Most FMCG brands recognise that strong communication and compelling copy are essential. But here’s the real question: Do they realise it’s not just about ads – it’s about nailing it on every step of the customer journey?
Ed Harrison, MD ANZ at Toluna, sees every day how emotional responses can make or break the success of brand and activation communications. Harrison spent the first 18 years of his career with a UK consultancy that championed the measurement of emotional response and using this data to predict business outcomes. As a result, it’s a part of his DNA to champion the use of emotional measurement to predict the success of innovations, marketing messages and even brands. It’s clear he remains convinced of the power of emotions in simplifying and guiding consumer decisions.
Toluna focuses on three core areas: Brand engagement (including testing communications and campaigns), product innovation (exploring markets and testing new concepts and packaging), and custom market research. Harrison’s experience is invaluable as Toluna helps brands perfect their messaging across everything from billboards to TikTok and YouTube videos, ensuring these messages drive the right emotional responses.
“When we look at how communications can transform success for businesses, the first thing to remember is how consumers make decisions as human beings,” Harrison said. “The vast majority of our decisions are based on implicit, intuitive, immediate feelings that we then mostly rationalise at a later point.” This applies whether people are purchasing FMCG products or making significant purchases, such as a house.
Harrison attributes this to our evolutionary history. Humans have existed for approximately 2 million years, yet only started using language around 100,000 years ago. That’s a long time relying on emotions, such as anger or sadness to make decisions quickly and intuitively.
So, what does this mean for marketers? “Our brains are designed to learn from experiences. We mark these experiences based on how they make us feel – effectively categorising them as good, bad or indifferent. This is so that when we face similar experiences in the future, we have a quick and easy guide to inform our actions. (If it was a bad experience previously, I’m more likely to avoid it),” he explains.
“These same principles also apply when we shop. We have a preference for the familiar (distinctiveness) and draw on associative memories (emotion) to determine whether something feels like a good choice.”
In supermarkets, for example, where shoppers typically spend 45 to 60 minutes picking from tens of thousands of SKUs, Harrison said that decisions rely on “pattern recognition and feeling”.
“Do we recognise the brand and the product? Are we familiar with it? How do we feel about it? That helps us to shortlist things quickly and easily.”
For marketers, this means crafting consistent messages and positive associations over time, so that when shoppers see the brand, they feel it is a good choice. While more rational messaging has its place, Harrison cautions, “it still has to cut through, connect and be really memorable. In these instances, visual metaphor and wordplay can be very strong.”
The importance of testing creative in context
The first role of marketing is to break through the clutter and be noticed, he says. “That’s one of the things that we start with at Toluna. We always test the creative in context. So, if you’ve a digital video, for example, that can be shown on YouTube, we’ll have respondents review a series of websites. One of those will just so happen to be a YouTube page with a skip button. We are looking at whether people are willing to watch the ad that is shown on that page, and if so, for how long?”
“We were trying to get as close as we could to a behavioural insight around whether the ad cut through in a way that people were willing to pay attention and notice. How long did they watch the ad on average, and afterwards could they remember any of its intended messaging?,” he continues.
“We also have a question which breaks down different emotional states so you can understand, does this make people feel happy, sad, or angry. If you’re a commercial brand and you’re making people feel angry, they’re unlikely to want to buy your brand.
“We replicate this real-world environment. If it’s a social asset, we’ll place it in a social feed. If it’s an out-of-home asset, we will create a virtual walk-through of the street. You might have some bus stop furniture or a bigger billboard. In doing so, we’re able to understand passive browsing/viewing behaviours and use this to understand creative potential to break through.
“Marketing that is designed to seduce is more effective than marketing that attempts to persuade. You do need both types, and you can still make the persuasive marketing more intuitive and emotional.”
Harrison shares with Inside FMCG some real-world examples of how effective seductive marketing can be.
KFC’s clever chicken burger ads: Feeding hungry shoppers on the spot
A tasty lesson in the power of location-based marketing was a campaign that Harrison worked on for fast-food giant KFC in the UK. The brand had been running beautiful burger ads on TV with mouth-watering close-ups that made everyone crave a chicken burger. But when people saw those ads at home, they would feel hungry and raid their pantries for snacks; it didn’t drive them into KFC stores.
Harrison’s recommendation was to move those tempting images closer to the point of sale. KFC discovered that showing these delicious burger shots on billboards near their stores, rather than only on TV, let them tap into customers’ immediate hunger pangs. With the store just steps away, people could instantly satisfy their cravings.
The emotional pull of those burger images turned desire and sensory pleasure into real-life purchases. Harrison says this proves that getting up close and personal with your customers, especially when they’re hungry, can boost foot traffic and sales.
Similar work with a large chocolate company demonstrated that showing the ingredients of chocolate bars, such as nuts, caramel, and chocolate, increased cravings. “It made people want to eat the product, so when they put that ad in out-of-home environments close to a supermarket or a news agency, their sales spiked, because there’s immediate ability to scratch that itch.”
Keep the message simple
Overall, however, a guiding principle applies in all executions, especially inside stores: “You have got to keep the messaging really simple, and where possible, implicit. Because people have their blinkers on, much like a Clydesdale horse; they are not going to be scanning around, looking for things.”
Panadol, for example, embraces this philosophy with a claim around the speed at which its Extra products work in relieving pain. “The campaign boldly gives consumers the idea that the medicine works faster than other products. I’ve caught it from my periphery, and the dissolving tablet is the implicit part that tells me it’s going to get to work really quickly, because it dissolves very easily.”
Another example he cites is M&M’s, which use fictional characters based on the shape of their round candy-coated chocolates. Over time, the characters have been used consistently in all marketing activities – from creative to free-standing display units – across stores and travel retail locations. Their fame drives instant brand recognition and positive feelings that draw shoppers to buy the products.
Those characters, says Harrison, do two things for the brand: They give you instant brand recognition, and they give the consumer an instant feeling if you’ve primed them in the right way. Having the M&M’s characters holding product in an airport or somewhere like that, it’s one of those instant draw cards, because people recognise it, and the brand does not need to make a claim.”
Omo made a splash by embracing the dirt
Washing detergents have long relied on a “whiter than white” pitch, pitting active ingredient X against competitors to prove who could clean better. It’s a crowded field where “anyone could copy it,” says Harrison, and battles often came down to price rather than brand loyalty.
He recalls how Omo flipped the script: Instead of focusing on the technical “active ingredient X,” Omo launched its “Dirt is good” campaign. The theme: Kids being kids – grass-stained cricketing whites, children covered head-to-toe in mud. There was no mention of how the detergent works, just a powerful visual story that said, “We’ve got you covered. Let your kids get messy.”
“This campaign moved away from persuasion and into inspiration, connecting emotionally rather than functionally,” says Harrison. The award-winning campaign saw Omo’s sales soar.
“By reframing the conversation from cleaning power to embracing dirt as part of life, Omo showed that sometimes, the best way to stand out is not to shout about features – it’s to tell a story people want to be part of.”
Cutting through the clutter
While there are different rules for different channels, there is a key over-riding component: Understanding if people will notice the creative; if it cuts through the clutter or not.
“If you don’t pass that benchmark, then you might as well stack your money up and burn it, because you’re just wasting money trying to push it out before it’s optimised,” warns Harrison.
