If most people don't care whether a brand goes the way of the mastodons, how do you connect with them? Make them happy, according to Rob Hudson, chief digital officer at Y&R Group.
Hudson referred to Havas Media's global report that found that most people wouldn't care if 73% of brands disappeared (see Big Picture, AdNews 24 January print issue for details).
The problem is, you can't please all of the people all of the time. Hedonic adaptation, the process of returning back to a 'normal' state of happiness – from both positive and negative factors, eventually kicks in. “What excited us yesterday doesn't today,” said Hudson.
“You buy a new car. What happens in a few months? You want a new car. You can't spend your whole time ecstatic and in a state of awe [about new stuff] because you would not have time to live life.”
Citing an eight month average turnover on new mobile phones, Hudson said that gadgets can never truly make people happy “because they will then just want the next one. I'm fairly sure I'll be bored of Google Glass by the time it arrives.”
He said “technically our children should be boring us after eight months, so we should be really grateful that they change, quickly learning to walk, talk, put things in the DVD player.”
Marketers, he said, must be aware of the same adaptation cycle and keep things fresh. Brands must make themselves relevant by “going to people's lives and making things better rather than expecting them to come to us via Facebook, YouTube or wherever.”
Nike is the poster child of that approach. Other brands are piling in. Hudson cited Rip Curl as a local example. The firm is now mass producing a 'Rip Curl Search GPS' watch linked to an app (see AdNews 16 May print issue for an interview about the watch and app with VML's Aden Hepburn), that Hudson says puts the brand at the heart of the key moments its customers never tire of: the search for the perfect wave.
“The company launched in 1969 building boards for the local market. It was a tech company back then, building the perfect board for he perfect wave,” Hudson told the recent DNA 2014 conference in Sydney. “Then when the board market became saturated, they moved into wetsuits, which again, was about good technology. Then they moved into adjacent markets, wetsuits for sailors, divers etc. But they never forgot 'the search' for the wave.
“So 45 years on, how do you bring all that together? Watches.”
The GPS watch develoment does “all the things you'd expect from a modern case study: it records, it shares, it has wearables, there's a mobile app and there's big data from surfers' height, weight location etc. It offers key insights.”
But Hudson says ticking off all those boxes is not why it works for the brand.
“It works because this guy is not using it behind a screen, but at the moment when he is out in the sea, searching for the wave. At that point, Rip Curl is there. Isn't that better than a 20 minute YouTube video? If we can make people a bit happier, isn't that better?”
Returning to hedonic adaptation, Hudson underlined that brands providing genuine utility can't afford to stand back and admire their handiwork.
“Innovation is not a luxury, Rip Curl is already working on the next version. Because after it hits the market it will be the new normal. Today's happiness will be tomorrow's normal.”
Correction: The correct term is hedonic adaptation, not hedonistic adaptation.
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