Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
“The marketers decided it is dangerous to assume that people can be trusted to behave in a rational way… If people couldn’t discriminate reasonably, marketers reasoned, they should be assisted in discriminating ‘unreasonably’, in some easy, warm, emotional way.”
Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, 1957
Or as my granny, Marjorie, used to say, “Tha’s now’t so queer as folk”.
A common expression in the North of England, and a Statement of Truth, albeit from the mouths of those likely born sometime around the beginning of the last century, and unlikely to still be with us. Of course, it’s a statement of truth that still applies, however thick or thin the accent involved. And while queer may now assume rather different connotations, few would be wise to challenge Marjorie’s meaning. There’s nothing odder, nothing stranger, than folk.
We are a Curious & Compelling pick ‘n’ mix of Issues & Motivations, a never-ending riddle, constantly surprising, so often unpredictable.
And I love that. It’s one of the reasons I work in advertising.
Why do we do what we do? Why do we behave the way we behave? What motivates us? Drives us? What issues lie beneath?
Fine questions, all of them.
People are a mystery... and yet... they are also not.
Given the right triggers, the right stimulus, people can be quite predictable. With the exception of Impulse Behaviours born of clinical madness, all behaviour is with reason.
Every reason provides a guilty tell into the inner workings of the human heart or mind. What’s so compelling is that only occasionally is human reason anchored in straight, neatly tram-tracked logic. Human beings we are, Vulcans we are not – meaning, there’s method to almost all our apparent madness, but Mr. Spock would have a hard time joining the dots.
Whenever research investigates people’s media habits, it always reveals a massive over-claim in the declared reading of the more cerebral and high-brow titles. The Economist, The Times, Business Week, all are examples that would punch double their circulation if everyone who said they read them actually did.
The Economist: one of the many brilliant print executions by AMV.
We’re not good at admitting our guilty pleasures, but white lies that portray us as wider-read and better-informed come easy. We reason, why should a modest thing like honesty get in the way of a more impressive self-image?
Veblen Goods
The first time I came across Veblen goods, I had to marvel at how it so succinctly illustrates “irrational reasoning”.
Veblen goods, aka. “I WANT to pay more! The MORE expensive it is, the MORE I LIKE it!”
“Veblen goods are a group of commodities for which people's preference for buying them increases as a direct function of their price, as greater price confers greater status.”
Source: Wikipedia
Wanting to pay more is, at face value, Absurdly Irrational – but face value and Snob Value are very different beasts. With Veblen goods, the notion of value is re-interpreted, is no longer literal, meaning Snob Value is simply a different kind of ROI.
What does the purchase of luxury goods afford? Potentially a concise and consciously indiscrete badge, screaming, “I’m a success, have money, can afford this! Acknowledge me!”
Our Conspicuous Consumption is now so evolved, so beyond blushing, that it can even afford to be ironic and still maintain the ticket price. Consider Bling... H20. $40 bottled water decorated in Swarovski crystals.
We can all be (“thieving”) magpies in our fancy for shiny trinkets, in our lust for jewellery and gems and all things bling. And if “bling banditry” is a touch vulgar for our particular strand of materialistic snobbery, alternatives remain to still tone-down AND over-indulge. We may walk the line signed stealth wealth, of discrete luxury and inferred “high quality”, so displaying our Impeccable Taste, as to be similarly appreciated by a “Good Taste Set” of fellow lux goods in-the-know-ers who are just like us.
Louis Vuitton, print ad, May 2010: “The seamstress... A needle, linen thread, beeswax, and infinite patience protect each over-stitch from humidity and the passage of time.”
Following complaints to the ASA, the above Louis Vuitton ad was pulled for being misleading. Louis Vuitton handbags are in fact machine stitched.
Stella Artois
Placing Economic Theory in the hands of a copy writer, Stella Artois’ UK strap-line (from 1982 to 2007) was a sharp, snappy salute to Veblen.
“Reassuringly expensive” was a brilliant piece of copy-writing, but the real genius lay in the fact it was referring to a lager, AND in that it needed to slight-of-hand drinkers into happily paying more because of the greater Duty placed on higher ABV beverages.
Feel reassured by the expense. Enjoy paying more! What an awesome head-space for any brand to occupy. On trade, at the bar, Stella Artois became the gold-standard for what it was to be a “Premium” lager.
Stella Artois print campaign, “Reassuringly expensive”, by Lowe Lintas. Two fine examples, from 2000.
Crisply ironic and largely unappreciated, off-trade, up-and-down the supermarket aisles of Britain, Stella Artois (in bottle and can) ran on close to 52-week-a-year promotional discount. “Reassuringly Expensive”... and “Always on Offer”.
For a good while, Stella Artois got to have it both ways, with their off-trade discounting seen by shoppers as an opportunistic “deal” rather than a contradictory pricing strategy that devalued brand perception. It was all very clever stuff, with Stella Artois ‘Marketing’ showing all the wiles of a seen-it-and-sold-it-all rug trader in a dusty souk.
Patek Philippe
Patek Philippe’s advertising also makes its pitch to offer the best of both worlds. It’s all treat, no guilt, for the high-income family man who wants to feel selfless about indulging more than £10k on a wristwatch.
Patek Philippe print ad, May 2011: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation."
I once worked with a Creative Director who had a borderline physical reaction every time he saw this campaign. And no, it wasn’t a positive physical reaction, more Big Red Welts of Contempt – but like Stella Artois, here too, there is a blend of genius at work.
Diametrically opposing a world of Fast Consumerism, of layer-upon-layer of Consumer Landfill made ever deeper by so much disposable flat-pack Swedish furniture, we have Patek Philippe. We have quality, craftsmanship; we have a sense of true timelessness.
A wildly self-indulgent luxury good becomes “an heirloom”. For your son, where selfishness is flipped as familial benevolence, materialism as a mortality dampener.
The “social sciences” may just text-book this up as “over-justification”, but it’s quite brilliantly effective. No one likes to be in conflict (cognitive dissonance is no fun), and no one has to be with this kind of easy, multi-levelled justification from the knowing pen of Tim Delaney (of Leagas Delaney).
Surely any advertising that manages such a blatant and effective guilt-appeasing hustle, and sugars the purchase by implying a small shot at remembrance and immortality has to nail a few jury votes?
Halda
Authenticity & Rarity are of course among the more rational high-price-point justifiers.
A friend of mine who runs an ad agency (the seriously hot and seriously cool, Forsman & Bodenfors) also side-lines in the watch business. Hans worked on a watch prototype that he then sent into space, aboard Discovery, decorating the wrist of Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang.
“The Halda Concept” is a 128 piece-only wristwatch that comes with two inter-changeable “modules”, one mechanical, the other digital, the former for planet Earth, the latter for those moments spent journeying The Final Frontier.
Made from NASA certified “TECAMAX”, it’s very lightweight, resistant to extreme “space-like” temperatures, and the Vertu-like Digital module also measures G-Force. All in all, it’s all rather James Bond.
The primary target group for a “Space Tested” Halda wristwatch? The 5000 people who’ve made a down-payment on a $200k ticket to travel by “the world’s first commercial spaceline”, Virgin Galactic. And the secondary target, as Hans put it best, “someone who wants a hilariously expensive bragging piece on their arm.”
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Headlining Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Wikipedia runs with:
“Human beings have wants and desires which influence their behaviour. Only unsatisfied needs influence behaviour, satisfied needs do not.”
I say the Human Condition is a Constantly Unsatisfied one. This is not a bad thing. This is not a cynical statement. We are all in a permanent state of desire, of wanting, for one thing or another. “Desire” exists to address a deficiency, whether for food to appease hunger, or a luxury handbag, to imbue social standing. Both desires are for a “return to balance”, where a current imbalance exists.
Advertising is The Business of Selling. To do this well, it must appreciate what people are really buying.
Typically, they’re buying gestures, gestures that Contribute & Compensate, that return balance. They’re potentially buying Social Status & Self-esteem, Recognition & Respect, Belonging via “Clique Approval”. They’re buying Individualism, or maybe the short-term “Feel Good” of Accumulation.
All advertising is an Appeal to Act, so behind the appeal is a clarion call to our most rooted human desires.
Does advertising create desire, or does it merely play to those perennial needs that exist within us? Is effective advertising the Sinister Science of Hidden Persuasion, or simply an empathetic mirroring of the human condition?
Advertising that works knows its audience all too well. Advertising makes most sense when it has the clearest sense of its audience, however irrational, conflicted or seemingly queer that audience may be.
SP.
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