← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
509. The Anatomy of Bad Ads
00:50:59
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer sits down with Dr. Jake Teeny, an assistant professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management. Together, they delve into the world of advertising, specifically focusing on what...
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- [00:00]
Melina Palmer
Welcome to episode 509 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy in today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Jake Teeni. Ready? Let's get started.
- [00:18]
Dr. Jake Teeny
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [00:34]
Melina Palmer
Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. How many times have you seen an ad and thought, who approved this? Our lives are bombarded with ads these days. We can all spot a bad one from a mile away. Some are offensive, some are confusing, some are comically bad acting. Others are just plain boring. So if we all know immediately that an ad is bad, how do they ever get made? And would we do any better making our own ads? My guest today, Dr. Jake Teeny and I will be discussing just that. What makes a bad ad? The different types and top mistakes so you can avoid them and do better while keeping human behavior in mind. A little bit about Jake he received Bachelor's degrees in both Psychology and Philosophy before getting his master's and PhD in social psychology from Ohio State. He is presently the Donald P. Jacobs Scholar and Assistant professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He broadly researches the science of attitudes and persuasion, striving to answer questions like what makes a personal message, advertisement or recommendation persuasive? What leads people to spread word of mouth about an idea, product, politician or otherwise? And how do our thoughts about our thoughts influence our evaluations and behaviors? In researching these and many other topics, he has published empirical studies both in top tier psychology and marketing journals, he has written reviews on influential behavioral research, and he has provided theoretical frameworks in academic chapters for conceptualizing the study of our opinions and beliefs. He's written for Psychology Today, highbrow and often through his longtime blog, Everyday Psych and more. In addition to his work conducting and translating Science Fun Fact, Jake also regularly writes and publishes creative fiction. With dozens of short stories and screenplays published in various literary magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and nationally renowned writing competitions like Short Story America, he continues to actively transform the daydreams in his head into entertaining stories that comprise a wide variety of genres and forms. It's going to be an interesting conversation for sure. Really quickly. Before we get into it, I want to make sure you know there are links in the show notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Jake and myself and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 509. Now let's jump right in. Dr. Jake Teeny, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
- [03:17]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Thank you. It's great to be here.
- [03:19]
Melina Palmer
Yes. I'm excited to talk about bad ads today. Before we jump into that, for everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?
- [03:30]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, of course. So I'm a associate professor of marketing at Northwestern University. In their business school, Kellogg School of Management, My research and focus is largely on the psychology of social influence and persuasion. In fact, that's what I got my PhD in, Social Psychology. And now I apply that a lot to understanding what makes advertising effective or, as we'll talk about today, ineffective, and how we can use that also both as consumers and brands and in professional settings.
- [04:03]
Melina Palmer
Awesome. Well, I think this is going to be a really fun one, you know, as we're going through this process. So you and I spoke originally, it was the Monday after the super bowl, right. Or we had. It might have been the Tuesday. But like, when we had our initial conversation as we were figuring out, like, what are we going to talk about? And we were talking about super bowl ads, and it kind of led into this conversation of the good and the bad and the ugly. Right. Of advertising. And I think the super bowl is, you know, good example of people really, really paying attention to ads. So first, of course, we want to make sure to acknowledge all of the amazing people doing fantastic work, even if every so often an ad is not what you dreamed it would be.
- [04:52]
Dr. Jake Teeny
I mean, it's true. There's so much work, so much time, money goes into these. Like they, they, everybody really deserves. That's why they have these advertising awards now, right? Like the FES and things like that, because, you know, they, they deserve applause. But, you know, even like movies which take a lot of money and time and resources, you get a bad movie every now and then.
- [05:11]
Melina Palmer
Yes. So with that in mind, let's talk about how does this even happen? How do these bad ads even get made?
- [05:21]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question, especially after coming off saying how much money and time and energy goes into them. And I mean, we've all seen bad ads, right? You know, one question I often get in my classes is like, is there really good and bad ads? Isn't it all subjective? And it's like, come on, you've seen a bad ad, you know what a bad is, right? You know, you cringe, you hit skin skip. You know, you ask who approved this? And there's tons of different examples. Now, I think when thinking about bad ads, there's really kind of two forms broadly that you can think about. You can think about ineffective ads, right? Maybe they didn't change the opinions. They didn't generate kind of the awareness or attention that you might want for putting money into an advertisement. And then you have the other form of bad ads, which are just offensive and like really upset people. Both of these are wasted money, but they kind of have different paths to how they emerge.
- [06:13]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, well, let's, you know, make our way into the list here so we can start with the ineffective ads. I think, you know, we all have kind of an idea of the ones that are going to backfire, right? And what can happen with that. But we'll get, we'll dig into that too. But I think there's, there's a lot more to learn in that space of ineffective, because from, you know, conversations we've had here especially, you may really win in one category where it feels like everybody remembers the ad, but no one remembers who did it like, or what it. Like what it was for or what we're supposed to do, right? So they can be kind of sneaky in their badness, right?
- [06:54]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yes, yes, exactly. Insidious, one might say. You know, I think ultimately, and this is, this is true for both ineffective and offensive ads, is it really comes down to either a lack or kind of a failure of stress? I mean, strategy is so important, especially in marketing when you're really dealing with psychology and persuasion, which is. Are not easy things to do well, and it's difficult, coupled with the fact that marketing moves so quickly. Right. You've always got to be what's the new zeitgeist, what's now popular. And trying to move that fast often means you don't move with the strategic mindset, but taking some time ahead of time and, you know, this is often what I teach in my class will save you money and energy down, down the line. My mom's favorite quote always rings in my head. Haste makes waste, right? And so taking a moment to sit back and think strategically what your goals of your advertisement are meant to be is probably one of the most effective ways just simply to eliminate or reduce the likelihood that you have an effective ad. And when thinking about this strategy, you know, the first step is always, well, what's the point of this? What's the objective advertising? And I'M you know, as you've talked about on your show, any kind of purchase behavior goes through some kind of consumer funnel. Probably at the broadest level you can think about it in terms of first raising awareness about the brand or product, then generating positive attitudes or opinions toward the brand or product, then actually eliciting action, getting them to go and buy or try the product. And then, you know, at the bottom of the funnel is like action repeated, getting them to do it again. And I think a lot of times advertisements are ineffective because they're not realizing, hey, when you're focusing on trying to change someone's mind, it's not just this broad overall persuasion. You want to focus on a specific element in that purchase funnel because you're going to employ different strategies to be more effective at each of those.
- [08:57]
Melina Palmer
Right. So we want to make sure we have a goal in mind. You know, seems obvious, but so often, like you said, when we're trying to just react quickly and get something out there, we can kind of miss the mark. When you. So you had the. Haste makes waste. And I was thinking, I was wondering if you were going to do the, you know, measure twice cut ones kind of same idea, right. Being really thoughtful about what it is that you're trying to do. One of the pieces of advice I know I give people here in this point, as we think about those goals is often tend to think way too big and what the goal is, which is then very vague. And that is where we can miss. Even though we say, well, we had a goal, but like, if your goal was, had too much going on or, you know, something just like, well, we just want them to buy. It's like, yeah, but there's so many steps in the process before you get to the point of them buying the thing. And like, maybe you just need them to like, leave Instagram, right. Get to your website, which is, you know, or, and you know, or TikTok even harder to get somebody to, to go do something. And so, you know, that first impression is maybe more of just knowing that you exist and that they subscribe or follow or like one of your pieces of content before you kind of keep moving or that they don't skip that ad or whatnot. So do you have some examples of what you would say are some good goals as we're gonna. If we're gonna avoid, you know, we go from, you know, definitely have one and we don't want it to be good.
- [10:29]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, I mean, I think you hit on kind of a key oversight that happens even at Some of the top brands is they make their objective very broad and what you need to do is you need to be specific. I'm trying to increase awareness that my product is eco friendly for, you know, this specific use case. And the more specific you can be in your objective, the better you'll be able to bring that out and show it in your advertisement and communicate that. We'll talk a little bit, I think later about kind of failures of positioning or failures of main message takeaway. And a lot of this comes down to people have, trying to have too many messages or too many points of difference or too many value props, right? And that specificity in your goal will help you spend, specify what it is exactly that you want to get through. The world is such a noisy, loud place, especially in the world of advertising. And so the only way you're going to actually get them, get anything kind of across your consumers is to have a very specific kind of goal in mind. And sometimes that goal doesn't mean that it's going to translate into business sales immediately. You know, there's a long term debate and marketing between brand building and performance marketing, getting those clicks, right? That performance marketing or that brand building kind of generating positive opinions toward it. And it depends differently on the brand, the product lifecycle. You know, there's a classic example in advertising from Apple's 1984 ad. And this is when they were kind of first releasing ads about their personal home computer. And it's this crazy looking ad kind of based on the ideas of 1984. You don't really even see a personal computer in the ad. But it just, it's so distinct, it's so attention grabbing. It just builds awareness about this, right? That's kind of their goal of the ad. And then they had other elements of the advertising campaign that then supplemented with that, you know, that information about, well, what actually is a personal computer, how can I use it in my daily life. If they tried to do all of that in one ad, it wouldn't have been effective. But by specifying specifically what their goal was, they were able to focus on attention, which is going to be, you know, kind of the main drivers of getting awareness for sure.
- [12:48]
Melina Palmer
I love that. And such a great example in being able to know that this one big ad, this kind of splash we have to make is that we're investing in helping people to even know what we are and be curious to go learn more. Right? And that curiosity gap is so, so key when it comes to getting people to go do anything, right. That you Want to go learn. We've. You know, there are some of these ads I've seen where it's like even like a billboard, you know, where it's the, like, I hate suchand such.com and it's like just a URL and they're on a black or red or whatever. There's one. And I forget where I would have seen it, but it's.
- [13:28]
Dr. Jake Teeny
There's. I hate Steven Singer is actually.
- [13:30]
Melina Palmer
Is it the jewelry?
- [13:31]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, yeah, I see it all. They're all over Chicago. I think they started in Pennsylvania.
- [13:38]
Melina Palmer
Yep. So I've probably seen it when I was in Chicago and that was part of that piece.
- [13:43]
Dr. Jake Teeny
But now I will say, you know, I've seen advertisers do this a lot, this kind of curiosity appeal, and I actually generally warn against it because oftentimes the people that are going to be curious enough to go and look to see. See what it is aren't necessarily the consumers who are going to buy it. And also, you know, consumers only, you know, people. We're consumers. Right. People only have limited amount of time, and they're not necessarily going to spend that on advertising. One of my favorite quotes is, you know, people don't watch ads. They watch what entertains them, and sometimes that's an ad. And I think we overestimate how interested consumers will be in some kind of catchy slogan. The Steven Singer one. You know, there's a bit of a story. When they first released those billboards back in Pennsylvania, it was accompanied with like a big kind of radio push as well, talking about them being a jeweler. So there it was kind of like the 1984 approach. You have this one kind of big, splashy billboard, but then you were also hearing about it in other ways and getting that other information that informed you what it was and now made you want to go check it out. The issue with those billboards now is they're not running those supplemental campaigns. So in Chicago, you know, I always actually ask students in my class if they've seen it, and, you know, a handful will have seen it. And then I'll ask how many of you actually went to the website. And I'll maybe get one person, and I'll be like, did you buy anything? And they're like, no, I didn't even know it was about jewelry. I was just curious. And then left. Right. So our. The ultimate goal shouldn't be just to kind of like, oh, this is kind of fun. People want to spend their free time looking up my advertising stuff. It should be Curiosity about a key benefit that this person thinks is relevant to them. Right. And so I, I think we've got to be a little careful with that, definitely.
- [15:35]
Melina Palmer
And I liked that in the way of the example with the 1984 and like you said early on with the hate Steven Singer, that there was enough to help kind of when you were curious and then you were able to find there was like connected stuff versus just one random billboard that, you know, probably more college kids are going to look at that are maybe not are going to go actually buy any sort of jewelry that you have. So just being thoughtful with any of it of where you get that. And even if you get. Then it's like, man, so many people went to the website and then did anyone buy anything? Right. Yeah. So that's where those goals matter. So, okay, so let's talk then a little bit, you know, about what those failures are you talked about. So we've got, if you want to dig in maybe on. Let's talk about failures of attention.
- [16:22]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Sure, yeah. So when it comes to ineffective ads, I think one of the first roadblocks is just getting consumers attention. Right. Like we've talked about. There's just so much noise out there. How are you going to get anyone to kind of pay attention to what you have to say? I think this is probably exemplified best in the car ad industry. Right. You look at any car ad and it's like fast car moving, rugged terrain, driving over rocks, right. They just all blur together in your head. And you know, the reason that car commercials do this is because this is what everybody's been doing. So it feels safe to do that commercial, but it doesn't get your attention. Right. You know, recently Citroen, I think that's how you say their name, released this really fun kind of long form commercial with an alien. And this woman is like driving with an alien in her car. And, and it's totally different, right, than any kind of your standard car commercial. And you're interested, you want to see what happens. And I won't ruin the punchline because it is a fun punchline once you watch the ad, but it was totally different and gets people to kind of pay attention a little bit more. You know, there was a classic campaign here, oh, maybe 10 years ago in the super bowl where the car company, rather than putting their own ad up in the super bowl, they ran a campaign before the super bowl that said every time you see one of our competitors cars on the super bowl ad, tweet us on social media and you'll have a chance to win a car for your friend. And so you got the, you know, it's again, it's just kind of shaking up the system in the way that people typically expect it. And that form of distinction, right. Not only just distinction in terms of your aesthetic appeal more broadly, but distinct distinction between your category and how other people are advertising in there are a great way to really try to kind of build some of that attention.
- [18:22]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, I love that example from the car in the way of like anytime you see our competitors do this, but it's like you're almost guaranteeing that I'm only thinking about you when I'm looking at every other car. Right. And so then when that one comes up, it's just to like throw away and tweet you that I saw the, the ad just to talk about how I like you better. Right. Which is a really smart tactic. The other car one I was thinking of. There are two. So there's one I remember always, but unfortunately I don't remember who it was for, but it was at a time when I don't think I was like buying cars. Right. But where it's all the people that they're like sitting just in the air and you can't see the car around them and they're like moving around. Okay, so it's a Saturn one. And then, and it's like the people all are all on the bus or whatever and they're not. There's no car. And it's so funny and awkward. But then you see like the actual car that stands out because everything else is just the sort of like sea of sameness. So I like that one. And also one where I do remember the brand even though I haven't bought this brand before. But I know people that have is the Subaru with the dogs driving and the like puppy family, you know, as far as being that Subaru is like that pet friendly kind of brand and it's, you know, golden retrievers driving in their car with the puppies in the back and it's adorable. And so we know that they love dogs.
- [19:56]
Dr. Jake Teeny
That's great. I actually haven't seen that. That's one. I'm going to have to check that out. The Saturn one is a great example, I think of where just because you do awareness well, it doesn't mean like it's still an ineffective ad. You didn't remember who Saturn was then. Saturn's not doing too well. If you've heard recently, they don't exist. But so, you know, it goes to show you too, in effect like when thinking about what makes an effective ad, sometimes people over index on this idea of attention grabbing. And you know, that's not the only part of it. Right. You know the other thing that, and we'll talk about in a second is having that key message like what do I take away from it? It. And in that Saturn commercial, the, the, the whole idea of the commercial is, you know, their tagline is like we see people, not sheet metal. And it's like okay, well what does that mean? Like yeah, you don't, you know, and so, you know, it, having, having an effective ad is. Yeah, okay, you've got to have good attention. You don't want to slow start. Right. We see a lot of this sometimes with ads where they think, okay, the, you know, consumers will watch this till the end. They'll get that punchline or they'll get, you know, whatever is kind of good. And it's like nah, nah, they're not going to do that. So you've really got to kind of start out of the gate fast, get their attention with something distinct. And then once you've got it, you've got to have a clear message.
- [21:14]
Melina Palmer
Especially these days too where ads come up when I'm, you know, in the middle of a game and I just want to be able to get to the next level and you're like, can I X out of this yet? And my, even my three year old now, like when he was little, you know, even littler I suppose he's still, but, but he would go add like when something happened, he didn't want to watch it. And you know, they, all the kids just say skip, skip, skip finally. Right.
- [21:43]
Dr. Jake Teeny
So I don't know if you've noticed but YouTube changed the, its whole interface with ads. It used to have that like 5 second countdown before you could skip it. And they realized like you know, some 40, 50 something, some big percentage of people's time was spent just staring at that countdown number. And so now it doesn't show that at all. And the skip button will just appear in hopes that they'll drive your eyeballs to the, at least the commercial for the few five seconds.
- [22:07]
Melina Palmer
Yeah, definitely. You know, I love that. Okay, so we talked about the failures of attention. We talked about then, you know, when you can get attention that's good and it's not enough on its own. So what's the next failure? We've got the main message or being clear enough and then memory, right?
- [22:26]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, exactly. So the main message or the positioning or the value proposition. What is that kind of key point of difference that makes consumers want to choose you over the competitors or something people often forget? Choose you versus do nothing. Right.
- [22:43]
Melina Palmer
Status quo. It's real.
- [22:45]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean we're Netflixified, all of us. We like you know, sitting right there and just hitting next automatically. So when it comes to choosing the right message, I mean I could, we could talk for hours on coming up with kind of the right positioning, the psychology behind it. And so, you know, having the wrong message for the wrong target is obviously going to be difficult because they're not going to remember it very well or it's not going to be very meaningful to them. But you know, two things that I'll touch on here that I think I see often and one we already mentioned earlier and that the first is having too many messages. You think my brand does all of these great things, I want to put them all out there. And it's just, you know, there's actually been quite a bit of research about the amount of memory people can allocate when you have like multiple messages or multiple value propositions in the same message. And each one gets a diminishing amount of attention. So when you have diminishing amount of attention on each of these different value propositions, well now they're going to leave without knowing anything or really remembering anything. So having that one key message is so important. I think a good example of an ineffective ad in this space is recently Folgers has been trying to reposition itself. You know, the freeze dried coffee and it's fallen a little bit out of fashion. But with COVID a lot of people were switching to kind of home brewing and making ice coffee a lot at home. And Folgers thought, well, you know what, we could fit into this pretty well. And so they run this, you know, it's a very energetic spot, it's got cool visuals, but they just have all these different messages of different ways you could use Folgers, different people using Folgers. And by the end of it, you know, it's that classic. If you're targeting everybody, you're targeting nobody. And so if they had just focused on one key advantage, well then you're gonna, consumers are gonna leave that knowing exactly what Folgers does well and why they should go to them versus the competition or do nothing at all.
- [24:45]
Melina Palmer
Definitely. And this is, you know, gets sort of into that features, benefits conversation that people have, you know, heard so much over the years. And one of the examples I love to give in this category that I think does it. Well, where so many people get it wrong is the. So we've all gotten the brochure. You know, there are less brochures these days. Now websites kind of do this but you would be handed the thing and it's like from the long list of all the things we do. And it's like you open it up and it's just like bullet points forever, right? And I'm not paying attention to any of those. I don't remember. And there's so many that are just table six things anyway. But people feel like, you know, quantity is the way to win of like look at all the things we do, but it doesn't mean anything. And so I think that Jake from State Farm, the original Jake from State Farm is such a great example of a thing that is something that all of those insurance companies have, right? That you have 24, 7 calling like there's somebody there. And even just to say like 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can reach us in our call center. Like Blair, right. Like it doesn't mean much to me but having it be actually funny, which is a big. That's really hard for people to be able to do, right? And the way he says khakis, right. And it's so awkward and hilarious. But you get that like I'm up at 3am and I call and Jake is there. He's. He's here for me, right. And we remember that even though everybody else has it, they picked one thing that is like the least thing that they do really. And it's made this huge benefit. And we remember that it's Jake from State Farm because they say it so many times, you know. And so I think that is a good example of picking one thing and explaining it really well in a point that makes sense of the benefit to that consumer. And if you can make it funny, you know, congrats to you kind of on that.
- [26:49]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Totally. I mean we'll talk about this in a second. But having your brand name or having your key point of difference come at an emotional high point, like a burst of humor is a great way to improve memory. We'll call those Creative Amplifiers, Creative Amplifiers where you get like that kind of like really high creative point come at the same time that your brand or your point of difference comes and that really helps it stick in consumers minds, you know. And to your, your, your point about the messaging, I think even if you choose the right message, right. You choose the right value proposition position, there's something in Advertising we'll talk about called laddering, where you can discuss that same point of difference at a features level. Like, okay, here are all the components that show evidence for why this is good or a functional level. Here's the, you know, utilitarian benefit. It offers you an emotional level which is like that psychological kind of sense of well being or confidence that it's giving you or this higher order kind of higher purpose level. Like what are you doing, doing to kind of help society or people around you? And so, you know, in having a good message, it's not only about selecting the right message and the single right message that we talked about, but then delivering it in the right form. Like you said State Farm could have said that same part. Oh, we're 24 7. That means you can call us at any time of day, you know, but they show it in a very kind of emotional, like makes you feel good, like the trusted neighbor, someone that's, you know, friendly and kind of down to earth. And that's what people need, especially when dealing with insurance. That often feels so complicated and convoluted. Having a clear emotional message helps it come through clear, clearer and then also helps it stick in your memory better.
- [28:36]
Melina Palmer
Yep, Love it. Absolutely. Great, great examples there. And I know that you also had on your list here. So we have if there's too many messages, but also that they can be like too metaphorical, right? So you have the example of perfume and cologne. You're like, what am I even looking at?
- [28:52]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Totally, totally. I mean there's another example I was, I was thinking about earlier today too. Wealth simple is like a financial advising group and they got a lot of praise in the creative space in the last few months. They ran a commercial where they had a slug as the main character. And this slug is like trying to just cross the sidewalk and it's so hard. And it's supposed to be this like metaphor for life and how life's difficult and wealthsimple is there to like help you get through it. And I show it in my class. And so people and I ask, what do you guys think of this? Everyone's like, I, I don't even know what the brand does. Right. And so it's like, it's a very fun kind of entertaining ad, but it's just too metaphorical or anal, you know, analogical for. For what they're actually trying to sell and what the benefit would be for the consumer. And often we see that with perfume. But there's reasons they do that.
- [29:44]
Melina Palmer
Right. Well, and having, well and I think the perfume is about the celebrity more than everything else really. And, and if you get it to where they, the brand name and the product name is the thing of where they say, the one that comes to me, of course, is J' Adore Dior. Right. Like you could, I will always know. I have no idea what that smells like, but I can always see like, you know, Charlize, you know, saying it all the time. Right. You just remember, you can remember that. Right. So even though I don't remember what any of the ads look like, other than it's like, you know, maybe her walking down a hallway or something. But like, I know that if someone was to say name a perfume, like, you know, that might be one that would come to mind because the people actually say it very specifically in those ads. So. So they don't have a failure of memory. Right. So if I'm in the brand, the market for some, you know, expensive perfume, perhaps I'll try check that one out. What are some issues that come up when we have that failure of memory?
- [30:49]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, you know, one of them we already talked about and that's not having like an emotional high point in the ad. If people are just kind of, they did this Affectiva, did this cool study where they took like 1200 people, showed them a bunch of ads. Some ads have these emotional high points, some ads didn't. They were just kind of flat tonally. And then they brought them back like a week later and asked them to recall the brand, the product, you know, all these kind of memory related things. And the ads with emotional high points were the ones that were remembered significantly better. And it's based on classic research by Kahneman and Tversky. The, the peak end theory, where the idea is with any experience we typically remember the emotional high points and the ending of whatever happened. And so having an ad that has emotional high points in the ad and then especially at the ending and pairing that with your brand or your point of difference is a really good way to improve memory for it. So that's a big one. That's a little bit more on the creative side. As a strategist, you can say still try to encourage that or at least keep an eye out for it. What's maybe more in their control is making sure that the ad fits within kind of their brand or their brand equity. Right. Kind of the perceptual associations that people have about the brand. And I think, you know, a great divergence or bad example of an ad and you know, everybody was talking about this was Jaguar, the brand, the car brand's recent rebrand. And they, you know, they repositioned for good reason. They're trying to make themselves a more expensive luxury car. They're going fully electric. So it makes sense to do kind of like a sharp change in your branding. But it's so different than the decades, if not long. Right. Of history of associations they have with the brand that it's just hard for, you know, any kind of new meaning or new attributes to stick to it. We, we've seen this across the board. And you know, Dose Equis, that's another example. The beer brand, they ship, they used to have this most interesting man in the world and that really kind of connected to the brand and they got rid of him. And you know, their, their later ads just don't. People don't remember them as well because they've lost or not employed some of those kind of memory architectures that they've established over years and can consumers minds, which again makes it harder to remember.
- [33:20]
Melina Palmer
So with the Dos Equis as a interesting example there because you know, even still I think of the, you know, the most interesting man in the world and then they swapped out the original guy for I think Benicio Del Toro for a while as being that, you know, most interesting man in the world. But like when it's working, I'm assuming something happened to where it wasn't as effective. But I know sometimes brands just get a little bit antsy and in the like if it, you know, we gotta change it because gotta get ahead of it or like we're bored of making these ads and so, you know, they go break things that weren't that are still effective. Do you.
- [33:58]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, no, I mean it's, it's much, it's more often the latter. Like I think probably strategically it was ineffective for Dose Equis to shift away from this. They felt internally that it was drawing too much attention away from the beer and to their, their mascot, which is fine. You're just a pretty normal Mexican beer. You want attention to be on something exciting other than you. But you know, the brand gets bored. You get someone come in and they feel like, I want to do something that's mine and something that's new. We actually saw something similar happen with Allstate and Mayhem.
- [34:34]
Melina Palmer
Right.
- [34:35]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Those Mayhem commercials, people love them. But the brand was like, eh, we've been doing this for a while, let's switch to something else. And so they stopped showing them and they actually got letters and messages from consumers being like, bring back Mayhem. We love mayhem. And so that's exactly what they did. And, you know, they saw their brand love dip when they stopped running those commercials, and they saw it pick right back up when they did it, when they brought them back. So I think this is, like you said, new. You know, cmos is one of the fastest moving executive positions in any business. And so when they come in, they're expected to make big ripples across the company. And one way to do that is to, you know, mix up the advertising, but don't fix what ain't broke. Right? You know, if this ad is really working for you and people really like it and remember it, you don't need to change it. You can. You can bring it to life in more modern and different ways, but don't lose what you have going for you already.
- [35:32]
Melina Palmer
Definitely there's that balance of the novelty and nostalgia, right, that we can mix in a little bit of that, but don't fully throw everything away that has been working and try to do that really hard pivot when you have, you know, a fan base that loves you. So one more piece on this kind of memory. One, Because I think that the. So the. The Budweiser commercial with the dog and the Clydesdale is, I think, a commercial that everybody actually does remember, like mo. People know. And actually people know that it was Budweiser, typically because of the Clydesdales, where you see them. So why was this on your list of ineffective? Oh, no, that was effective.
- [36:17]
Dr. Jake Teeny
It wasn't good. Yeah.
- [36:18]
Melina Palmer
I was going to say, how did this happen? What. What's wrong with it?
- [36:20]
Dr. Jake Teeny
No, no, they do it. They do it. All right? So they. They plan to. The brand equ. Right? You hear Clyde Zill, you think Budweiser. Great. Right? On track. They have emotional high points, right? You get that punchline at the end where the dog or the horse does something cute or saves someone or usually involves beer and spreading happiness. Right? And it's very distinct than any other competition. So that was an example of, like, they're doing things right.
- [36:44]
Melina Palmer
Oh, good. I was. I was like, what? What's wrong with theirs? Perfect. That's. That's good ads. Okay. And so then other last piece I see on your notes here, being that if it's just too similar to what everyone else is doing, especially if you're not the brand leader, right? So you have the example here of, oh, my gosh. And so are we supposed to say verbo? Is that what you say?
- [37:07]
Dr. Jake Teeny
I mean, that's what all the kids are saying.
- [37:10]
Melina Palmer
I'm not I'm not hip.
- [37:11]
Dr. Jake Teeny
I don't, I don't have time to say four letters. It's really verbo. It's not vrbo.
- [37:18]
Melina Palmer
Fair enough. Yeah, but. But their ads look too much like Airbnb and anything else. Right?
- [37:24]
Dr. Jake Teeny
To, you know, it's not so much that their ads look too much like Airbnb, it's just that. And you know, vrbo's in a difficult spot. But Airbnb, when they first kind of came on the market, their whole appeal was against hotels because you could get more space. Right. And often cheaper. Well, VRBO is kind of making the same claims in their ads. You can get more space, but it's private because they're kind of going against Airbnb. And if you don't really pay close enough attention to the very end, you'll see that ad and probably the dominant association you'll have is with Airbnb. So it's tough because, you know, vrbo's point of difference or vrbo. Now you got me second guessing it. Is it vrbove?
- [38:09]
Melina Palmer
I think they say verbo in the ads, but it's weird.
- [38:12]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, yeah, it stands. It's like vacation rentals. Something, something. Airbnb is just like, they have those mental associations for much longer. So unless VRBO really kind of puts their brand name forward or chooses a different point of difference, it's a bit more distinct than Airbnb. At least if they're competing with Airbnb and not hotels, it's gonna kind of trigger the memory a little bit more of Airbnb. I think there's a really classic example. Nike had us a famous commercial for their shocks. I don't know if you remember those shoes that have like the springs in the heel. And the commercial has this guy, like streaking across a soccer match and he looks very out of shape and he shouldn't be fast, but he's got shocks on, so he's avoiding all the security and he's dancing. And it's funny, it's very intense. Well, a little bit later, Reebok ran almost like a point by point similar ad with the streaker, similar looking actor running across the field. And only if you wait till the very end when you see him get like tackled by this football player wearing Reeboks, do you realize, oh, this is a Reeboks ad. And so you get this situation where you're triggering the wrong brand in mind for this positioning until the very end. And people are, you know, they're just going to. They're either Going to turn the channel off. Oh, I've already seen that ad. Oh, I know this. For Airbnb. I don't need to pay attention. Right. And so it's not going to help with memory for your brand, specifically.
- [39:37]
Melina Palmer
Great points. Love it. All right, so we've talked quite a bit about the ineffective ads. And like I said at the beginning, we know that the backfiring, you know, we accidentally offended people. It was, you know, and people get outraged real quick. Right. So we kind of know what those are. I don't think we need to get into some of those potential specific examples as much. But, you know, how does that even happen? How do we. What's like, maybe one thing that we do, or if you want to quickly go through the list where people don't realize they're going to offend huge groups, how do we make this mistake?
- [40:11]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think one of the big things is brand managers just, they kind of get tunnel vision. Like, if you've been working on something for long enough, you start to see it in a certain perspective, you start to think everybody's going to see it from that perspective, you know, and then when it gets out into the real world, when people don't have the same kind of background or mental associations or aren't thinking about how this is going to be perceived in that context, it can really backfire, I think. You know, a clear example of this is Nationwide ran a Super bowl commercial in 2015 about this really cute boy, keeps saying, oh, I'm not going to be able to kiss a girl. I'm not going to be able to fly a plane. And then at the very end, he says, I can't do any of these things because I died in an accident. And then it shows, like, all these kind of like potential dramatic accident situations. And then it's like, Nationwide is on your side. It's like, what? I'm in the Super Bowl, I'm having fun, I'm with my buds, I'm drinking beer. And then you hit me with this, like, child death ad. And it's like, accidental death. What's Nationwide really gonna do to protect you? And so it was like, you know, they focus grouped it. They had all this testing, and it seemed like it was doing well, but they just didn't think about how it would emerge in the broader context. You know, the classic kind of Kendall Jenner ad where she's like, it's for Pepsi. And she's apparently solving, like, police brutality and a protest by giving a Pepsi to the Police officer. Like, you know, when you're in the brand and you're thinking about it being fun and, you know, in an advertising stage space, all of that makes sense. But then when you take it out into the real world and people bring their own kind of like expectations and assumptions against it, they're going to interpret it as what you think Kendall Jenner is going to solve, you know, police brutality with a Pepsi? Like, how dumb are you? Right? And so people, brand managers, strategists, it kind of caught in this one view and fail to think about, okay, well, what's it going to look like for people? You know, like you were saying earlier, your kids like ad, ad people don't like ads. You have to assume the worst assumptions. When consumers watch your ads, they're not going to be charitable. You as the brand manager get locked in this tunnel vision thinking, oh, this is going to be great. This will be good. I have good intentions. But then when it gets out into the world, they're coming in already skeptical. They're going to interpret it not in kind of a positive light. And then that's when you get kind of these like, unexpected things, thoughts and reactions that people just weren't, you know, the brand managers weren't, weren't, weren't predicting.
- [42:45]
Melina Palmer
Right. Well, and while we don't know specifically because we weren't in the rooms, I'm guessing for some people too, this is where the problem of that, like you said with the tunnel vision, the biased leading in the way that you're asking the focus group, you know, the questions that you asked them that are helping to prove your own point. I know overconfidence is on your list here as well. Right. And so if I'm sure that this is what it is I'm trying to do, I can very easily ask a question to get someone to agree with what I think, to get it down the line versus, you know, you want to have that bigger context. And instead of trying to prove yourself right, I would say looking for those opportunities to say, how, how could we possibly have missed the mark? And, you know, any of those, you know, the pre mortem of if this didn't land, like, if we mess up and people hate this, what would it be for? Why would that happen? Is probably a good step. If you were going to give. As we have to wrap up the conversation, I know we could talk about ads forever. I'm excited for the next time we get to talk more about this. But if you were going to give people one key thing to be keeping in mind so that they can be on, you know, our best ads list, most effective brands, you know, what would you recommend to people to stay off that, you know, worst dressed list? I guess as it, as it were for brands.
- [44:03]
Dr. Jake Teeny
All right, I'll give you a framework that I teach in my class and is actually a framework that's used in Northwestern's kind of famous super bowl ad review and it's called ad plan. And there's six things that you should be looking for in any ad. They're pretty self explanatory so I'll just kind of label them off one by one. The first is attention. Is this going to kind of catch a consumer's interest or be aware to it distinction? Is this different than what people are advertising, how they're advertising in this space, how advertising more broadly is going on, positioning, what's that main message, that single kind of value proposition I want to communicate and is it clear linkage? Am I doing things to get people to help to remember the brand? Like some of the stuff we talked about earlier, amplification. What are the thoughts people are going to generate? What are the associations they're going to bring to mind similar to what we were just talking about with tunnel vision and then net equity. So how does this connect in with my broader brand image and perceptions? And if you can do well on each of those six points in this little ad plan framework, then you're already off to having a much better success or chance at success with your advertisement.
- [45:20]
Melina Palmer
Love it. Have the plan for those ads. We got our ad plan going. Good, good acronym choice. We made it happen there. So perfect. Well, for everyone who is now so interested to learn more and to follow you, connect, whatever that happens to be, you know, what's their best step to do.
- [45:37]
Dr. Jake Teeny
So yeah, I think I'd recommend coming to my website everydaypsych.com so that's everyday psych P S-C-H.com and there I regularly translate different things from psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, behavioral sciences more broadly to how you can enhance your everyday life or enhance the marketing and persuasion that you're trying to employ.
- [46:03]
Melina Palmer
Perfect. Love it. We'll of course have a link for Everyday psych in the show notes. And thank you again Jake for joining me. Not from State Farm, but I get that a lot.
- [46:14]
Dr. Jake Teeny
I've got to dress up for Halloween one time.
- [46:17]
Melina Palmer
Nice. My husband's name is Aaron and so I'm sure you would potentially not be surprised to know how often he gets the A Ron joke. Right. That's one that Comes up a lot. I have nothing in this rock because Molina's not common yet, but maybe one day. Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining me. It's been really fun chatting today.
- [46:39]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.
- [46:40]
Melina Palmer
Thank you again to Dr. Jake Teeny for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I love digging in on ads and asking thoughtful questions about them. I wonder why they put that there. Did they intentionally do that before this other thing? What if they would have tried it this way? And yes, sometimes even a what in the world was the point of that? Of course it's one thing to see a bad ad and another one to not create them yourself. This is because of the way our brains work in two systems. System one, the subconscious is that buying brain which can automatically look at an ad and think nope. Or an email and say spam. But when we sit down to create those ads and emails, we're in that system two, processing the conscious brain and it has a tendency to get myopic, have tunnel vision and miss so many things that are instantly obvious to a viewer or recipient. These insights from Jake today can hopefully help you to have more effective ads, emails, messages, everything moving forward with your brand. Remember that in order for your ad to be effective, you need to have a clear objective in mind. What is this meant to do? Who's it for? What are they doing now? And where would you like them to be different? After experiencing the ad, you then need to overcome the three failure points. Failures of attention, which includes an ad that isn't distinct for the media channel or product domain. One that has too slow of a start, so people tune out before they even know who the brand is. And those where the copy or product is irrelevant to the viewer, which is a targeting problem. Typically the next failure point is with that main message. In this case there tend to be too many messages and I typically focus on this one as it's a very common error that brands make or that it's too metaphorical and abstract. Finally, you have those failures of memory. This means there is a weak connection to the brand. There aren't emotional high points and your ads are too similar to the competition, which is really common. Since we're a herding species and like to look to others like us to determine what's safe and stick to that. But to stand out and have your brand be remembered, you need to break free of the herd. We didn't talk too much about the backfiring ads today, but the main things to keep in mind there are to ensure you don't let yourself have tunnel vision and fail to see how this thing could come off wrong in the wild. You also need to avoid overconfidence, not assume that the masses are going to give your brand the benefit of the doubt. They often don't. And try to avoid those negative biases getting layered into your ads. Finally, I love that Jake provided the ad plan framework. If you focus on attention, distinction, positioning, linkage, amplification and net equity, you are well on your way to creating a coveted good ad or dare I say, a great one. So what about you? Is there a bad ad that has stuck with you over the years? Like you think of bad ads and it always comes to mind. We would love to hear about and see it. Please come share it on social media. You'll find me as the brainy bizarre pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy to tag myself as well as Jake, and you can also find links to my top related past episodes, books, ways to get in touch, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthebrainybusiness.com 509 and thank you again to Dr. Jake Teeny for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [50:42]
Dr. Jake Teeny
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.