Make Them Feel

People have a need… a want… to feel something.

It’s incumbent on Marketing to make people feel something because if you don’t move them with your messages, they won’t make a move to do anything for you, your brands, your products or your services (this includes buying from you and telling others how great you really are). When I present, I usually wrap-up with a well-known video. It’s the endearing story of Juan Mann and the video "Free Hugs" (you can see it below). The video is moving. No matter how dead inside you may be, it’s hard not to put a smile on your face or even spread a smidgen of warmth to some of those colder areas when you watch this video/movement unfold.

Does your marketing make people feel something?

In the grand scheme of things, people don’t hate marketing and they don’t despise advertising. What people hate is bad marketing and they despise bad advertising as well. Decades have been spent trying to quantify and qualify what might be considered "bad marketing" or "bad advertising" and there are more event and award galas to celebrate the best of the best in marketing and advertising than you can shake a Cannes Lion Award at.

But did you make them feel something?

Putting awards aside and putting aside the fact that people will PVR past a lot of advertising, why is it that some TV spots that are placed on YouTube get millions upon millions of views? In a world where people claim they would skip over commercials or prefer not to have them present in the first place, why are millions of people flocking online to actively search out these same commercials, watch them, rate them and discuss them… in droves.

We are creative and spiritual machines.

If more Marketers focused on feeling, emotion and attempts to stir the human condition, more and more people would not only embrace advertising and marketing, they would actively seek it out (in fact, going back to the YouTube example example, they already are). Marketing fails when the final product is produced like any other cog from any other random factory that produces boring cogs.

Push for feelings.

We’re all going to be trapped as Marketers. Whether it’s by conservative clients, limited budgets and/or business objectives that don’t provide any semblance of clarity, but it’s our job to turn those perceived limitations into an opportunity. Because if somebody in the food chain of the brand and agency isn’t whipping out the microscope trying to uncover why the consumer will care and what the campaign or initiative is going to make them feel, all is lost.

How does that feel?