My blog post this morning is more of a rhetorical question and some meandering thoughts. Recently I’ve seen some senior marketers speaking about the importance of emotion in advertising. I also remember my old boss and mentor telling me that if we want to have a strong and effective advertising campaign, it needs to touch on a universal truth. This universal truth should be common to all people but speak to them in their own way – basically, it should focus on human behaviour and conjure up a memory or emotion from their own life that will connect them to the message and the brand. That is why I think the T-Mobile Welcome Home campaign was so effective because we all love to be welcomed back by our loved ones at the airport. They made this sometimes boring, sometimes anxious, sometimes emotional time in our lives fun and rewarding.

If you live in Australia, or Sydney Australia more specifically (because this is where I live and I can’t speak 100% accurately about the rest of Australia) we seem to have developed two forms of advertising that are somewhat unique to our shores. The first form of advertising is the jingle, which I like (sometimes) because I can conjure up many memories from my childhood of foods (Tip-Top) and brands that I loved (Ridgy-Didge). The second form of advertising is the urgent, shouting form which I loath (Harvey Norman and Strathfield typify this space). These two forms can still work in tandem, and both seem to be effective (although for the latter I don’t know why).

Here is a Tip Top Muffins ad from the 1990’s with the jingle “Good on you Mum, Tip-Top’s the one”.

And here is a Tip Top bread ad from 2010 where they have kept the same brand identity but refined it, found the emotional connection through human behaviour and things we love. The jingle is still there in the script an the music but its more subtle.

Finding an emotional connection through advertising will increase brand loyalty

Here is an example of our shouting ads, this isn’t too bad. I won’t subject you to the used cars version but you get the idea and the jingle is still in the background.

If we want our audience to be loyal, if we as marketers want to connect with them and have them remember us fondly, we need to be more sophisticated in our approach. We must think about how our products and brands have played a role in their lives and try to better relate to each individual rather than accommodating the masses. When we do the first, we’ll get the second by default.

I’ve shown you just 2 but there are thousands of examples of Australian Jingles. If you fancy, look up Optus ‘Yes’, Meadow Lee “you ought to be congratulated”, VB Beer “a good hard thirst”. If you like or loath them, leave me a comment and I’ll send you some more.