Where we want to be when we leave your store.

It is no secret that emotional advertising has more impact than a rational sell. There is a vast amount of psychology research around emotional advertising and branding. For a digital signage network existing in environments of extreme noise and stimuli (subways, retail, etc.), emotion is a crucial component of storytelling when the message must be completely visual.

Research suggests that emotional messaging is more likely to generate a return, even in a market downturn. In their article from Ad Age, Why Emotional Messages Beat Rational Ones, Hamish Pringle and Peter Field gathered case studies over the course of recessions and market swings.

“What the data show us is that emotional campaigns are almost twice as likely to generate large profit gains than rational ones, with campaigns that use facts as well as emotions in equal measure fall somewhere between the two. It turns out that emotional campaigns in general generate a wider range of desirable business effects, each of which plays its part in improving profitability. But they excel in one noteworthy area: reducing price sensitivity…”

Emotion is fundamental to aspiration, the hope to achieve something with a purchase. In almost every case, that aspiration is positive.

There is a mixture of emotions that a retailer must combine to create effective engagement with customers who use the screens to navigate through the path to purchase. The emotion of the product, the category, the store, and the external broadcast advertising must work in tandem to attract a customer’s desire to purchase a product, and this mixture must support the customer’s aspiration. The more a message feels like it was meant for the customer, the stronger the customer engagement will be with both the retailer and the product.

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What time is it when an ape wants to eat you?

When Universal Studios released King Kong on DVD in August, 2006, they provided me with the regular 2:30 trailer. At that time I was focused on building the HD Program at Best Buy to better reflect both the desires of the customer (“Show me what this movie looks like at home.”) and the brand value proposition (“We’ll show you the latest and greatest.”). Using the same trailer for the DVD release that was used a year earlier for the theatrical release would have no impact. Instead, I wanted a real clip from the film that promoted the DVD and looked awesome in HD. I used the clip where the ape and the Tyrannosaurus are about to fight. When it aired, the feedback was terrific. One compliment from a store employee was, “I can smell the ape!” (It was this instance that started me down the path of understanding employee engagement.)

At corporate, I asked meeting attendees to watch both spots. I showed the trailer at the beginning of a meeting and the clip at the end of the meeting. Then I asked if the audience if they could tell me the running times of the spots.

In almost every case, the viewers felt the trailer was longer than it was, by about 30 seconds. The actual running time of the trailer was 2:30. In contrast, the viewer felt the clip was shorter than it was. Many felt it was only about 30 seconds, when its actual running time was 1:05.

The trailer was not engaging. It felt longer than it was. However, the viewers were so engaged with the clip that they lost track of time.

I recently wrote about a Stanford study written by Jennifer Aaker and Cassie Mogilner on the effects of time versus money. Part of that study included perception. The authors surveyed attendees at a concert in San Francisco with free admission. But, people had to wait for long periods to get tickets. When attendees were asked about the time they spent to see the concert versus the amount of money spent to see the concert (They asked random individuals: “How much time will you have spent to see the concert today?” or “How much money will you have spent to see the concert today?”), the responses to the question stressing time were more favorable. What was surprising was that those who waited in line longer said their satisfaction with the concert was higher.

What does this mean? The more engaged a customer is with something that will benefit his lifestyle, the greater the discrepancy in perception of time as the he moves down the path to purchase. (How many of you have seen a movie that was so good that it felt like it was half as long as it really was?)

The role of Digital Signage in any environment impacts not only the shopping behaviors, but also the psychological effects of the time spent in the store. In a recent study, 45% of all customers interviewed had a perceived wait time of five minutes less than those interviewed in a store without a digital signage network. In the same study, 68% of all customers interviewed prefer to shop at a store with digital signage.

Perception of time has deep impact in areas of where the psychological effects of waiting could be detrimental to the overall experience, like amusement parks, checkouts, grocery markets, gas stations, and waiting rooms.

If you can relate to your customer’s lifestyle and purpose for being in your store, you can create compelling content that eases the perception of time spent with the products and services you sell, creating a truly engaging experience.

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Which would you rather have?

When a customer wants to know how a product will make his or her life better, time is almost always included as a factor in that question. Will this product organize my/save me/give me time? Money comes and goes, but time is something no one gets back. As such, there is an implied value of time in our lives. Often we feel that we need to take advantage of it as much as possible. (If you have kids, you definitely know this.)

In a recent Stanford study, authors Jennifer Aaker, the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Cassie Mogilner discovered that, “…referring to time typically leads to more favorable attitudes—and to more purchases.” In one case study, they found that advertising stressing time (“Spend a little time and enjoy C&D’s lemonade”) was more attractive to customers than advertising that stressed money (“Spend a little money, and enjoy C&D’s lemonade”).

Understanding the connection between a customer and a product helps you build better advertising. If the advertisement conveys time as a benefit to the customer when using the product, the customer may take the next steps on the path to purchase. In a market downturn where price is already the hot topic, this may be that extra incentive in a customer’s path to purchase.

You can download the fascinating research paper here.

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