BMW is one of the most successful luxury brands of the
market. It has maintained a consistent and respected image through years and
its marketing techniques on their advertisements have a lot to do with it.
This particular commercial is centered on the emotions that
driving provides you and these emotions are associated to the name of the
brand. Heath, Brandt and Nairn (2006) carried out two experimental studies in
which they proved the powerful effects that emotional power commercials have
over more cognitive ones. They contrasted cognitive-power commercials with
others that highlight a more emotional-power and also investigated the
influence of emotional awareness on advertisements and how it affects the
consumer. 23 American Ads and 20 British Ads were shown to the participants and
later on, they were asked to rate them on a favorability scale. They found a
strong positive relationship between emotive power Ads and favorability shift.
In a further investigation on this emotional spots, they found out that the
less aware consumers were of the emotional elements of the commercial, the more
effect it had.
This particular spot of BMW is a really good example of the
two discoveries of this research. It doesn’t involve a cognitive or rational
persuasive technique but it is full of high levels of emotional content that
look for the transmission of the enjoyable feelings of driving. At the same
time, the emotional elements of the commercial (the landscape, the music, the story
and the message of the Ad) are subtle patterns that evoke a reaction in the
viewer, giving them less opportunities to rationalize, evaluate or contradict
its potency.
Finally, all these feelings are associated to the brand symbol and its main slogan: Do you enjoy driving? Provoking a strong desire to drive.
Reference:
Heath, R., Brandt, D., Nairn, A. (2006). Journal of Advertising Research.
Nice discussion of Heath et al. Supposing you were the advertiser for BMW, would you have chosen this as the best possible way to persuade/recruit potential buyers?
ReplyDeleteProbably not, as no specific characteristic of the brand is highlighted. They are not trying to sell anything in particular that could persuade the buyers. The viewer can see this commercial and get the feeling of how happy he is with his Volkswagen Polo when he travels alone through the mountains and how he enjoys letting his hand out feeling the wind. No necessity of buying a BMW is created in the audience.
Deleteprobably what mercedes tried to emphasize here is a general positive experience associating with driving BMW. Sometimes the company does not only produce ad for the purpose of selling a particular object, but also maintaining its brand image. so i think maybe this is the case.
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