A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
—Francis Bacon, The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
THE COLD MONTH OF FEBRUARY 2011 WAS UPON US, BUT sports fans everywhere were heating up for what would become the most watched television program in history. Super Bowl XLV featured a match-up of two of the NFL’s most title-abundant franchises, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. But like every year, there were really two big games in the making . . . one on the field of play and the other in the field of advertising. Each year, advertisers unshackle their budgets and creative constraints in an effort to “go big or go home” on the world’s biggest media stage. Who would capture the title on TV’s most expensive and expansive advertising venue? In 2011, neither game would disappoint. The Packers outlasted their opponents despite an impressive comeback to capture the title while advertisers captured a record 111 million television viewers.1
Super Bowl ads must be created with a special eye for the context of the big game, considering both the audience and the competition. Since Super Bowl Sunday has become virtually an American holiday, we are competing not only with other great ads but with crowded living rooms full of beer-drinking partygoers and brimming bowls of chips, dips, and salsa. Conventional wisdom has led marketers to up the ante each year with over-the-top humor, high-end productions, and A-list celebrity talent in an effort to stand out and gain attention.
For a few months prior, our creative teams at Deutsch LA had been busy churning out a steady stream of ideas that pushed the boundaries of creativity, addressing the need to feel epic and Super Bowl–worthy. But none of these ideas could unseat the simple charm of a concept that had been on the table early on in the creative development process. As it turned out, this year it was the story of a little boy and a simple, poignant, heartfelt moment that would capture the crown and the imagination of millions worldwide. The commercial featured a pint-sized version of Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of Star Wars fame, and quickly became the topic of water-cooler conversation everywhere. In the ad, mini-Darth is seen in a series of unsuccessful attempts to use “the Force” on various household items, each time predictably failing, until he encounters the new 2012 Passat. This time, the car appears to come to life by the power of his little raised hands after his dad secretly starts the engine using the remote start feature on the key fob.
Created to tease the coming of the 2012 Passat, the spot was deliberately leaked onto YouTube a few days in advance in an effort to have it go viral. The strategy paid off in spades. Thanks to the Internet, we can now measure the impact of an ad by the extent to which people voluntarily search and choose to view it, often again and again, the ultimate testament to its appeal. The Force won our Super Bowl before the game even started with an incredible 12.4 million pregame downloads on YouTube and total domination of Super Bowl prebuzz on Twitter.
The ad went on to become not only a powerful marketing effort but also a global cultural phenomenon. At the time of this writing, it has amassed a staggering 54 million views on YouTube and inspired countless accolades, spoofs, imitations, comic strips, movie trailers, sports arena shows, and television news programs. It made a national hero of six-year old Max Page, whose concealed identity had everyone curious to meet the cute boy behind the ominous mask. Adweek selected it as the best commercial of 2011. And in a recent CBS prime-time show, Clash of the Commercials: USA vs. The World—a live interactive event broadcast from Las Vegas and hosted by Heidi Klum—online voters chose the ad as the greatest commercial of all time.
The Force struck a nerve and put Volkswagen back into the fore of public consciousness by being ranked as the most memorable ad of all the Super Bowl commercials. Online it became one of the top ten viral ads of all time and among the highest rated ads of all time. The spot won numerous prestigious awards including two Gold Lions at Cannes, a Gold Pencil in the One Show, and a Gold Clio. And even more importantly, it drove significant increases in purchase consideration, upped traffic to the VW.com website by half, and contributed to a hugely successful sales year for the Volkswagen brand. In total it earned a reported 6.8 billion impressions worldwide and more than 100 million in earned media.2
But the most intriguing aspect of its success was the effect that the advertisement had upon the minds of viewers. It received the highest “neuro-engagement score” ever in the annual Sands Research Super Bowl Ad Neuro ranking, which measures electrophysiological activity in the brain in response to viewing the commercials that run in the Super Bowl each year. As Dr. Stephen Sands, chair and chief science officer at Sands Research, announced, “Deutsch LA’s creative team for Volkswagen for two years in a row has topped our ranking and this year their Darth Vader advertisement elicited such a strong emotional response, it ranks as the highest we have ever tested . . . the positive and negative emotional response flows with the commercial and ends on an extremely positive point.” Dr. Sands added that, “By creating an engaging and emotional storyline with strong positive response, viewers were extensively engaged and strongly recalled the spot, and, more importantly, specifically recalled the brand associated with the commercial. Too often that correlation is lost and key branding moments are missed.”3
A high-density electroencephalogram (EEG) records what areas of the brain are activated from moment to moment while subjects watch the commercial as the storyline depicts a series of expected predictions . . . the Force is powerless on the exercise bicycle, the household pet, the washer and dryer, the doll, the sandwich. But that predictable pattern is finally interrupted. Thanks to the dad’s unexpected intervention, the viewers are bemused with the emotional payout of an unsuspecting reward when the delightful mini-Darth becomes surprised and astonished by his own powers. A close analysis of the EEG data shows a very clear prominent spike in engagement and emotion as the dad remotely fires up . . . not only the car, but also the brains of those watching.4 As Sands also reported, “As the father starts the car from inside the house a peak of engagement ensues in the bilateral parietal lobe (which signals attention) and the frontal lobe (which signals higher cognition). This implies that respondents have continued sustained attention and are processing this event within the storyline.” This neuro-engagement is sustained through the all-important display of the brand logo, which immediately follows the pattern interrupt as the engine starts up. As Sands puts it, “The overall engagement to this ad is strong all the way to the end, and we didn’t see a significant drop of attention like we do with most ads. The final shot of the logo created a huge right temporal and right frontal and parietal lobe activation. This signifies that respondents were processing the final messaging and brand. Additionally, people were experiencing a positive emotional reaction to it.”5
One of the reasons the ad became such a force in advertising is that it interrupted another well-known pattern: the image of Darth Vader. The concept of the Dark Lord is simple: the classic antagonist and the epitome of evil. To have an adorable child play this archetype is a complete departure. We took a concept related to darkness and immorality and replaced it with light-hearted innocence. Had the little boy been dressed up like Luke Skywalker, there would have been no interruption, no tension, and much less attention. Several decades earlier, Volkswagen created perhaps the most effective advertising campaign of all time through pattern interruption. It was 1959 when they developed “Think small.” Advertising Age has ranked it the top ad campaign of the century.6 While the industry zigged and boasted big, Volkswagen zagged and thought small with charm, wit, and honesty, breaking the convention of conspicuous consumption and transforming our markets and our culture through a refreshing change of pace. Thinking small was actually thinking big.
Why do some things capture our attention and others go completely unnoticed? Why did mini–Darth Vader become the spotlight of the public eye?
Perception is an active process that is constructed by the brain, not one passively recorded by our senses. In other words, we see with our brain, not just our eyes. Television is our most dominant media because vision is our dominant sense. It is estimated that as much as 85 percent of our perception, learning, and cognition are mediated through our sense of sight,7 and over one-third of the brain is dedicated to the processing of visual information.8 But what we see is as much a function of how our brain physically processes that information as it is the physical nature of what we are observing. Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Herbert Simon likened the mind to a pair of scissors in which one blade is the brain and the other is the environment. In order to understand how we perceive and experience the world, we must first recognize the simultaneous interaction between both “blades.”9
Perception is not a simple linear process, but rather an ongoing back and forth comparison between expectations and incoming sensory data.10 Our brains create models of the world and compare incoming information to those models. When things that we observe fit these expectations, we don’t have to think about them and they become unconscious. That’s because our conscious minds work on a need-to-know basis. We can process only a limited amount of information from the environment, so when the world is accurately predicted, we no longer need to pay attention to that information and are freed up to focus our attention elsewhere.11
Take for instance the act of learning to drive a car. At first we pay very close attention to everything we are doing, but once we know how to drive the process becomes unconscious. Of course, we are consciously aware of the fact that we are driving a car, but we no longer need to be aware of all the perceptual input and motor coordination required for driving. We become, for the most part, unconscious of the gas pedal beneath our foot, the small adjustments that we continually make in guiding the steering wheel, or the need to switch on the turn signal before changing lanes. Only if something interrupts our pattern with the unexpected, such as the driver in front of us slamming on his brakes, or a dog running out into the middle of the street, do we notice what is happening and consciously react in that moment. Our unconscious mind takes care of most of the driving so that we are able to pay conscious attention to these important interruptions. This example underscores an extremely powerful concept for marketers: awareness of our surroundings occurs only when the things we experience violate our expectations.12
It deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr all the ltteers in a wrod are. You can stlil raed it wouthit a porbelm bcuseae the huamn mnid wroks by a porecss of ptatern rceigontion. It dtemrines maennig bfoere porecssnig dteails.13 Amzanig huh?
You are able to read this jumble because your mind works by a process of pattern recognition. Our brains look to organize information into familiar patterns that fit our preconceived or learned notions of the world, seeking connections to things that we already know. That process creates meaning more from the context of a situation than from its specific content. We don’t read the actual letters but rather look for the structural patterns. Our brains do this by matching things in the world to patterns or models in our mind. This is what scientists refer to as “a priori knowledge,” or in other words, information that already exists in your head. As with the jumbled words, you have already learned the patterns in which the letters, words, and sentences commonly occur so the brain automatically decodes and organizes the mess, predicting the intentions behind what has been written.
To illustrate this point of how the brain makes predictions to interpret reality, let’s turn our attention to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes vision. The visual cortex surprisingly has blind spots, much like the areas you can’t see in the rear view mirror of your car. At the back of the retina, where the optic nerve exits the eyeball, there are no photoreceptors at all, making us blind in that region. If the mind didn’t make up for this lack, we would have a hole in our visual field. Thankfully, the brain fills in the gap by using information from around the blind spot to infer or predict what might be there. We “Photoshop” our reality, manufacturing awareness based on input from the surrounding environment rather than what we actually see. This perceptual filling-in is known as “constructive perception.”14
In addition to this visual manufacturing to compensate for blind spots, our brain displays its ongoing connection to our reptilian legacy through tiny little jumps called saccades. These occur when our eyes sweep across our field of view, changing focus from one fixed point to another, as when we read. In between these focal points, the information that reaches the brain is blurry, so the visual cortex sees the equivalent of tiny neural “jump cuts.” The brain remarkably fills in the gaps of this feed to create a coherent narrative and seamless story from the choppy input.15
By filling in the blanks, our brain plays an active role not only in our ability to see but also our ability to generate awareness. In order to capture anyone’s attention you need to do more than activate the senses; you need to first actively engage the brain.
So how do we begin to embed a new idea about a brand into the minds of people? Because brands are learned behaviors, the first step in the branding process is the same as the first step in the learning process. And when your teacher told you to pay attention, she knew what she was talking about. The best way to learn anything is through focused attention, and nothing focuses our mind better than surprise and novelty.16 When someone does something different or unexpected, they interrupt our anticipated pattern of perception, which sets off a neurobiological process that commands our notice.
The “Energizer bunny” is one of the longest running and most recognized advertising campaigns in history, a version by ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day of a campaign developed by DDB Worldwide. According to Advertising Age, the bunny is one of the top five advertising icons of all time.17 The campaign introduced the quintessential power of pattern interruption. You think you are watching a commercial for Sitagin Hemorrhoid Remedy when, out of nowhere, a boisterous little “spokes-bunny” breaks into the commercial, beating his little drum and spinning around uncontrollably. Your momentarily confused brain turns to amused miscalculation as you quickly realize that the ad has nothing to do with hemorrhoids, but is rather a demonstration of the long-lasting power of Energizer batteries.
The human brain is fundamentally attracted to what is different. If it were not, we would never learn. The brain knows to stop and rethink its pattern, so it may react differently to the new experience and better comprehend it. When the bunny disrupts what we think is a hemorrhoid medicine spot or coffee commercial, we switch from autopilot to focused attention. While we make sense of things by comparing them to familiar patterns in our head, we are stopped dead in our tracks when we notice the unfamiliar or lack a connection to a preexisting pattern. That is because we need to understand and adapt to our changing environment in order to survive. As neuroscientist Russell Poldrack explains, “The brain is built to ignore the old and focus on the new. Novelty is probably one of the most powerful signals to determine what we pay attention to in the world. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, since we don’t want to spend all of our time and energy noticing the things around us that don’t change from day to day.”18
“Seeking new and unfamiliar experiences is a fundamental behavioral tendency in humans and animals,” says Dr. Bianca Wittman of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London. Wittman conducted an experiment in which volunteers were shown images that they had been familiarized with prior to the experiment. Each image was associated with a unique probability of a reward. The volunteers attempted to choose the ones with the largest pay-outs. However, when the experimenters introduced new, unfamiliar images, the participants were more likely to take a chance and risk choosing these newer options rather than picking the familiar, and arguably safer, choices.
Using fMRI scanners Wittman and her colleagues discovered greater activation of the ventral striatum, an evolutionary primitive region of the brain that plays a key role in processing reward, suggesting that this process is adaptively beneficial and shared with other animals. “It makes sense to try new options as they may prove advantageous in the long run,” says Wittman. For example, introducing new types of food into one’s diet may enrich nutrition. Getting a balanced diet of fruit, vegetables, and meat proteins in Pleistocene environments was a good thing for human evolution.
Marketers have learned to exploit this human tendency, such as through the use of limited time offers, those specials that come and go in the food service industries. Wittman’s research helps to explain how carefully planned infusions of seasonal varieties can excite people with pleasurable anticipation, like the annual return of Starbucks’ pumpkin spice lattes in autumn or the cultlike following for McDonald’s McRib sandwich. Unordinary brand line extensions, like Snapple’s papaya mango tea, an exotic departure from plain lemon and tea, can also allure us to diversify and add a new product to our carts.
This also helps to explain the appeal of “new and improved” callouts on food labels, or the ongoing redesign of brand logos and packaging even though the product may not have changed. As Wittman further points out, “It also introduces the danger of being sold old wine in a new skin.”19
Neurobiologists have found that novelty activates a part of the brain called the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental. This area exerts a major influence on learning, as it is closely associated with the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, as well as the amygdala, the center for processing emotional information. Researchers Emrah Düzel and Nico Bunzeck conducted a series of experiments measuring the brain’s response to novelty from which they concluded that exposure to new experiences improves memory. When we introduce completely new facts to the mind, it has a better chance of remembering the experience. While novelty acts on a number of different brain systems, it primarily activates the dopamine system. Düzel said, “It is a well-known fact amongst scientists that the mid-brain region regulates our levels of motivation and our ability to predict rewards by releasing dopamine in the frontal and temporal regions of the brain. We have now shown that novelty activates this brain area.”20
Conventional wisdom has often suggested that constant repetition of the same facts is the best way to learn, but this research challenges those assumptions. Though the brain is receiving additional information through the new facts, it is actually more receptive to the information overall, becoming more focused and more responsive.21
The success of the Energizer bunny campaign was rooted in the flexibility and campaign-ability of the idea. It was continually refreshed with new commercials and unsuspected interruptions. If Energizer kept running the same spots, our brains would quickly ignore the surprise.
Marketers have become woefully aware of the phrase “media wear-out” in advertising. Running the same television commercials again and again often diminishes their effectiveness. Based upon these observations, slightly changing an ad over time will likely draw increased ability to break through, sometimes without viewers even realizing it. Our brains are unconsciously programmed to scan the environment for contrast and notice change even if those revisions are seemingly below the radar screen of our awareness. This instinctive desire to seek variance is why we enjoy tasks that challenge us to find differences—for example, People Magazine’s puzzle called Second Look, in which readers try to find the subtle distinctions between two almost identical pictures. Because of this natural tendency, marketers might be well advised to include variations, additional ads, alternate windows, and varying insights and support points into the same overarching message over time. By deliberately running commercials or ads with a number of slight revisions in copy points or visual elements, and spreading these slightly varied executions over the media flight, marketers will be able to keep viewers engaged longer term. As Dr. Düzel points out, “When we see something new, we see it has a potential for rewarding us in some way. . . . The brain learns that the stimulus, once familiar, has no reward associated with it and so it loses its potential.”22
That’s because our brain learns through the release of dopamine. When we make a prediction and it comes true, we are rewarded with the secretion of dopamine in the brain. Once it is learned, we no longer need the reward of dopamine to encourage our attention. Dopamine neurons get even more excited by surprising rewards, like discovering that those amazing shoes you’ve always wanted are not only available in your size, but today they’re on sale for half off. According to Wolfram Schultz, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, these unpredictable awards can be three to four times more “exciting” to our neurons than awards that are predicted in advance, and can trigger intense emotional responses. The purpose of this surge in dopamine is to draw attention to this new and possibly important information. It is a signal that the brain should take notice and learn what is happening here.23
The Old Spice brand completely transformed its old-fashioned image thanks to an infectious effort from ad agency Wieden + Kennedy that was brimming with pattern interrupts. This campaign embedded a much cooler and contemporary brand image in the minds of people by introducing the world to the charismatic hunk of Isaiah Mustafa or “the man your man can smell like.” The introductory commercial featured a series of seamless transitional pattern interrupts as Isaiah directs the viewer’s attention from unsuspecting scene to scene. He goes from his bathroom, to dropping in on a sailboat, and finally ending up atop a horse. A follow-up spot shows him riding the same horse, but this time the camera pans back to reveal that Isaiah is riding it backwards as he proclaims, “Did you know women prefer Old Spice one bajillion times more? Did you know I’m riding this horse . . . backwards?”
The magic behind this amazingly impactful campaign is not just the smooth pitchman of Old Spice body wash, but the equally smooth interruptions. In yet another commercial we see the great-smelling, smooth-talking Isaiah go, in the span of a mere thirty seconds, from standing at an outdoor shower to log rolling in the wilderness, to carrying a gourmet cake, to remodeling his own kitchen with a power saw, to swan diving off a waterfall into a hot tub, and finally . . . as the walls of the hot tub collapse, we are left with him straddling a classically cool motorcycle. Our brains are captivated and delighted . . . again and again and again . . . with the reward of dopamine and the payout of focused attention. With 1.4 billion impressions, this campaign captured more than just attention—it changed behavior with an incredible 32.4 million downloads on YouTube, and a 55 percent sales increase over the three months since it was launched.24
But not all pattern interrupts need to be pleasantly surprising to be effective. That’s because missed predictions fire another hardwired neural response that biologically commands our attention. This reaction is what neuroscientists technically call the “Oh Shit!” circuit. When we expect something to happen and it does not, a distress signal is released from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC is closely wired to the thalamus, a dual-lobed mass of gray matter beneath the cerebral cortex that plays a critical role in awareness by helping direct conscious attention.25
Volkswagen’s “Safe happens” campaign from ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky chose gravitas over levity to tout the safety of Volkswagen automobiles. Television viewers are brought into the daily mundane interactions between a passenger and a driver, who is behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Jetta. You almost feel like you are riding in the backseat, eavesdropping on a normal everyday conversation, when all of sudden, “Wham!”—or in brain science parlance, “Oh Shit!”—the spot takes a tragic turn when an incredibly realistic car crash takes place. Fortunately, we are relieved to learn no one is hurt. This approach was a departure for a typically fun and friendly brand, but the campaign worked. It became a highly salient message, and one of the most memorable commercials for the brand at the time, communicating safety and firmly anchoring that message to our deepest most reptilian concerns, capturing a great deal of interest, not only in the media but also driving a demonstrable spike in purchase interest and imagery for the brand.26
Activation of this distress circuit galvanizes consciousness to bring whatever stimulus is in our environment to the center of our awareness. Our worst predictions, mistakes, and screwups are actually our best tutors. That’s because our brains only pay attention to what is around us when our predictions fail, when we experience something that defies our expectations. By paying attention to these mistakes, the brain learns and refines its model of reality. Novelty not only excites us with the promise of reward through the activation of dopamine, but it also teaches us to learn new things when our prognostications fail.27 It’s like the famous adage, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me again, shame on me.”
We not only perceive the world in patterns, we live our lives in them. Our daily steps often follow the same familiar grooves and well-worn paths. Like streams that eventually turn into rivers, we can’t stop the flow of the automatic routines of our daily lives. Among the infinite sea of possible choices in life, we often recreate and repeat the very same activities each and everyday. We sleep on the same side of the bed, wake up at the same time, drink the same coffee, eat the same breakfast, drive the same way to work, surf the same websites, watch the same TV shows, bitch about the same problems, gossip with the same friends about the same recurring dramas, and buy the same brands and products.
Interrupted patterns can provide access to better lives. Mike Sheldon, our CEO at Deutsch LA, often says that “The secret to life is to inject it with new experiences and scare yourself a little.” These moments when we take the unexpected and uncomfortable path may startle us. But as we exclaim, “Oh Shit,” we also open ourselves to new experiences that can lead us to try new things or better brands. The gateway to personal growth is also the path to brand growth.
Pattern interruption works not only because it excites our sensibilities and teaches us something new, but because it is one of the quickest ways to redirect our behavior: the ultimate goal of almost every marketing effort. But people don’t always jump to purchase a new brand. They need to be convinced and romanced over time, not only logically but also more importantly physically and emotionally . . . especially if that purchase is as expensive as a new car.
It began like any other day in Stockholm, Sweden. As early morning commuters entered the Odenplan train station, they walked to either the escalator or the adjacent staircase that would take them to the elevated train platform. On any other day most opted automatically for the path of least resistance, the escalator, but today was different. En route to their train, people came upon a curious demonstration of Volkswagen’s “fun theory,” developed by the ad agency DDB in Stockholm. The agency had transformed the steps of the staircase into a giant set of piano keys. Would-be escalator riders were interrupted out of their daily routines and prompted to scale the steps, making their own music as they climbed. Their inquisitive minds couldn’t resist the allure of the unusually new environment. This branded experience demonstrated that the easiest way to change behavior is to quite literally interrupt one’s pattern, and in this instance make it a bit more fun, something people associate with the Volkswagen brand. Sixty-six percent more people than normal chose the stairs over the escalator.28 Rather than riding the monotonous escalator, they danced and made music a part of their morning commute. By returning people to the fun and innocence of childhood, Volkswagen interrupted their pattern and gave them a truly memorable experience that put smiles on their faces. This event inspired web surfers through a series of award-winning viral videos that expanded the experiential effort for all to see online.
Several years ago I wrote a creative brief to encourage DIRECTV satellite television users to get out of the well-worn grooves of their daily TV-watching habits and watch more pay-per-view programming. After talking to satellite television viewers about their preferences, we discovered that despite over a hundred different channels from which to choose, most people clustered their viewing habits around a narrow subset. When these viewers decided what to watch, a pay-per-view movie was often an impulsive afterthought, not a habitual practice. The main idea of the brief centered around the notion of instant gratification, that right now, while they were watching something old and familiar, there was something new and exciting happening on pay-per-view.
The real brilliance of this effort came from the campaign developed by our creative team, which was based around a set of cleverly conceived pattern interrupts. Viewers were tricked into believing they were watching a classic scene from an iconic film like Airplane, Karate Kid, or Animal House. Amazingly realistic reenactments of these scenes pleasantly startled the television audience, making them believe the real movie was in progress, but then the protagonist broke character and turned pitchman. In one spot, Leslie Nielsen appears to be piloting the plane in Airport, reminding his co-pilot to “Stop calling me Shirley.” Just as viewers thought they were watching the actual movie, Nielsen turned to the camera and suggested that they “try a movie you don’t know all the words to.” It got the attention of customers as well as the trade, getting viewers to consider pay-per-view and snagging a Belding Sweepstakes award, the top creative honors that year in Southern California. Viewers loved being reminded of their favorite films, but they loved the surprise even more, and they also remembered the message, inspired by the suggestions of Nielsen, Mr. Miyagi, and others to try more pay-per-view. This effort morphed into a long-standing, compelling brand campaign that featured many different surprising scenes from culturally relevant movies, convincing cable users to unplug and change things up for the better by switching to DIRECTV.
Much like Isaiah and the increased sales of Old Spice, people follow what begs their attention. And as with the Old Spice commercials and the momentarily perplexing moment when the dad remotely starts the car in the VW ad, one of the key features of pattern interrupts is confusion. When the viewer becomes confused, when predictions fail, there is a burst of dopamine in the brain, followed immediately by the firing of the “Oh Shit” circuit. The conscious mind becomes overloaded with bewilderment and pays close attention. And while the conscious mind is preoccupied, we are less apt to judge, enabling an entry point into a new behavior, such as letting Old Spice purchasers smell like “the man your man can smell like” and enabling Volkswagen prospects to enjoy the “power of German engineering” in their new Passat.
Confusion not only facilitates behavior change, it is often necessary to the process of learning. We are confused when we first try to learn algebra, or understand a new app on our iPhone, or the first time we hear that the new Lexus can “park itself.” Our previous knowledge or perceptions are challenged, forcing us to apply our concentration so we may better understand. In order to get someone to think or to do something differently, or to change their perceptions of a brand, you have to say or do something that may seem a bit foreign at first, even a bit perplexing.
The great poet Robert Frost once said, “The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”29 For so long, business types have been behaving like busyness people, tediously recycling old products and ideas, sticking with the same old approaches even though their customers find attraction in the new and curious. They have been preoccupied by the paralysis of their own analysis, believing that confusion is such a bad thing that they painstakingly screen for it in advertising copy tests and strategic concept evaluations. They end up killing ideas that lead to even the slightest levels of bemusement. What they fail to realize is that some degree of confusion is the first step to behavior change.
But marketers must do more than just interrupt. Their efforts must also make people receptive to and interested in doing business with them. During the Internet boom in the late 1990s, Outpost.com interrupted people’s patterns on television by firing gerbils out of a cannon at a wall! The ad got them plenty of attention but not a sustainable business model. Unfortunately for Outpost, folks were still not sure about buying things online, and without winning the consumer’s trust through advertising, how could a commercial which ostensibly abused animals make them feel comfortable about sending their hard-earned money through the Ethernet? Today, if you type Outpost.com into your browser, it will interrupt your pattern again by redirecting you to Fry’s Electronics, a company that is known to be a reliable source of discount electronics, never having shot a single gerbil at anything.
Several years back, Quiznos restaurants employed another ill-fated pattern interrupt through the use of rodent-like creatures that sparked plenty of water cooler conversation but questionable interest in their product. This commercial featured small, furry, ratlike characters levitating aside Quiznos sandwiches, one wearing a bowler hat singing his praises to the refrain of “We love the subs!” while another in a pirate hat strummed along on an acoustic guitar. The goal was to entice viewers to buy their submarine sandwiches, and though those little guys were very funny, not all attention is good attention. Rats and food just don’t mix. In fact, the last time I checked, the mere thought of rats next to food is repulsive to most people. As one blogger put it, “They do not inspire me to buy Quiznos, they inspire me to throw up.” We need to do more than just interrupt patterns; we need to connect products with invitingly appropriate associations that move people in the direction of wanting to buy the product.
We frequently are disturbed by stimuli that disrupt but fail to engage us further. When you surf the Internet, you have probably experienced those pop-up ads that prevent you from being able to read the article you are really interested in. Some of them even have that built-in motion graphic that does little to entice but draws your attention away from the real reason you visited the site. Or maybe you have been forced to sit through a commercial that you didn’t want to see on television, let alone on the web. But in order to get to the cool video in the headline, you have to annoyingly wait through the commercial or give up altogether and close out the screen.
When I go to my local gas station, I am now forced to complete one more step of my transaction, accepting or denying an offered car wash. I am warned that if I accidentally push the wrong button there are no refunds! That’s a lot of choices set against increasing gas prices, and those annoying video screens on top of the pumps hawk advertisements at a volume set loud enough to compete with the local traffic. No wonder I can never remember what they’re selling. Attempting to force compliance through unwelcome intrusions is a losing strategy. It makes life more difficult when brands are supposed to be shortcuts to make life easier. It makes us feel bad when brands are supposed to make us feel good.
We need to remind ourselves that we are all in the business of buying and selling good feelings. Whether it’s a teenager who offers to mow the lawn on Sunday to convince his parents to let him stay out late on Saturday or an advertiser convincing men to shower with Old Spice body wash . . . we are all peddlers of dopamine. That’s right, good marketers are selling the best drugs in the world, drugs that are produced by the exquisite pharmacies of the brains: the molecules of our own feelings. And, when it comes to pattern interruptions, the more you surprise and the bigger the reward, the better the buzz.
And that’s why great pattern interrupts like the “Energizer bunny,” “The Force,” and “The man your man should smell like” work so well. They are like hitting the jackpot on the one-armed bandit at the Hard Rock in Vegas: They just feel good. And it can be just as good a feeling for the marketer who creates it as for the consumer who experiences it. I recall the excitement that spread throughout the halls of Deutsch and Volkswagen as downloads of “The Force” ticked steadily upward day after day and heartfelt support and appreciation poured in from the trade, the media, and, most importantly, the everyday fans of the brand. After all, Volkswagen is the “people’s car.” We all want to share in the high, the rush of good feeling, and that’s really what happens when a marketer generates a viral buzz. We are not just selling a product; we are producing a positive and life-affirming feeling for the millions of people who are engaged by our efforts.
Ads that appropriately use pattern interrupts are like magic. They misdirect our senses with the smoke and mirrors of our own beliefs and pay us back with satisfyingly unexpected outcomes that make us feel simpatico with our world. They produce natural reactions that happen without effort or thought, that bond people together over the shared experience. Like a hilarious joke whose punch line you didn’t see coming, the pleasure from the experience is not just a sales tactic, but a gift from marketer to consumer.
When pattern interrupts are used strategically, they can pay out huge dividends. One of most intriguing examples of the empowerment is the queen of shock herself: Lady Gaga. In 2010 she topped Forbes Celebrity 100, even unseating Oprah Winfrey from her number one spot. When Lady Gaga stepped on stage at the Video Music Awards to receive her Video of the Year award from pop legend Cher, she was wearing a dress made of out of raw meat! She boldly announced to the crowd, “I never thought I would be asking Cher to hold my meat purse.”30 Lady Gaga did more than capture the attention of our reptilian brain, she upstaged even Cher, one of the leading fashion pattern interrupters. As she told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, “As part of my mastering of the art of fame, part of it is getting people to pay attention to what you want them to pay attention to, and not pay attention to the things you don’t want them to.” As a result, she has amassed 90 million from a monster tour, 32 million Facebook fans, and 10 million fans who follow her on Twitter, all of whom helped her sell a million downloads of her latest hit “Born this Way” in five short days.31
If pattern interrupts are well executed, striking the right associations and triggering the right emotions, marketers can leverage some of the most fundamental inclinations of humans, startling awareness and piquing curiosity. By creating a memory that is retained in people’s minds, successful marketing can begin to drive them to choose a new product. But even more importantly, it will introduce and open them to the process of change.
Embed pattern interrupts. Include these devices throughout marketing communications across all media. In order to effectively employ pattern interrupts in advertising, you don’t need to go over the top or shoot for shock value. Advertisers painstakingly obsess over the production of advertisements, editing and fine-tuning commercials to get to that one elusive final cut. Cognitive science tells us that we don’t notice the world around us when it’s reliably predicted away, when what we are experiencing in the moment matches our intuitive predictions. Once we know the drill, the gig is up. We stop paying attention. So how do we change the drill?
Consider shooting several versions of the same spots with slight twists in the background, plots, characters, product features, etc. Advertisers often generate multiple cuts anyway as a result of the editing process. Run these throughout the media flight instead of leaving them on the editing room floor. The same holds true for digital, print, outdoor, and experiential ads. Slight twists of the unexpected go a long way over time.
Break with industry standards. To change your business, you have to change your business. Try something completely different and even counterintuitive in your day-to-day business operations. For example, Zappos decided to throw out the book on how they ran their call centers. Rather than follow the prevailing industry norm of working off well-developed, highly researched, time-tested if-then sequential algorithms, they did something remarkably unanticipated. They told their customer service representatives to throw out the script and do whatever it took to help the customer. The direction: Solve the problem in any way you see fit, as long as it gets solved. The result: Zappos now consistently ranks as one of the best companies in the United States for customer service, ahead of BMW and Apple and on par with Ritz-Carlton.32
Don’t default to the expected solution. When I worked at ad agency Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG (now Euro RSCG New York) in the late ’90s and early 2000s, chairman and CEO Bob Schmetterer told a fascinating story about an Argentinian ad agency that had a client that needed a big ad campaign to drive traffic to their new riverfront development. The real estate complex was located off the beaten path in a remote part of town. Rather than investing the 4 million budget in advertising, the agency came back and recommended building a bridge instead. Even though the client was expecting an ad campaign, he approved the brazen idea and the spectacular footbridge became a cultural landmark emblematic of the new Buenos Aires, generating more publicity than advertising ever could have and physically delivering thousands of customers to their shops, restaurants, and businesses.33
Surprise people in emotionally meaningful ways. Several years ago our team at Deutsch LA pitched and won the CiCi’s Pizza account. The brand positioning that I came up with revolved around the extraordinary lengths that CiCi’s employees went through to treat their customers special, as compared to the service apathy so prevalent in typical fast-food restaurants. The insight for this strategy was illustrated to me firsthand when the then-CEO invited me to have lunch with him at one of the local restaurants in Texas. As I walked through the door a couple of employees warmly and emphatically called out: “Hi! Welcome to CiCi’s!” I looked behind me for someone more important than myself, and when I found I was alone, I shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “Are you talking to me?” Treating people with uncommon care, respect, and kindness is likely one of the primary reasons CiCi’s has become one of the highest performing brands in the nation.34
This philosophy extended far beyond a gimmicky salutation by well-trained employees. It was at the core of the company’s manifesto of business operations. What made it even more unforeseen was the fact that they were offering an “all you can eat pizza buffet” for a mere 3.99 at the time. There is no overhead cost associated with a heartfelt “hello” or “thank you.” The pleasantly unusual first impression turned curious diners into loyal customers. After all, when people do right by us, we are hardwired to return the favor.
Rethink traditional copy testing research. We have created an industry of ad development for copy testing that is designed to beat the system, rather than connect with and move people to action. Some agencies are paid on the basis of how well their ads test, not how well they perform in the real world. And though fortunes are spent on them, traditional copy test measures are often perilously inadequate and don’t reliably predict in-market behavior. We need to stop asking respondents to repeat the main idea from the brief back to us and think we have some how done our job. Consumers are people, not parrots. They have a far more complex relationship with an ad’s message than just to memorize and regurgitate its catchphrase. When a research study tested Volkswagen’s “The Force” in a traditional setting, many said the main idea was about “fun to drive” or “surprisingly powerful,” which was not the ad’s intended takeaway.35 Neuromarketing has revealed that the ad had an inordinately tremendous capacity for engaging our neurology and spiking emotion at a critical moment, which was a far more engaging experience than just remembering and repeating the content or copy points.
The next time you test ads consider ways to measure unconscious emotional response. If you conduct focus groups, do something completely unorthodox, forbid note taking, and check laptops at the door. Pay attention to the faces, bodies, and physical reactions of people, and not just the screens and keyboards of your laptop computer. Try to see the bigger story unfolding in the group, and don’t take the individual verbatim commentary on face value without this larger social context. Remember the true insight lies in the feelings generated, not just the words expressed.