend on each other and small new businesses with pro-social motivations to decide what to buy.

There are seeming disconnects in the data. One source reports that the average TV spot gets a few seconds of attention at best, while TRA, Nielsen NCS, BHC and many others continue to report that TV has higher ROAS (return on ad spend) than digital. How could both of these things be true?

It's because TV does its job often without requiring a high degree or a constancy of attention. Typically, one sees a commercial more than once. Even straight 1950s-type ads if used today (as is common) gain cumulative effect across a campaign, in some cases simply by a reminder effect. The whole process could be described as subliminal, because it's going on mostly in the background of the mind, and yet this is enough to have effect. If you like a brand but have not used it lately, even just hearing something for a second from the next room can help cause you to buy that brand again sooner than you would have.

The old marketing advertising model was pretty flat and stayed on the surface of things. The new marketing advertising model is already far more nuanced and still has a long way to go. As always, there are leaders, fast followers, etc. Today a number of agencies, advertisers and media are regularly using the RMT motivational approach. Every year that number grows. At the same time, other researchers with similar views are pushing back the veil -- companies such as Semasio and Neuro-Insight, academic superstars such as Dr. Americus Reed at Wharton -- addressing deeper levels of what makes us individuals and motivates us beneath the surface consciousness, and all RMT partners in the pursuit of advertising that speaks to the Deep Self.

Soon, CMOs and other senior practitioners will be visualizing the world as it is, where brand messaging through media is like water around fish and is absorbed and acted upon to the degree that it is relevant to the Deep Self.

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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.