Likable Is Not The Same As Interesting
The winners of the 2024 USA Today Ad Meter during the Super Bowl were all very likable. Big helpings of celebrity star power, entertaining shenanigans, and a tiny measure of the heartwarming. Ads nobody would be offended by.
In the Ad Meter Replay analysis, USA Today measures the ads people are talking about on social media for a week after the game.
The 2024 Ad Meter Replay, looks at four qualities of likability: Most Comical, Most Inspirational/Heartwarming, Best Cameo, and Rookie of the Year. Rookie of the Year isn't exactly a measure of likability, but judging from the ad that won that award (CeraVe with Michael Cera) they were measuring likability.
Aiming for likability is a reasonable goal. Especially in the context of the Super Bowl where people gather to be entertained, likability can go a long way in getting people to listen to you. It can also generate positive feelings about your brand - even if they may not remember why they have those feelings over the long term. But likability doesn’t necessarily keep them listening to you or more pertinent, thinking about you over the long term.
To make the point, USA Today also tracks the highest-rated Super Bowl commercials in history.
The highest-rated Super Bowl ads in history according to their Ad Meter scores, which again measure likability, are not necessarily the most memorable ads. A focus group of one here, but reading through the list, I haven't thought about any of these ads since the Super Bowl Sunday they ran. Now I'm not saying they are not effective. It is possible that all these ads need to do for these brands on the Super Bowl is to leave people with good feelings about the brand. But there are other, possibly even more efficient ways, of getting people to remember your brand.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, memory works in different ways. And when it comes to creating memories through advertising, it's not all about creating positive vibes.
Advertisers rarely, if ever, consider saying anything that might upset people. It is a convention of advertising to be relentlessly positive. The belief is that a brand needs to be positive because a more pleasurable state attracts more people. But when it comes to mental availability, we’re not just talking about attraction, we’re also talking about active processing after the ad viewing.
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So are advertisers right to always be positive?
An analysis from Ehrenberg Bass Institute shows which emotions drive the most sharing.?Caveat: They used videos as a proxy here, but advertising should follow the same pattern. What they found was that both positive and negative emotions top the list:
Both positive and negative feelings generate arousal and lead to the kind of engagement brands want: thinking about, talking about, and sharing.
Interesting things continue to feel worth thinking about, even after they’re over. While likable can feel great at the time, it doesn't necessarily last long after the viewing is over.
You have to be willing to be unlikable (to some people) to be interesting. For instance, the most memorable Nike ads over the past thirty years weren't aiming for likability. They were points of view that not everyone agreed with and even made some people angry. I am not a role model. Dream Crazy. Hello World.
Is being willing to be unlikable once in a while the right strategy for everybody? Of course not. But there is a benefit to it that should be considered. By once in a while saying or doing something that not everybody likes, you not only refocus your fans' loyalty, but you’ll also attract new attention from the incongruity of saying something that seems out of character for the brand.
In this year's Super Bowl, only one ad was willing to go there. He Gets Us. The JESUS DIDN'T TEACH HATE. HE WASHED FEET ad. It was amongst the lowest-rated Super Bowl ads according to USA Today, but it was the only interesting one. The only one worth thinking about. Even if you wanted to, you would struggle to put together this many words about any of the other ads. People wanted to talk about it after the game was over.
The evangelical sponsors of the ad were willing to say something they knew some people wouldn't like to get people thinking.
The point is, if you’re too concerned with being likable, you’ll never be interesting.
Founder @ Applied Brand Science. Helping marketing teams raise their game with brand science.
1 年Indeed likeable and interesting are not always the same thing. And both are gradients, right? Some Marvel movies are more interesting, some less (some not at all). But I totally agree that being interesting is a really fabulous lever for being noticed and remembered and building a brand. I bet most advertisers wish they could be interesting and likeable. Once in a while maybe you do get both (the VW Use the Force / remote start ad?). But usually I think you're right: you gotta choose.