Nobody chooses a career in comms to sell more checking accounts; they do it to marry products with people to enjoy more meaning from what they consume. That checking account could represent an internal high-five that you’re now adulting. And those feelings add up to more satisfaction in our lives.
Here’s the rub: Marketing and communications are woven into the media landscape that carries it, which is currently a persistent doom scroll of anxiety and negativity. The 24/7 news and social media cycle constantly exposes people to global crises, social injustices and environmental threats. This continuous exposure is making people sick. There are reports of higher rates of mental unwellness, with many people feeling the weight of the world on their shoulders—so much so that nearly half of the books at airport kiosks are about managing stress.
So, as bad as some advertising is, against this current backdrop, it can be toxic.
One response to this: A movement toward marketing a brand’s purpose that aligns with a growing consumer expectation that companies do better because simply marketing those narratives can have tremendous power to create positive change. Great campaigns have reduced rates of smoking, increased body positivity and reduced teen pregnancy rates. Yes, marketing did all that.
Focus on individuals
Supporting purpose-based brands simply isn’t enough. And that’s because people’s lives are not wholly societal, they’re intensely personal. If marketers are going to help people live better lives, they had better start with individuals. Stronger individuals will have the vigor to solve the greater problems. And stronger individuals are fueled by personal happiness.
Brands can’t take responsibility for happiness writ large. They’d love to try, but happiness is the domain of relationships, physical well-being, inner makeup and the overarching fabric of life circumstances. However, brands can—and do—create great joy.
Joy is extremely powerful, even if fleeting. It’s most tangibly measured in momentary bursts of uplift. And while it may create physical manifestations like smiling or a rapid heartbeat, it’s not always giddy.
Joy can be invoked by inspiration, epiphany, relief, understanding—an array of triggers. People experience joy many times a day. Mostly it washes over them, elevates them and evaporates. But if people have enough of these moments, the cumulative effects—well, that’s living a better life.
Brands have a huge and uncaptured role to play in this realm. In a proprietary diary study, people recorded the times in their day when they felt joy. Then later reviewed those instances to reflect on which were triggered by or related to a brand. The gap was staggering. The smell of coffee in the morning, enjoying a song, walking a pet—all produced great joy. But very few were connected explicitly to a brand, though brands are owed a lot of credit for their role in these moments.
Create and share joy
Bringing joy has a significant business impact. In PETERMAYER’s research, the agency studied thousands of consumers and dozens of industries and found an 80% correlation between purchase intent and the joy factor ascribed to a brand. And 63% of that purchase intent is ascribed to the joy experienced first in a brand’s communications.
Through applying the principles of positive psychology to brands, PETERMAYER concluded that most products and services have an inherent ability to unleash feelings of joy. Most are simply not aligning the ways in which their products and services elicit joy to their audiences. The practice of uncovering consumer modes of joy and applying them to brands can lead to advertising that unleashes purchase intent.
These applications affect the consumer journey as well as the communications approach and can have far greater implications into service design. If a brand or category is inherently joyful, this work helps extend joy elicitation into many areas of operation. But if a brand or category is commoditized or maybe even joyless, the opportunity for differentiation and meaning is multifold.
For example, having well-working streaming internet is one of the most joyful experiences in modern life (many times greater than eating a steak!). But internet brands are some of the most joyless in people’s lives. This joy gap represents a significant opportunity, and why a PETERMAYER category-challenger fiber internet client reported double-digit sales.
Joy is the new purpose, and at PETERMAYER, it is the agency’s purpose. The concept of brand joy taps into the idea that positive consumer experiences, even small ones, can significantly enhance overall life satisfaction. Brands can create joyful moments that accumulate to improve well-being—for their consumers and themselves. And that’s advertising doing one heck of a lot of good.
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As CEO and owner of PETERMAYER, Michelle Edelman is part of the 1% of women agency owners. A stalwart champion of brand joy, she pulls from her years of strategy leadership to guide the integrated marketing shop into the next frontier of communications.
