How Brands are Changing Their Marketing Practices to Focus on Emotional Connections to Increase Customer Engagement  

Think about the experiences that matter most in a person’s life. Of course, graduating from school, starting a career, volunteering or getting married may be a few examples that spring to mind, but it’s unlikely that “My consumer relationship with (insert brand name here)” would rank highly on the list.

The marketers of tomorrow will seek to change that. Savvy marketers are learning to take inspiration from personal milestones like those listed above, as well as from everyday consumer behavior, to become vital to their audience at the perfect entry point — a best practice demonstrated at the 2016 South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Tex.

“When you understand what matters to people, you can be what matters to them,” said Ann Mack, Head of Content and Activation at Facebook in her “Marketing to Moments that Matter” panel at the conference. This mentality, or the idea that you can shape the way a consumer views a brand by demonstrating its value at a particular stage in that consumer’s life, is a perfect formula for brands looking to break through the engagement barrier and make an impact on their audience.

However, staying true to a brand’s vision is essential and, most importantly, brevity is key.  As attention spans diminish and “micro-moments” occur — those times every day when people abandon one activity and pick up their phone to look up information or research a product — the consumer experience becomes fractured. So how do brands break through the noise? 

Multiplying the Potential to Catch Consumers’ Attention

Increasingly, marketers are realizing that it isn’t enough to build a campaign centered on one story, or on one platform. They must consider how to connect with consumers via micro-moments, every-day moments, annual moments and once-in-a-lifetime moments in their fight to stay relevant in the multi-platform consumer journey.

“This has major implications for brands. In these micro-moments, being there and being useful for consumers matter more than ever. These moments are increasingly when hearts, minds, and dollars are being won and lost,” wrote Lisa Gevelber, Vice President of Marketing at Google, in the Harvard Business Review report titled “Micro-Moments and the Shopper Journey.”

So, for instance, when a consumer experiences a micro-moment and dives into a brand’s Instagram account or mobile site, or when someone engages with a TV commercial, the creative content must be tailored to the experience, and it must be compelling and relatable enough to win them over. That is what consumers expect, and it is key to staying top-of-mind. Brands that fail to do so will also fail in their efforts to remain relevant, as other competitors embrace this concept and disrupt the marketplace.

How a Lighthearted Commercial Covers Weighty Topics

Take the recent State Farm campaign, which follows a young man’s evolution as his lifestyle changes from bachelor to father, as an illustration of a marketing campaign tailored to a series of once-in-a-lifetime moments. In the 30-second “Never” commercial, during which the actor states that he’ll “never” get married or have a child and then falls in love and does just the opposite, State Farm uses narrative storytelling to illustrate the moment when their service becomes important: when the character embarks on a lifestyle he never thought would happen.

The broader meaning is that through this concept, State Farm speaks to the inclinations of young couples facing life’s biggest moments such as marriage, childbearing, and domesticity. The brand adeptly inserts its messaging into this scene, blurring the lines between storytelling and advertising, all within a half- minute. And the company’s approach on various other platforms, from social media to their mobile site, reinforces — without having the message seem repetitive — the scenario of how a person’s identity and the things they care about change when their lifestyle changes.

The Logic of Advertising that Tugs at Consumers’ Emotions

Given that the Mad Men-esque days — when advertising and marketing campaigns focused on the hard sell — are long gone, brands that will thrive in today’s marketing landscape have an opportunity to take a more nuanced approach to the way products and services are marketed.

What it all comes back to is understanding the ups and downs of modern life, discerning where a brand’s product or service fits in to all of that, and finding clever ways to make a person think of one particular brand as they enter a certain stage of their day, year, or life. It’s about engaging with a consumer emotionally across platforms and providing consumers with content that speaks to their internal struggles and dreams. Or, as the famous utterance of the poet Maya Angelou points out, “People won’t remember what you said, they won’t remember what you did, but they will always remember the way you made them feel.”