Just when I thought the Iphone 6 was a massive leap forward in technology, along comes Persona Synthetics. Over the weekend I was captivated by their adverts featuring Sally Synth, "the help you have always wanted".
While we watch her perform a number of household tasks - cooking, cleaning, caregiving- the voiceover describes Sally as "a teacher, a helper, and a friend". But before I could tell my mum that she no longer has to put up with my poor attempts at mowing the lawn, twitter burst my bubble. Eager to share the news I took to social media, but before long I had found out that this was nothing more than a marketing stunt for Channel 4's new drama #Humans.Words couldn't surmise my disappointment, but before I resign myself to a lifetime of chores I thought I would share with you the merits of this marketing campaign.
Diving straight into the deep end with the consumer behaviour jargon, let's discuss message-response involvement. The amount of information we process from an ad depends on our levels of involvement. This can range from simple processing, when you consider the name of the brand, all the way to elaboration whereby you fully engage with the ad and add new bits of information to your memory. These differing levels of involvement are often mediated by the media platform on which you are exposed to the marketing message. Print is a high-involvement medium because the reader must first choose to actively process the information, and can revisit a parts of the ad before moving on. In contrast, television is a low-involvement medium. Apart from the ability to flick to the next channel, we possess very little control over the adverts we are exposed to.So therein lies the question, "How do marketers get people "involved" with their TV advert?" Well, one solution is to incorporate novel stimuli or do something out-of-the ordinary like...I don't know.... have and ad about the latest generation of Human Snythetic?
With the sheer amount of adverts that we are exposed to on a daily basis, creating one that is both visually and mentally stimulating is essential if you hope to cut through the clutter. Creating an advert which appears to be promoting a mysterious new line of human robots will do exactly that! The mystery and confusion helps to increase our level of involvement as we pay more attention in order to work out what this ad is really about. But this ad is not only engaging, it also is "sticky". Sticky ads are ones which the audience remember and can effect their behaviour. This is exactly what these adverts were able to do as people took to twitter to voice their confusion and in some cases- horror- at the adverts.
By producing an ad shrouded in mystery, the architects we able to create a "buzz" about their advert. Buzz marketing, a facet of viral marketing, is about getting people to share opinions or information about a certain brand or event on the internet. This is mostly done via the social networks like Facebook and Twitter and is typically, as in this case, all about increasing awareness. This sort of marketing can be positive or negative, or as you can see from the tweets above, a bit of both. But as the saying goes any publicity is good publicity, and while most people were a bit freaked out they could appreciate the novelty. Using controversy to create a buzz can be risky, and if there is too much controversy the buzz will turn into backlash against those who initiated it. Luckily for people over at Channel 4, they found the "sweet spot". There was enough controversy to incite debate but not enough to cause mass outrage at the human synths (remember Irobot?). Viewers were more intrigued than offended by Persona Synthetics first TV advert. Furthermore, the website and apparent opening of the flagship store on Regent street only served to pique our interest.
Setting up an official looking website and having billboards on Regent Street advertising the launch of a store might seem a step too far, but its all part of an effective marketing campaign. To ensure that the maximum amount of people were exposed to the Human synths, this was part of Channel 4's 360-degree branding. People respond differently to different marketing communications tools.So by having a variety of touch points, people have the opportunity to engage with the marketing message in a way they deem to be most useful. Beyond this Integrated Marketing Communication practice, it also makes the campaign more immersive! Coming back to this idea of involvement, making an advert which people feel they can engage with beyond the parameters of social media, brings it to life and is 100% more thought provoking. Making the transition for advert into real life can be hard but when its done well it can lead to a stage of narrative transportation, whereby people are fully engrossed in the campaign.
A perfect example of how effective this cross over can be are the Comparethemarket adverts. They feature the Russian meerkat Aleksandr Orlov, the founder of comparethemeerkat.com. Launched in 2009, its centres on the meerkat's annoyance at humans mistaking his website for comparethemarket.com due to the similarity between the words "market" and "meerkat". You can actually visit the website and they have recently given you the opportunity the get your very own Orlov toy when you buy the from comparethemeerkat..... sorry Orlov......... comparethemarket. The interactive campaign increased the sites market share in 2010 by 76% and in April of this year, compare the market launched Meerkat Movies offering customers 2 for 1 cinema tickets.
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