Automated for the people: the rise of emotionally intelligent marketing

Achiev­ing suc­cess in mar­ket­ing “requires a deep­er under­stand­ing of the jour­ney of people’s lives, not just more data about the shop­per jour­ney”.

So said Kantar’s chief knowl­edge offi­cer, J Walk­er Smith, when he ­addressed mar­keters gath­ered at the Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al ­Fes­ti­val of Cre­ativ­i­ty in June. In his opin­ion, brands need to put the ­human expe­ri­ence at the cen­tre of every­thing they do.

Research by glob­al media agency Carat sup­ports Smith’s asser­tion. It asked 15,000 con­sumers in 15 mar­kets to rank more than 50 ­well-known com­pa­nies on their emo­tion­al intel­li­gence (EQ). Each firm’s score was based on the extent to which respon­dents agreed with state­ments such as “this brand ­under­stands peo­ple like me and what we need”. The result­ing Brand EQ Report 2022 revealed that the 20 high­est-ranked organ­i­sa­tions had mas­sive­ly out­per­formed the world’s major stock mar­ket aver­ages on growth in share­hold­er val­ue bet­ween 2010 and 2021.

It might seem like a coun­ter­in­tu­itive idea at first glance, but the lat­est dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy can be “an incred­i­ble enabler of human con­nec­tions”, says Ricar­do Mar­ques, vice-pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing at Mich­e­lob Ultra. He’s well qual­i­fied to com­ment: the beer brand has suc­cess­ful­ly com­bined a high lev­el of EQ with both arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) on its way to becom­ing num­ber two in the US by sales vol­ume.

Mich­e­lob Ultra’s award-win­ning “McEn­roe vs McEn­roe” cam­paign, by FCB New York, fea­tured a vir­tu­al match between the vet­er­an ten­nis star and dig­i­tal avatars based on him in the 1970s and 1980s. The AI sys­tem analysed more than 1,000 of his past match­es, while a motion-cap­ture ses­sion with McEn­roe helped to gen­er­ate his move­ments on the AR ver­sion of the court.

“One of the biggest chal­lenges for any brand is to earn, not buy, the ­atten­tion of its audi­ence,” Mar­ques says. “That’s what tech­nol­o­gy, with sto­ry­telling that not only enter­tains but also lands a pur­pose­ful mes­sage, can do.”

Cel­e­brat­ing the career of one of sport’s biggest char­ac­ters was the inspi­ra­tion behind the cam­paign, which aimed to “remind our audi­ence to enjoy the ride and have fun in the pur­suit of their dreams”, he explains. “In this case, the techno­logy let us bring a dif­fer­ent angle to his sto­ry by tak­ing him on a jour­ney back in time. That’s the excit­ing ­oppor­tu­ni­ty for mar­keters: to inno­vate, be pur­pose­ful and enter­tain.”

With more than 10 mil­lion views across all of ESPN’s chan­nels, “McEn­roe vs McEn­roe” drew a big­ger TV audi­ence in the US than the aver­age night­ly view­er­ship of the six games played in the 2021 Nation­al Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion Finals.

It’s not only in the sport­ing world where mar­keters are using cut­ting­-edge tech­nol­o­gy to enhance great human sto­ries. Vodafone’s hap­tic­-suit expe­ri­ence at the Mighty ­Hoopla pop fes­ti­val in Lon­don this June is anoth­er exam­ple of a brand hit­ting the EQ brief.

As Mighty Hoopla’s offi­cial con­nec­tiv­i­ty part­ner, Voda­fone used the pow­er of its 5G net­work to make the event as inclu­sive as pos­si­ble. It applied this and oth­er advanced sys­tems to enable fes­ti­val-goers with hear­ing impair­ments to ‘feel’ live music like nev­er before.

The telco’s brand and mar­ket­ing direc­tor, Maria Kout­soudakis, explains that mem­bers of her team began by iden­ti­fy­ing an area in which they felt Voda­fone could have the biggest pos­i­tive impact. Then they explored oppor­tu­ni­ties to tell an emo­tive sto­ry that had the best chance of res­onat­ing with the pub­lic. By trans­lat­ing sounds from both the stage and the crowd into vibra­tions that could be felt across the whole body, Vodafone’s inno­v­a­tive hap­tic suits enabled their users to expe­ri­ence a live music event as nev­er before.

“We’re real­ly excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties,” Kout­soudakis says. “We would love to help make them ubiq­ui­tous in live music. But there’s even more we can do beyond that, from game-chang­ing VR experien­ces to let­ting fans feel the crowd from home.”

Rosh Singh, MD of brand inno­va­tion con­sul­tan­cy Unit 9, believes that Voda­fone found the ide­al com­bi­na­tion in this case.

“It def­i­nite­ly helps when a brand has emo­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent acti­va­tions that match its core pur­pose or mis­sion,” he says. “As a com­pa­ny that’s focused on con­nect­ing for a bet­ter future, Voda­fone cer­tain­ly hit the right note. Inclu­siv­i­ty has become a huge top­ic – and right­ly so. It’s impor­tant for firms to con­sid­er how to con­nect with their entire audi­ence. Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy can often offer them the solu­tion.”

An award-win­ning cam­paign for sport­ing goods retail­er Decathlon by BBDO Bel­gium is anoth­er case of a com­pa­ny mak­ing effec­tive use of the lat­est tech in the name of inclu­siv­i­ty. This time, it was all about get­ting inside the meta­verse.

“The Break­away” cre­at­ed the first e‑cycling team for prison inmates, enabling con­victs serv­ing time in the top-secu­ri­ty Oude­naarde Prison to ped­al away anony­mous­ly on Zwift, a vir­tu­al world where 3 mil­lion cyclists ride togeth­er.

The French-based multi­na­tion­al had want­ed to make free­dom its cen­tral theme after the wide­spread Covid lock­downs had restrict­ed ­almost everyone’s move­ments for months at a time in 2020–21.

Thomas Leje­une Debarre, the firm’s mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor in Bel­gium, explains: “We used tech­nol­o­gy to ensure that a spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple, who don’t have access to this feel­ing of free­dom, were able to expe­ri­ence it. Besides cycling, the whole point was to cre­ate inter­ac­tions with the out­side world.”

Every­one knows Decathlon in Bel­gium, he adds, but many peo­ple may not know what the com­pa­ny stands for. “Our ambi­tion was to make them realise that, when we speak about mak­ing sports acces­si­ble to the many, we do mean it.”

High-EQ firms are using com­pelling nar­ra­tives – aug­ment­ed by the pow­er­ful new tech at their dis­pos­al – to forge deep­er, more mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions with con­sumers. ­Richard Robin­son, direc­tor at mar­ket­ing advi­so­ry firm Econ­sul­tan­cy, sees this as a suc­cess­ful tac­tic for any brand seek­ing to pull away from the pelo­ton. He is a great ­believ­er in the pow­er of “sto­ries told well, com­mu­ni­cat­ed through empa­thy and evi­denced by data”.

Such sto­ries, Robin­son pre­dicts, “will become the hall­mark of every great brand that man­ages to sur­vive the 2020s”.