50 Stories Tall: The Sixth Story – Marketing the H’s

In a time when everything feels tilted about ten degrees from “normal”, I watched with great interest to see how brands would handle their messaging during the marketing extravaganza of the Super Bowl this year.

Keep in mind, annually, there seems to be some level of mass mental upheaval happening around Super Bowl time, with mid-Winter claustrophobia and depression really sinking in for much of North America. There's always this realization settling in about now, that holy shit we’re in a totally new year and everything is completely different and somehow exactly the same. We never really know if we should feel comforted or horrified by this knowledge. 

And, like everything, that anxiety has been heightened to low-Earth-orbit levels during this year, because of the…well, The Thing.  

So, as we work our way through the weeds of this new world, how will we navigate learning to communicate with one another again in any kind of way that feels personal? For good and bad, I think people fall back to what we know. We fall into those things that feel like safe ground to us.

This is key to understanding the best ways to market to people, because as we each find our way back to that safe, social interactivity again, brands too must find ways to communicate effectively, honestly, and personally, in ways that don’t ignore all that’s happened, while also not obsessing on it. 

As an indicator of how marketers are trying to address the challenge, I found that in advertising and promotion around the Super Bowl, brands are largely leaning on traditional themes during times of challenge.

For the sake of cohesion, I'd offer this alliterative list: Hope, Happiness, Helping, Humor, and Humanity. 

Speaking to your target audience using one or many of these five H’s is always a pretty decent strategy, but more so in a time when people are looking for messages that don’t drive us away from one another, when we already feel so disconnected. 

Though I plan to dive more deeply into each down the road (at some point), it’s important to examine each as a separate option in your creative and messaging, and then look for ways to integrate several as interconnected units.

Also, think of the ways in which each should be specific about evoking a feeling in the viewer, versus demanding of the viewer.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

It’s great to show reasons for Hope, but it’s less effective to demand that people have hope. Insisting that someone have hope can feel a lot like asking them to just be taller.

Conveying a relatable story of Happiness that you believe will resonate with a large (or targeted) audience is a very different thing than implying how easy “happiness” can be, if one would just learn to “enjoy the little things” or whatever.

Showing people caring and empathetic enough to Help others in need helps to bind us together in a feeling of unity, but asking everyone to do more, or do their part, or give of themselves, can be a really difficult message to hear, when it may feel like you have nothing more to give right now.

Expressing Humor in your stories is almost always the hardest thing, as everyone’s definition is wildly different, and you probably have no idea of what your target audience’s sense of humor is, en masse. Humor, in this context, means working on a more engaging, lighthearted touch, versus trying to explain why something should be considered funny about a given situation.

Finally, Humanity. This may be the most important goal of marketing strategy over the next several years (at least). How can you, your brand, your company, and your people find ways to better share of themselves, unify on common ground, and tell stories of who we are, together? People relate not only to the attributes they see in themselves, but also the attributes that they would like their “better selves” to emulate. 

I trust that it’s clear by now that these five marketing themes are also meant to be the guideposts for us personally to use to come together again, when things are safe. If the messages we’re hearing from our brands can work to instill these five H’s, it’ll begin to become ingrained in our expectations of ourselves and one another. 

Cory helps lead Marketing and Client Leadership at YAH Agency in Atlanta, which strives to find the best way to convey the H’s in all work for their clients. His passions are writing, photography, and annoying his co-workers.