Why Marketing should care about Entertainment

On October 27, 1994, Jack Stuart was walking in the park next to his home when he was unexpectedly hit on the head with a banner that read: ‘You Will’.

Last year, Jack landed in hospital after a mob of over 700 people brutally attacked him with banners.

When interviewed Jack said these unprovoked attacks happen on a daily basis not just to him but to everyone visiting the park.

Today Jack goes out prepared. He is protected by … an ad blocker.

We are bombarded on by between 300 – 700 marketing messages per day.

In response UK ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.

One of the main reasons cited were that adverts are interruptive and annoying.

However, we are not here to talk about how annoying ads can be but about one of the key messages consumers are sending marketers – we don’t appreciate you spoiling our online experiences.

Our brains are wired to better remember stories as opposed to data, facts, and figures.

A marketing researcher asked students in her class to make a 1-minute pitch.

Most of the students stuck to traditional pitch elements, such as facts and figures, but a few of them used a story within their pitch. The professor then asked the class to write down everything they remembered about each pitch: 5 percent of students cited a statistic while 63 percent remembered the story.

Whatever business you are in, you also need to be in the business of entertainment.

Jane Alison wanted buy a new Account for her business.

With easy access to the marketplace she had hundreds of options to choose from.

The question marketers would like to know is: why did she choose to buy Eddy?

Functional MRI neuroimagery shows that, when evaluating brands, the primary driver is how the brand makes a person feel rather than its attributes, features and facts.

Research conducted by the Advertising Research Foundation concluded that the emotion of “likeability” is the measure most predictive of whether an advertisement will increase a brand’s sales.

Jane chose Eddy because of his “likeability”

Personality, Logic and Emotion, walk into a bar and each order a pint of beer. When the drinks arrive they notice that all three pints have a fly in them. Personality picks out the fly, gives it a personality makeover and sends it off to make its fortune.

Logic picks the fly out of his pint, dissects it and writes down a list of all its features.

Emotion picks out the fly and after a bit of thought tells everyone in the bar the fly's story - people laughed, cried, took pictures and shared the story on Facebook.