Forget me nots: emotional advertising in South-East Asia

An elderly Thai man is helping a woman his age put her shoes on. 'Who are you?' she suddenly asks. The man sighs. He thinks about their life together – from meeting through courtship to a long, happy, marriage – the memories he treasures all lost to her now thanks to Alzheimer’s. In the present day, they dance around the room together. The dance ends, and she asks again: 'Who are you?'  We last see the man walking home, alone, and a brand logo appears on the screen, with a strapline: Forget Me Not.

There’s no conventionally happy ending to this ad by Thai Life Insurance – just as there’s no happy ending to the awful disease it depicts. But it’s a masterpiece of emotional advertising nonetheless, because – despite everything – it left its Thai audience happy. It’s not in the story but in the execution. The strength and honour of the man and the fierce vivacity of his wife, brought the love story to life and made the commercial an emotional blockbuster, shared around the country and the world.

'Forget Me Not' was a high performer in a self-funded BrainJuicer study of advertising in Thailand and Indonesia. We picked these countries because of their size – the largest ASEAN (Association Of South-East Asian Nations) countries – but also because of their striking cultural differences in a region that is often homogenised by Western observers. What would hit home emotionally in each country, we asked ourselves?

A focus on emotion
The reason for the focus on emotion is simple: emotional ads, according to work by Les Binet and Peter Field, are more effective at creating long-term business effects. There is a rising tide of emotional advertising at the moment, which is put down to a number of factors – from mere fashion to the influence of social media – but we believe that emotion is hot right now because it works. If people feel more, they buy more.

As 'Forget Me Not' demonstrates, however, what people feel can vary dramatically between markets. We tested quite a similar ad in Indonesia – the award-winning, heartbreaking 'Father’s Lie' for CCTV. In this spot, an old Chinese man lies on the phone to his daughter about the happy, fulfilled social life he is leading – while the camera shows his crushingly lonely real life. He simply doesn’t want her to worry too much, so he conceals the truth. Indonesian viewers found this commercial devastating – with none of the resolve back to happiness that 'Forget Me Not' managed.

These cultural differences don’t end with sad adverts. In Indonesia, people responded best to straightforwardly happy and inspiring ads – a commercial for infant nutrition firm Bebelac that showed mothers and toddlers bonding, for instance. In Thailand, on the other hand, surprise was a strong driver of positive emotion – commercials featuring intriguing and dramatic special effects scored highly.

Universal emotion, different culture
The takeaway for marketers in any country is that making emotional advertising isn’t just a case of applying a formula. Happiness may be a universal emotion, and may be important in every country in the world – but how you get to happiness will vary a great deal. The further marketers get from home, the more likely they are to lump very different cultures together – but of course different countries tend to be culturally quite distinct. The command 'be emotional' should liberate creativity and difference, not stifle it.

This is particularly important when we start thinking about one very specific aspect of Asian advertising: its length. Commercials like 'Forget Me Not' are beautifully done – but clocking in at 3 minutes, they are also very unrepresentative of their region. In China, for instance, the 15 second advert is far more prominent than it is in US or European markets.

Shorter adverts are a challenge for advertisers. While 30 seconds is enough to tell a great story and get a big laugh – think Doritos’ marvellous mini-sketches in their Super Bowl advertising – 15 leaves a lot less space for development. With so little time to play with, the temptation is to fill it with brand and message and squeeze out incident or emotion. The outcome you risk is a lot of identikit, information-driven ads that do nothing to delight or surprise the viewer.

But as 'Forget Me Not' and other local successes prove, Asian marketers are brilliant at emotional advertising. And as more of them embrace it, their experience of making short ads will prove invaluable in using the shorter length to make viewers feel more. If a 5-Star emotional ad that makes a brand famous is possible in 15 seconds – and we are sure it is, however difficult the job - we strongly suspect it’ll come from a market like Thailand or Indonesia.

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