“Find three businesses you respect and study how they form emotional relationships with their customers”
Costa Coffee
Costa Coffee is using a new strategy of emotion-led marketing to promote its new Costa Light drink. The campaign for the drink, features ads promising ’All the love, none of the handles’ to tap into consumer concerns about consuming too many calories in their hot drinks.
The move to offset “diet guilt” marks a change in creative approach for the brand. Until now, Costa’s creative work has concentrated less on emotional appeal and instead tried to set the brand apart from its rivals, such as Starbucks or Caffe Nero. This new emotional campaign is very effective in my opinion as “diet guilt” has been majorly advertised over lockdown as everyone has been pressured into doing online workouts and going for runs to lose all the “lockdown weight” in time for summer, leading everyone to be too careful in what they consume and putting too much pressure on themselves. This campaign creates an emotional connection to its audience as it shows that the brand is very relatable and knows what their loyal customers are going through. “All the love, none of the handles” alongside the reassurance of “fewer calories” shows the brand is providing support to their customers whilst also reassuring them that it is okay to have the coffee that they want.
Airbnb
In 2014, Airbnb created a campaign in New York City that used storytelling to create an emotional connection with potential customers. The Airbnb story highlights Carol, who uses Airbnb for supplemental income and going back to school. The 30-second YouTube video discusses how she’s been living in Lower Manhattan for 34 years, lost her job, but loves hosting people through Airbnb.
This type of story appeals to the universal desire to help others. By using Airbnb, we can have a place to stay, but also get to know new people and help people like Carol maintain her apartment and lifestyle.
This emotional campaign was very successful as it encourages tourists to use Airbnbs when going on holiday instead of larger hotel companies as people who rent out airbnbs are normal people that their customers can relate to as they all have similar stories that lots of families can empathise with EG saving up so they can send their child to a good school or give them a good quality life etc. this creates an emotional connection between the renter and the customer because the customer feels they are then helping another family in a positive way instead of giving money to a large company who will not notice this income very much.
Gatorade