How do you freshen your brand? Subaru Dog Commercials Tell the Tail.

Here’s a pet peeve many have with television commercials and marketing in general. Often when aiming to be creative, marketers overwork an idea to the point where consumers want to throw a missile at the screen every time the spot airs.

How many times can you watch the Dominos commercial, where the tree falls on the guy’s car and then he slips on the ice, ruining his pizza? Funny the first time, but with media now running commercials back to back, it gets tired fast. Or how about that “1-800 Cars-for-Kids” jingle? A good cause to be sure, but also a maddening earworm. With that song repeating in your head, you end up hating the commercial and even the kids.

How to revive the familiar

Subaru has a reputation for great branding. Why? No matter how many campaigns they’ve launched, they manage to keep it fresh.

Case in point is their famous line, Love; it’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru. This started in 2008 with a daddy and daughter who morphs from a 4 year old to a teenager embarking on her first driving experience. It was a moment we all recognize and remember with fondness. Subaru gave it their own special touch and made it iconic. This was followed by other family moments, a boy growing up alongside his dog and a daughter going off to college.

A classic …

But here’s where the brilliance comes in. Before these vignettes wore out their welcome, Subaru changed it up.  They managed to maintain the family vibe, but in a surprising, witty and endearing new way.

Instead of dad and daughter, the family driving lesson involve a bunch of canines. In one spot, they’re going through the car wash. In another, the golden retriever family communicates with Siri, the driving instructor. And in yet another, a cat steals their parking space at the mall. Facial expressions and doggy vocalizations are priceless. Check it out.

Both campaigns, “Love; it’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru”, followed by “Dog Tested, Dog Approved” have been winners for the brand. As noted in Ad Age, for example, while automotive sales in 2017 declined in the U.S. overall by 2.9%, sales for Subaru increased by 8.7%.

Of course, there is sound thinking behind the brand’s creativity. Subuaru lovers are also dog lovers. In fact, 67% of their customer base have pets.

What did they get right? There isn’t a single moment in any Subaru commercial that rings false. The intimate moments are an exact reflection of things that happen in everyday life. These vignettes touch the heart strings without ever appearing to try too hard.

Giving a brand a fresh take

Whether it’s going from humans to dogs, or running multiple campaigns simultaneously (think Geico), there are creative ways to stay true to your positioning while keeping it fresh. And this translates across all channels.

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Neuromarketing: it's not what you think

Neuroscience has brand marketers lining up to out-psycho-babble each other in an effort to sound savvy on the many ways to manipulate this science. 

And who can blame them. The revolutionary advances in the study of the brain are thrilling. Neuroscience books are flooding the market. The discoveries they reveal range from how the senses can activate memory and where the belief center is located in the brain, to why you act more from impulse than reason. All of this just scratches the surface.

Business writers, consumer researchers and consultants, hoping to capitalize on this excitement, promise new ways get inside the mind of that mysterious character — the consumer.

But such reasoning often contains a fatal flaw.  The fact is: in today’s marketing it’s not just the code of the human mind you need to crack — but the artificial one — a mind whose unconscious looms over all, the Google algorithm.

Take Gmail, for example. Before your email offer ever reaches its intended target, the google brain sorts it. This “mind” renders a judgement, deciding whether your message is routed into “primary,” “social” or “promotions” buckets. So, no matter how targeted your subject line, or how astutely your message hits the neural triggers of the consumer, it may never get read.

In digital parlance your email is called spam.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s forget about algorithms. Say your offer does reach its audience. Despite its brilliance, it still may be ignored. Why? The fact is your brain has its own sorting mechanisms, some of which are not commonly studied by neuroscience.

A few examples...

In the old days of snail mail, 4-color envelopes would almost always lose. Why? Before a reader even considered what the message, graphic or offer conveyed, the brain read it as junk mail. Out it went. Instead, a more bland, business-like approach would win nearly every time.

The same principle carries over to digital advertising. There, the credibility of the message sender outweighs the look and persuasiveness of the creative, no matter how many psychic hot buttons it supposedly pushes. It’s not what it says, so much as who says it.

And what about how consumers rank their purchases? Product packaging is a science today. Brands spend time and money on package design that invokes all the senses. They use metallic and tactile finishes, even embedded codes to make the product jump into the cart.

But let’s look at toothpaste brands. For some consumers all the glitter in the world is not going to count if price is your criteria when it comes to this product. You’re never going to sway a consumer who thinks it’s healthier for your teeth and gums to invest in floss, and is happy to go generic when it comes to paste.

The late Jerry Fodor, one of the originators of the modular theory of the brain, argued that the mind takes in the world through a process. Before your brain ever considers the meaning of something, whether consciously or unconsciously, there is a more basic level of perception that deals with simple recognition.

Perhaps where the connection between neuroscience and marketing goes wrong is by aiming straight at the mind’s higher cognitive functions — and never studying what happens in the simpler parts; i.e., those aspects of perception that quickly decide yes or no.

Does neuroscience have a place in predicting consumer behavior? Of course it does, as does big data. But know this: the science behind these technologies generates a lot of hype. Just think of the 2016 election. Many people believed what the polls predicted. They awoke the next morning with this question…

What happened?

Talk to the pros who marry science and art— Jerome & Brooke Storytellers. Visit us here.

What are the 3 "musts" for convincing thought leadership? (Hint: pain comes first.)

Your audience is hurting. It doesn’t matter if you’re addressing lawyers, tech innovators or marketers. If your thought leadership piece has any chance of gaining traction, it needs to demonstrate, right from the jump, that you feel their pain. Next you need a solution, followed by a real-world example. It’s a three-step process. Here’s how it works:

1. Identify the pain points

Tech innovators struggle with cyber security issues. CPGs are faced with increased demand for sustainable packaging. Iconic products are losing share to challenger craft brands. Medical device companies are faced with regulatory woes. How well are you tuned into the specific pain points of your target audience? Here’s how we did it for custom packaging giant Boutwell Owens …

“The holidays are a fraught time, especially for manufacturers. Brands create an excessive inventory of products and much of it gets shipped back. Then it has to be repackaged in its original format and shipped once again to the retailer. Somewhere within this process, brand owners lose half of their margins. It’s a nightmare that, in industry terms, is called ‘stock lift.’ Happy holidays!”

2. Offer a solution

Now that you’ve got the reader hooked, the best way to engage is with a smart solution. In the Boutwell Owens story, the audience was brand owners and packaging designers who contend with waste and the added costs of holiday retailing. Here’s the solution our article provided …

“Bottled products that are traditionally boxed can be converted for holiday promotions with the addition of a printed/die cut sleeve. These can be customized and bring a seasonal flavor, without changing the main packaging line. At the end of the season, sleeves can be lifted, leaving the product in place on the shelf, avoiding the lift and repack costs.”

3. Provide a real world example

To give the Boutwell Owens story credibility, we used a case history. Note, if clients don’t want their names used, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the success story that gives thought leadership its power. Here’s the payoff for this story:

“We did a sleeve for a mature product where the brand owner was launching a new line. We packaged it with a sleeve and a book cover that describes the new product. On the technical side, the sleeve was UV printed in multiple colors — very upscale looking. Once the product matures, you simply remove the sleeve and it transitions without new packaging graphics and without even a bill of material change. The cost savings are significant.”

Want thought leadership that builds your credibility?

Talk to the pros— Jerome & Brooke, Storytellers.  Visit us here.