Mental Subtraction and the Whopper
Stimulating a strong emotional response on the part of the
viewer of an ad is critical if the ad is to be effective in
driving behavior. But that doesn’t necessarily tell us how to
create that emotional response from an ad. It just tells us we
want one.
Last week at our internal Lunch ‘n Learn, where we talked
about creative work, we looked at tv ads that had received
recognition in the business,and looked at how emotion worked
in those ads. Two of the most famous, and most-acclaimed,
were the original “Got Milk” ad, and the more-recent “Whopper
Freakout”. Both shared a common theme, taking away the brand
from the consumer rather than sharing it with him. I
suggested that the use of the counter-factual, absence rather
than presence of something, might have added emotional power.
It requires imagination, which can be a more powerful stimulus
than observation.
A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology now provides some solid data to support that
interpretation. For years happiness researchers have done
studies showing that acts of gratitude, such as writing notes
of appreciation, can have a significant positive effect on
individuals’ life satisfaction and happiness. Now the power
of the counter-factual has also been established. As described
in Mind Matters:
“The researchers show that people prompted to write about how
a positive event may not have happened experience a greater
uptick in mood than those prompted to describe the positive
event.”
In other words, feeling appreciation for a relationship you
have may not make you feel as good as imagining what your life
might have been like if you had never met the person.
If this trick of mental subtraction (What if I’d never met my
husband?) works for relationships, it seems logical that it
works for other things too (What if I couldn’t get a Whopper?)
