But there is a danger that these marketers may be drinking their own Kool-Aid. Many customers can have a level of enthusiasm towards certain products or brands because we provide them with a great customer experience, but is that love? This is something worth exploring.

Neurologists suggest that the early stages of love, governed by parts of the brain that are used for goal-seeking and reward, resemble obsessive-compulsive disorder. The first time we look at an Apple iPhone, a Burberry trench coat or a Mercedes SLC AMG, our brains are interpreting these objects in a certain way. At the first stage of a romantic relationship activity sparks in the dopamine-rich region of our brain normally associated with motivation and reward. The intensity is proportional to the activity. Advertising may not elicit love for your brand but it can attract attention and interest.

The insular cortex and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, the parts of our brain associated with emotion, are not activated until the more mature phases of a relationship are entered. In the context of brand marketing, emotive connections require consistent good customer experiences, whether wonderful or awful – or love and hate. Love occurs when the sum of the total interactions that a customer experiences with a brand reach certain thresholds. Starting from the moment when a product is purchased to the moment when joy is shared with their friends on Facebook.

A parallel can also be drawn to kissing. According to Sheril Kirshenbaum, research scientist with the University of Texas in Austin and author of The Science of Kissing, kissing is sort of like Nature’s litmus test – whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, humans use the information encoded in a kiss to decide where a relationship is headed. She goes on to explain, when we kiss, we engage all of our senses. We’re learning so much about a person, not just visually, but we’re engaging our noses, our taste buds, our sense of touch, and through that information, all sorts of signals are being sent to our brain, telling us about the other person. Scientists discovered that women tend to prefer the scents of men who have a distinct genetic code for immunity – something that can only be picked up when in very close proximity, such as kissing. So think about the first kiss equivalent in multi-sensory customer experience – how do you design the litmus test for your brand?

Love is not emotion – it is a strategic capability to gain happiness. And love by itself has no object. It is some invisible and unexplainable energy of consciousness, which at times, we are not even aware of. It is beyond form, yet inclusive of form. Love is a capability that can be developed, nurtured and learned. We develop this capability when we were very young and over the years, we develop the ability to love and care for other people and sometimes even objects.

Emotion is a different animal. It is feelings (or reactions to our brain activity) that are aroused as a result of stimuli. When you see something, an emotion is elicited – you want to touch it, feel it and maybe even own it. As many relationships exist out of convenience or benefits, people remain loyal to certain brands. This may be because there is a lack of choice or simply because there is low involvement the product category.

Sex, love and emotion are three different things. In an ideal world, they intersect to produce ideal results. While it can be one of them, sex is not the single manifestation of love, as the purchase frequency of a product or brand is not necessarily the manifestation of brand love.

Emotions can often get us into trouble but we must recognize them as part of being human and accept them into our consciousness, where they can be cared for and managed. We often use the word “emotive” connections in the customer experience design process but I wonder how many of us know what it actually means.

Idris Mootee is the publisher and editor-in-chief of  M/I/S/C/, a published author, speaker and CEO of Idea Couture, a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. He spends his time between, London, New York, Toronto, San Francisco and Shanghai.

This Article has been taken from The Customer Experience Issue (Issue #3, Fall 2011) of M/I/S/C/ Magazine – a magazine dedicated to design thinking and innovation available in over 25 countries. To purchase a digital copy of the full issue and for other issues please click HERE.

When you work at an innovation consultancy, you take the word innovation seriously. For three years, I’ve worked at Idea Couture helping dozens of organizations  design disruptive future scenarios based on real consumer insights, social and societal needs, economic imperatives, and technological signals. For many of these clients, I’ve seen real innovation happen.

What’s interesting is that none of these clients talk about how “innovative” they are. But they live it. In the grand scheme of things, these are the companies pushing the boundaries of their industries and changing their own internal values systems. That’s real innovation to me.

For your average everyday consumers, innovation means disruptive innovation. Does a car that reads your Facebook news feed really deserve to be called innovative, or is it just novel? Is a CPG company that releases Organic shampoo in 2011 really innovative, or are they just opportunistic? Is a communications campaign that crosses multiple channels really innovative, or could it just be clever? I’d argue that very few of the “innovations” that companies advertise are really innovations, and even fewer of them are truly representative of a general organizational culture.

As a result, in the corporate and consumer world, the word is at risk of completely losing its meaning.

These days, it seems impossible to turn on the TV, open a magazine, read a blog post or listen to a CEO without hearing a company’s “commitment to innovation”. What’s I find truly unfortunate is that the disciplines of PR and marketing are bastardizing a term with immense power and meaning. Having spent plenty of time studying the internal models of innovation at some of the world’s most “innovative” firms, I can tell you that their internal processes are innovation blockers, not innovation enablers.

The dirty truth is that while most of these firms love the idea of innovation (and may even be filled with innovative people), they hate innovation in practice. Innovation “introduces risk” instead of mitigates it. Innovation casts doubt on how things have traditionally been done. Innovation results in disagreements. Innovation unearths cultural gaps within organizations. Real innovation is culturally hard.

Most companies are happy make incremental improvements or to explore novel changes. The refusal is to reset their understanding of their competitive landscape and to accept that their industries are fundamentally at risk. They’re fine with turning money into ideas (R&D), but not turning ideas into money (innovation).

So please, stop calling your company “innovative”. Yes, you make incremental improvements to your products. Yes, you invest in R&D. But at the end of the day, if you’re unwilling to shift adapt your core organizational values based on societal, social, and technological changes, you’re just fooling yourself. Until your organization is willing to rethink its relationship with its customers, reimagine what the future will look like, and reset its view of the industry it competes in, it’s not really innovative.

If you’re really committed to innovation, don’t just tell us about it. Live it.

I’m sure you’ve been put in the situation before. An RFP or a project arrives on your desk that just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it doesn’t take into account fundamental human behaviours. Maybe it ignores market realities. Or maybe it’s just trying to solve a tactical problem rather than dealing with what really needs to be solved. Either way, it creates an uncomfortable situation – are you a going to tell the client they’re wrong, or are you going to do what’s asked.

The NAA Interactive Briefing

In the interactive division of the National Advertising Awards, entrants were asked to submit an innovative creative solution to the the following business problem for Sympatico.ca:

“Drive adoption of Sympatico.ca’s various assets by convincing our target audience to make Sympatico.ca or one of its sister sites, like Best Health or Auto, their homepage. The site is currently competing with U.S. and international sites like MSN and Yahoo.” (for more details, download the full briefing here)

Of the teams that responded to the challenge, half developed creative advertising campaigns consisting of a mix of traditional and social media forms. Some came up with clever campaign concepts that successfully focused on strong calls to action that supported the stated business objectives.

And the other half of the entrants told us the portal model is dead.

Dear Client, You are Wrong.

Now I don’t want this to turn into a debate around whether portal models like Sympatico.ca are dead. What I do want to ask is, if you’re put into a situation where you don’t believe that a brief is responding to the right thing for a client’s business, do you follow it?

In the past, I’ve been on both sides of the coin before. Perhaps it comes down to the difference between taking client work to get paid and taking client work to make a difference. Here’s a quick summary of your likely outcomes:

Partners Vs. Working for Approvals

A lot of agencies don’t break the brief. The hope is that once the ability to execute is proven, there will be the opportunity to show strategic worth on something else. In my opinion, this is the wrong approach to design. This is working for approvals instead of working to achieve a result.

The benefits of not working at an agency is you’re not boxed into agency scenarios. As a strategic innovation and experience design firm, clients come to us with a recognition (and expectation) that in order to strategically differentiate, you may need to go outside your comfort zone. Questioning long-standing assumptions is part of our value proposition, and as such, every brief gets broken to some extent. If your job is to solve problems, then articulating the right problem is step number one. It’s the difference between a partnership and a paycheck.

Now obviously not everybody has the opportunity to work like we do. So what do you do when the brief is wrong?

As reported by the New York Times, 2009 was a rough year for the hotel business- budgets were cut, conferences were cancelled, and many of hotels have had to think of new ways to market themselves. What set Hyatt apart from their competitors however, is the fact they did not turn to traditional ad agencies to create a 15 or 30 second spot on TV. Instead, the Hyatt turned to Funny or Die- the direct source for quality comedy material and for a fraction of the costs than traditional agencies. In addition, the fanfare of Funny or Die is unstoppable; they have almost 1.5 million followers on Twitter and almost 50,000 Facebook fans.

Funny or Die’s 2 viral videos for Hyatt can be seen here: Ultra Lounge and Benihana.

Now you’re probably wondering, how does this piece of news have anything to do with Mad Men? On Mad Men, there is an episode in Season 3 where Conrad Hilton asks Don Draper to work on his business in the1960s. The interesting contrast here is that 50 years ago businesses would go to ad agencies for ad’s because agencies had exclusive access to top talent and resources to produce a brilliant TV spot that cost marketers top dollars. In 2010, the tables have turned and the recession has forced businesses to look outside of ad agencies to create viral videos that go beyond TV channels, that will live online, and that will include social media space in turn generating more buzz. The Hyatt versus Funny or Die example is a wake-up call for traditional agencies who are still in the dark, refusing to innovate and rethink their business models. As glamorous and nostalgic as Madison Ave was in 1960s, 2010 is no Mad Men.

Last year however, American Apparel teamed up with Lookbook.nu, an online site where everyday people can upload their “look”- people vote, you gain style credit, and your photo can end up on Lookbook’s homepage. In a sort of online contest, American Apparel and Lookbook asked the site’s members to submit styles featuring American Apparel clothing and the winning “looks” would be featured in a book available free in stores an online to customers.

After sifting through entries, the company chose 132 looks from 77 Lookbook members. The irony? All the winning looks are more tasteful, subdued, and less sexy than their usual adds. When asked why the change in direction, The American Apparel Press Team responded, “Maybe this is better categorized as a resource than as an ad. What we liked about it is that it’s 77 people who each have their own sense of style showing how they like to wear American Apparel. Our photographers and designers see the garments in one way and sometimes the customers and fans see it a totally different way. The book has both. That’s a big reason why we’re giving it away at the stores and we hope people take it and get inspired or interested in pieces they wouldn’t have considered before.”

Interestingly enough, the brand has also started to use the looks in their adds and they say that they will continue to use crowdsourcing as a means to engage customers. So for now American Apparel has a new look and I guess its true what they say- the people have spoken.

To see the Lookbook in its entirety visit the American Apparel site.

Frozen Grand Central from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.

In Januray 2009, T-Mobile adopted the dance Flash Mob for its ad ‘Life is for sharing”. Lately advertising has taken to guerrilla as a way to garner more exposure. According to Business Week article, ‘Advertising: When Guerrilla Goes Bourgeois’, “Guerrilla advertising is a catch-all phrase for nontraditional advertising campaigns that take the form of theatrically staged public scenes or events, often carried out without city permits or advance public hype”.

T-Mobile Dance from Jef Eckart on Vimeo.

Don’t you wish you were there? Some would argue that this is simply another example of advertisers ripping off underground culture for profit. However, isn’t it their job to find relevant ways to grab our attention? We are constantly complaining about how boring and predictable ads have become; pushing pricing, taking jabs at competitors, boring us with their predictable announcement of a new product, and don’t get me started on all the fine print. Why not take those generous budgets and actually entertain us for a change? Of course they have an ulterior motive, but who cares, they just made hundreds of peoples’ day far more exciting. We give companies thousands of our hard earned dollars every year, and all they can seem to do is spend it on trying to convince us to spend more. How about rewarding us with a bit of entertainment; brighten our day. Campaigns like the one for T-Mobile are not about a ‘brand new, great value, low cost’ product, it’s about earning affection for their brand. Maybe brands should try a bit harder to buy our love. What better way then making your brand the highlight of my day?

*Note: Please don’t misconstrue this as a plea for our streets to be bombarded with atrocious amounts of uninspired events. Only genuinely creative campaigns need vie for my attention.

I find myself noticing what seems to be an increase in the amount of successful attack advertising in the past few years – where one firm or another in a highly competitive market calls out a rival directly. It’s a risky move – the idea is to polarize middle-of-the-fence consumers to your side, but can damage your brand if not done well.  I have included my three favourites for your consideration below:

1. Mac vs. PC

No-one, and I mean no-one, has taken the p*** with a competitor as much as the iconic PC vs. Mac ads, first aired in 2006, with a succession of follow-up spots. Can you remember such a devastating competitive attack- either before after this campaign?

Going much deeper than a technical comparison of products, Apple attacked the very brand identity of its rival – and managed to imply that any user of a PC was frumpy and out-of-touch. Windows , representing the PC market, has struck back with multiple efforts trying to shift this image, but has met with varying success. The strength of the initial attack was so strong that it will take both time and investment to overcome.

2. Audi vs. BMW

Audi: “Your move, BMW”
BMW: “Checkmate”
Pretty much anyone who saw these signs: “Oh, Snap!”

These duelling billboards appeared in Southern California- with the BMW ad appearing not long after the AUDI version went up. Note that the BMW response is that of a local dealership toward the national Audi Campaign. The social media space  is where the damage was being done, so that was the arena where Audi planned a comeback, where they recruited participants to the AUDI facebook site- and asked them to photoshop an appropriate response.

The success of this comeback campaign was not clear…..while the internet certainly picked up on the BMW Checkmate damage that was done to the AUDI brand, it was an interesting way for AUDI to use social media in an interesting way to try and  mitigate the impact of the negative word of mouth.

In terms of the consumer decision making process for automobiles, automobiles have both an important technical element, as well as a strong brand identity element, which means comparative/attack ads aimed at these components are fairly commonplace.

3. Rogers vs. Bell:

In some cases, the attacker actually subverts the advertising images and messages of a rival – as recently seen in the recent Rogers (top image), and Bell (bottom image) tv and print ads:

In this case, both have launched integrated marketing campaigns battling for share of the ‘couch’. Part of this bitter rivalry is founded in the nature of the two businesses…..Rogers started as a cable company, and moved into mobile/home phone. Bell started as a home phone company – and moved into cable. As such, both have expanded into each other’s home territory….meaning that hostilities are high.

Sadly reader, I think most of my posts will involve Japan in some way (reflective of the substantial percentage of my life that was spent there). I can say that this kind of comparative advertising in Japan is VERY rare….extolling the virtues of your own product is one thing, but directly bashing your competitors is another story. Trying to promote shame and embarrassment in others is a social taboo.

Also, speaking as a guy who has some experience in personally selling both products and services, I can say that this full-contact approach can be risky- and seems to work best only when there are very cut-and-dried technical or price-point differences which are directly related to the customer’s purchase decision criteria. Saying “Ours is better/best” seems to be ok, but “Company B has terrible XXXXXX” can backfire – it implies that you recognize them as a real threat that needs addressing. .

In terms of an integrated marketing campaign, the comparative approach provides free advertising to your rival, as you are essentially paying to increase the brand awareness and recall of every brand you mention.

Having said all of that that, it is difficult to argue with the relative success of the campaigns outlined above, as all have been at least mildly successful in our North American markets (at very least, it has prompted plenty of people to blog about it). So, I would ask the reader:

• What are the risks of taking this approach?
• Why are they successful/Why do they fail?
• Can you find any examples where this approach did not work?

The collective work of the Frankfort School (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer and their classic 1944 piece “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”) provided the intellectual foundation for a consumer critique.. The imperatives of the production side were central, and in both consumption and production consumers were relatively powerless, even “manipulated” and victimized by advertisers. In these accounts, the powerful and active agents were corporations, not individuals. Today, we can see that this changing, with an over abundance of almost everything and the growing influences of social media and networks. Finally, the power is switching back to the mass – powered by social technologies.

The “de-legitimization” of modern liberalism, paternalist state policy and Keynesian economics continued to undercut the consumer critics. The growth of corporate power was accompanied by an ideology that posited the reverse—namely that the consumer is king and the corporation is at his or her mercy.

Even though as consumers we are all trained from the earliest ages to be consumers, and though our identities are deeply bound up with consumption choices, social networks are gradually becoming the medium that define our identities. This is the world we are living in. A TV campaign can only go so far in building a brand. In fact, it doesn’t build brands, it merely build awareness. Social technologies and media enable advertisers to cultivate brand engagement where interactions are take place. Time to reinvent advertising and if you have any of the following on your bookshelf, it’s time to put them away:

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy, 1963
Bill Bernbach’s Book By Bob Levenson, 1987
A Technique for Producing Ideas, by James Webb Young, 1940