Emotional Connections in Advertising: Are There Varying Levels?

In a previous post about the GE/Budweiser commercial and my thoughts on how such collaborations could redefine the advertising industry, I mentioned how much I love to watch the Super Bowl commercials. Normally I can’t get to my DVR fast forward button quick enough to skim by the ads, and even in the rare cases that I’m actually watching a show that isn’t recorded I still use the commercial time to check email, get a snack, go to the bathroom, etc. The Super Bowl is always a time for the best of the best in advertising, but what makes some stand out more than others? What makes some elicit such a strong emotional response that a person actually follows through on a call to action? This year’s Super Bowl featured many commercials of humor and other emotional connections, but one in particular grabbed me from a truly nostalgic standpoint.

The MetLife spot features a blast from the past of cartoon characters from the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s. It opens with the peanuts gang walking up a hill in a field and leads to a series of scenes which feature He-Man, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Atom Ant, Scooby Doo and a host of other cameo’s by characters long forgotten. Now they have me at Scooby Doo because it was by far and away my most favorite cartoon, but I’m beginning to realize that some of these characters I haven’t even thought about in 30 years, and I am loving this commercial. It has also elicited vocal responses from various age demographics throughout the room at the party I’m attending. We are all watching this commercial and trying to shout out the names of the characters and saying which ones were our favorites. The final shot of this ad is a group image of approximately 50-55 cartoon characters joining together.

This commercial not only had me pausing and rewinding live television with my DVR so that people in the room could see a character again or try to see if anyone else in the room could remember it’s name, but it actually had me stop the commercial at the final shot because everyone in the room wanted to see who was in it. Now what you need to understand about this scenario is that my family are avid NY Giants fans and it was a nail biting game, so for a commercial to render such a universal response to all viewers around the television is huge. Nobody said “Get back to the game!,” we just all had a blast in a nostalgic few moments bonding over cartoon characters. Stopping for the commercial and reviewing the characters actually put us 5 whole minutes behind in viewing the Super Bowl live because we didn’t want to fast forward through any of the other commercials either in order to catch up. Now five minutes may not sounds like a long time, but when you have family in other parts of the country calling to talk about a certain play it turns out to be a very big deal.

The funny part is that I had completely forgotten that MetLife is associated with The Peanuts characters. I personally never even thought about MetLife, but I have now spent my morning writing this blog about them and liking them on Facebook so that I could see the names of the characters we didn’t know. This emotionally charged, nostalgic focused style of marketing is genius to me. I have followed through on their call to action of going to Facebook and liking their page, but most of all I remember the company that the ad is for. How many times do you see a commercial you really like or that makes you laugh and you think to yourself “that was a great ad”, but when asked later who the ad was for you can’t remember. Ultimately that ad was a failure because you remember the commercial and don’t remember the company, and while the ad is strong enough to remember, it’s not strong enough to make you go and find out who it is?

Yes there were other ads with dogs in them that really resonated with me because I love dogs, but they didn’t make me remember their brands or do any follow-up. So what was it about the MetLife ad that produced such a strong connection for me? Was it showing characters from so many different decades that caused a group response that I fed off? Maybe a little, but I know that if I was alone and saw that particular commercial I would’ve still taken the same actions. Was it the nostalgia of bringing up childhood memories? That’s possible. What do you think draws the line in the sand of creating an emotional connection compared to creating an emotional connection that actually initiates follow-up?