Full transcript
0:10Advertising is particularly good at attaching emotions to brands.
0:15A terrific example from years back is a car called the Renault Clio.
0:21Years ago they launched with an advertising campaign featuring
0:24a couple of daft French people, Papa and Nicole.
0:28The whole idea of that ad was supposed to be that the Renault Clio
0:33is a terrifically easy car to drive.
0:35However, when you look at that ad
0:37what you're looking at is two people flirting, being terrifically sexy.
0:42And of course what that does, is result in you thinking
0:45the Renault Clio is a terrifically sexy little car,
0:48and lots of people want to be sexy.
0:50The result? The most successful car launch ever in the UK.
1:00Meta-communication are all the twiddly bits -
1:04the music, the characters, the setting, the storyline...
1:09Anything that's not actually to do with what you're telling people.
1:13The interesting thing about meta-communication
1:17is that we are programmed not to be able to unprocess it.
1:21Once it’s exposed to us, we've got it.
1:25Here's a good example: the famous Apple 1984 ad
1:30was shown once on midnight in 1983,
1:35and once in the Superbowl in 1984.
1:39And yet that ad is known practically all around the world.
1:42The ad is the girl running down this aisle with all these
1:47zombie-like people, and she hurls the mallet through the screen.
1:53And of course the message in that ad is very simple -
1:56the world is being dominated in that era by IBM
2:00and Apple is going to break out of that era.
2:03That idea of Apple being the defender of the people,
2:08and the defender of freedom
2:10of course reflected into Steve Jobs, who became the epitome
2:14of the defender of the people.
2:17Which means people who buy Apple computers and in most cases,
2:20astonishingly, even though that ad would never have actually been
2:24seen by them on air,
2:26they know about this ad.
2:28And they feel Apple is a terrific company.
2:31And in that respect, once you get a reputation like that established,
2:35it's there forever.
2:37There's a company called Huawei who've recently launched an ad
2:42featuring a little creature called a Gnu being photographed.
2:47And the guy who's photographing the Gnu looks at his photograph
2:51and he imagines what's going to happen to the little Gnu.
2:54It's going to be captured, it's going to be put in a zoo,
2:56it's going to have things thrown at it...
3:00So, he decides not to take the photograph.
3:03And the message is, with Huawei
3:06you can be your own judge of morality.
3:11What absolute nonsense!
3:13I mean Huawei's a phone, it doesn’t allow you to do anything.
3:17But, emotionally, very appealing.
3:26How do you stop your emotions being influenced by advertising?
3:30Well, in my book, there's only two ways to do it.
3:33One is just don’t watch any advertising.
3:36The other way, curiously enough, is to watch the ad very carefully,
3:40is to look at it and to say: What are you trying to do?
3:44"What are you trying to influence?"
3:46"What's really behind this ad?"
3:47If I see this little furry animal in the woods,
3:51what's it there for? Is it there to make me feel good about this brand?
3:57Yeah, of course it is.
3:59And by doing that, you can do something called counter-arguing.
4:02We're not used to counter-arguing the emotion in advertising,
4:06but if you look at the ads,
4:08if you look at the emotive content in the ads,
4:10if you listen to the music
4:12you can say, "Ah! I know what you're trying to do."
4:14So emotionally you can counter-argue that ad.
4:19Of course, it probably won't work
4:21but at least you can feel you're slightly more in control of your life
4:25than the advertisers are.