• • • • Sample • • • • Emoti-coms About the Authors Xavier Quattrocchi-Oubradous is an artist-turned- investment-banker-turned-media-entrepreneur. After many years of cello practice, trying unsuccessfully to emulate his family roots, he graduated in management at Dauphine University, Paris and in political sciences at Sciences Po, Paris. His business career started with financing industrial projects at investment banks Calyon and GE Capital. He then launched a series of businesses in the marketing and communications industry – including QobliQ, a multinational group offering digital, sponsorship, corporate social responsibility (CSR), social media and experiential marketing services. He has published several articles in Admap . Dr Charles Bal was research manager and is now head of brandRapport France, a sponsorship and associative marketing consultancy owned by QobliQ Group. He has developed a new family of sponsorship measurements that take into account the highly emotional nature of sponsorship. As part of a cotutelle agreement between the University of Paris- 1 Panthéon Sorbonne (France) and the University of Adelaide (Australia), in 2010 Charles completed a PhD examining the role played by emotions in the sponsorship persuasion process. He has already presented his results at marketing conferences in Europe and Asia-Pacific, and has published his work in several international reviews ( Journal of Sponsorship , Asia-Pacific Journal of Marketing & Logistics , Admap ). Emoti-coms A mArkEting guidE to communicAting through Emotions From shouting to singing your message by XAviEr QuAttrocchi-oubrAdous & chArlEs bAl Hh HARRIMAN HOUSE LTD 3A Penns Road Petersfield Hampshire GU32 2EW GREAT BRITAIN Tel: +44 (0)1730 233870 Fax: +44 (0)1730 233880 Email: [email protected] Website: www.harriman-house.com First published in Great Britain in 2011 Copyright © Harriman House Ltd The right of Xavier Quattrocchi-Oubradous and Charles Bal to be identified as the Authors has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. ISBN: 978-1-906659-72-1 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library. All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior written consent of the Publisher. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining to act as a result of reading material in this book can be accepted by the Publisher, by the Authors, or by the employer(s) of the Authors. Cover design by Sophie Blair (www.sophieblair.com). Set in Caslon, Ubuntu Titling and Ubuntu. Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Antony Rowe. Hh Harriman House A mes filles, reines de la communication émotionnelle. – XQO To my emotions…and to those of you who trigger them! – Dr Charles Bal contents Preface: A note on Emotional communication introduction: reversing the Eyeball-to-Eyewall trend chapter 1: rationality: A theory of Economists, a myth in business 1.1 What is rationality? 1.2 Are we really in control of our decisions? 1.3 Business is not only about rationality chapter 2: What We should know About Emotions 2.1 What is emotion? 2.2 Six key fundamental facts about emotions 2.3 How to represent emotions in an actionable way 2.4 The growing place of emotions in modern societies chapter 3: how Emotions matter to consumers 3.1 How emotions drive our consumer life 3.2 The ‘3 Ms’ of emotional communication: mindset, message and mechanic 3.3 From one to many: emotional contagion and mirror neurons chapter 4: Emotion, the holy grail of brands? 4.1 Emotion-enabled communication techniques 4.2 Careful when playing with emotions 4.3 The view from the boardroom chapter 5: share of heart, the new Paradigm of communication 5.1 Share of voice: less and less audible 5.2 What is ‘share of heart’? 9 Emoti-coms | Quattrocchi-Oubradous & Bal 5.3 Content production and distribution is critical to share of heart 5.4 The conveyability of the message conclusion: Emotions are not the key, they are the door notes Books and articles referenced in Emoti-coms index 10 P r E F A c E music is the shorthand of emotion. “ – leo ”n. tolstoy PrEFAcE A note on Emo tional communic ation ” his book makes a number of cross-references to music, t which may seem strange as we are dealing with business, marketing and communication. The first reason for these references is that it is somewhat difficult to talk about emotions in the abstract. Our vocabulary is inadequate for explaining what happens when emotional messages reach our brains, and how we react to these stimuli, as the emotional phenomenon is extremely complex and sometimes counterintuitive. When words are missing, it is often useful to use benchmarks, and the authors’ choice has been music. Why did we choose music? Like emotions, music has the feeling of a wordless language, almost as complex as spoken or written languages, but communicating with us directly , without filter or barrier, and without the necessary treatment of words and syntax. Music does have a grammar, but you do not need to know it in order to listen to it or be deeply affected by it. As Victor Hugo said, “music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent”. 13 Emoti-coms | Quattrocchi-Oubradous & Bal That is the reason why the effect of Bach’s toccata in D minor is almost immediate on most of us – provoking a flow of thoughts, questions, images; changing our mood, displacing our thoughts, bringing forth a range of new feelings. The first three notes of the toccata, coming out of the organ’s pipes, are designed to grab our attention in an instant, divert all of our brain functions towards our ears (or rather towards the vibrations coming through our ears), focus and be ready for the later developments. They are comparable to the first three notes of Beethoven’s fifth symphony in the energy, power and excitement they convey. The muezzin’s adhan (call to prayer) is equally striking. It is difficult to imagine faster ways to generate emotions, apart from fight-or-flight situations. This is typically what our business readers need to do every day, all day long: grab the attention of their audience to convey a message. This is what music does. And it is what emotionally focused marketing will help us to do more effectively than ever before. Why music is more relevant than vision in our argument Visual creations were of course also designed for the purpose of promoting faith or other messages. The Mayan or Egyptian pyramids, Greek or Khmer temples, the Taj Mahal, the Blue Mosque, or even the sorcerer’s body paintings and other outlandish attributes are designed to help people apprehend some sense of the divine – by showing them something at the limits of what their brain can believe, something almost unfathomable. Why do WE lovE to bE dEcEivEd? What is the common factor between a bestselling novel, a great movie, a hilarious joke, a jaw-dropping presentation and an illusion? For American cognitive neuroscientist Al Seckel, the common denominator is simple. 14 A Note on Emotional Communication | Preface They all violate our expectations in some sort of pleasing way. Human beings have a natural tendency to anticipate what is going to happen, and to form expectations about their near future. In some cases, a violation of their expectations is perceived negatively because of disruptions it brings to their life. But on the other hand, when the situation is not critical and the trick is clever, an unexpected twist can be a joyful experience. This is precisely what happens when we are exposed to an illusion. Irrespective of our age, social background or experiences, there is always something fascinating in being confronted with a visual representation that literally tricks our brains; an image, for instance, that fools the most primal of our senses, making us see a circle when it is actually a square, or a moving 3D shape when the reality is a fixed 2D drawing. What Al Seckel’s work teaches us is that not only are we easily fooled, but we somehow like it. Our brains usually ‘produce’ positive emotions when we partake of these illusions. We enjoy being willingly deceived. However, the main difference between visual messages and music, and the reason why music is a more helpful analogy for discussing emotions, is that it too deals with less direct, objective, measurable experiences. We have difficulty in explaining why we are touched by sonorous harmonies – but we can easily describe how impressed we are by the height of a cathedral in comparison to our human body size, or the pleasing colourful effect of sunlight through stained glass. Our brains can deconstruct, rationalise and explain the complexity of the visual message – especially as the brain capacity in processing visual messages is highly developed. Conversely, harmonic sounds and rhythm resonate directly with the brain, since the equivalent of the treatment of eye-sourced information by the visual cortex is almost nonexistent in hearing. 1 Music has a more direct and straightforward impact on our brains. This means the musical effect is much closer to the influence of emotions in the brain than vision. 15 Emoti-coms | Quattrocchi-Oubradous & Bal Why music is more relevant than odours Deeply nested in our evolutionary roots, thus wired even more deeply and more directly than hearing and sight into our brain, smell is probably the only other sense that is a reasonably close parallel for the operation of emotions.