 |
| Cameron Scoggins in "Flowers." |
Hello, my name is Shannon and I’ve been emotionally compromised by a Bank of America commercial.
“Flowers” is a Bank of America commercial directed by the Hill Holliday advertising agency. The television advertisement caught my eye as I was watching Hulu a few days ago.
The story goes like this: A nameless man buys flowers. He waves for a taxi. The man, despite buying a bouquet of flowers, decides on only one flower and leaves the rest behind. He pays for the taxi and walks up to a building. Up the stairs, a knock on the door, and the long awaited for point of the commercial appears. The person, the destination, the receiver of flowers, opens the door.
Then the commercial stops.
I was so emotionally invested in this man that I had no idea it was a bank related commercial until my third or fourth time watching it. All I wanted to know was more about this anonymous person: who he was, what was his motivation for leaving the flowers behind, who he was visiting, etc.
The question you’re probably asking is “Why is this bad?” In theory, emotional commercials get a lot of attention. We see thousands upon thousands of advertisements a day and of those, we only remember a handful of them. A commercial that uses emotional appeal is more likely to help you remember that handful than one that does not. I remembered this commercial, so why wasn’t it effective?
Let us look at why emotional advertising is effective in the first place, according to Jay Osterholm (Osterholm) :
- Humans are naturally emotional and drawn to other emotional things.
- Emotions are what ultimately drive purchase behavior, despite how involved a purchase can be.
- The right emotional appeal can shape brand image and brand association.
Bank of America checks off on all of these, but I still don’t think it was an effective ad. The reason being is that the ad’s major flaw is distraction. The emotional aspect of the commercial completely overpowers the entire message. How can a commercial hope to stay in line with its strategy if it can’t even get its sales point across?
I get what they were trying to accomplish. “Life's Better When You're Connected.” It’s not a bad message to play off of. Like I said before, the distraction of the story takes away from the clever copy. In between the flowers and taxi rides are many uses of a Bank of America card. However, the card is not in focus. It acts as a piece of background or a mere prop. In fact, it takes less of the spotlight than the flowers, which is rather sad if you consider that’s the service they’re trying to sell.
Not only does the emotional aspect of this commercial take away from the intended selling point, but the story itself is very frustrating to follow. The commercial tells an incomplete story. Again, why leave one flower behind? Who was he visiting? What is the purpose of leaving this information out? I understand the intent behind not telling the audience, but it just ends up leaving me angry and semi-betrayed.
Again, I was emotionally invested in this man and now I’ll never know how his story ended.
Hill Holliday and/or Bank of America, if you’re reading, please make a sequel to this commercial. Just make sure you finish your story next time.
0 comments:
Post a Comment