Advertising and marketing promotion, the secret of Thailand’s “tear-jerking” advertisement!

I don't want comfort. I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want kindness, I demand the right to suffer.

——Huxley, Brave New World

What is more memorable than happiness is pain, what is more memorable than laughter is tears, and what is more worth savoring than joy is sadness.

Sometimes, "pain" even becomes something that people pursue. We will watch "Titanic" with tears in our eyes, open a copy of "Hamlet" in our spare time, and watch the TV series "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace" and feel worried about the tortuous fate of the heroine.

Compared to the numbing happiness of the "boiling frog in warm water" type, sometimes "pain" can enhance our perception of life, prolong our aesthetic nerves, and make us feel that we are truly "alive".

Since the birth of the advertising industry, making people "happy" seems to have become the mission of advertising, because "happiness" can arouse consumers' desire to buy.

As a result, advertising has become a disguised form of entertainment and consumption has become an alienated enjoyment. When all advertisers start to create an atmosphere of "enjoyment" for consumers. It is difficult for us to tell whether the pleasure we feel when consuming comes from our true feelings or from the "illusion" created by advertisers.

Amid the chorus of thousands of people advocating "happiness", "happiness" begins to become unreal and "cheap". People began to yearn for something that could truly reach the depths of their souls.

This is the beauty of "tragedy", this is the value of literature and art, and this can also be the key to the rise of advertisers.

Thai advertisers have also seized on this psychological motivation of the people and successfully produced some world-famous textbook "tear-jerking" advertising and marketing promotions . Thailand is a country in the Asia-Pacific region famous for its "advertising creativity" and has reaped rich rewards in many advertising competitions. What kind of psychological motivations does Thailand’s “tear-jerking” advertisement capture, and what lessons can it teach us?

1. Reverse “entertainment”

The development of the cultural and entertainment industry has transformed happiness from a "scarce" treasure into an "abundant" commodity.

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche deconstructs the birth of tragedy into the result of the confrontation between the Apollonian spirit and the Dionysian spirit, that is, between "rationality" and "irrationality". The advertising industry also went through a similar development phase in its early days.

In an era of material scarcity, spiritual emptiness, and the lack of cultural and entertainment industries, "happiness" was a luxury. At this time, the main purpose of advertising is to make consumers "happy".

Consumption and enjoyment were once closely linked, with you in me and me in you. As long as advertising can make consumers "happy", it can arouse consumers' adrenaline and desire to buy.

However, the rapid development of the cultural and entertainment industry has turned "happiness" into a commodity that can be mass-produced. Games, variety shows, TV dramas, movies, there are more and more things that can make people "happy". Just open Weibo and read the jokes written by famous bloggers, and you will have a good laugh.

At this time, the "happiness" given to us by the outside world has become cheap. However, most advertisers are still repeating the old routines, trying to once again use "happiness" to awaken people's "desire to consume."

Under the premise that all advertisers are trying their best to create "hedonism", this old method has become less effective and has been overwhelmed by the brilliance of the cultural and entertainment industry and other competitors.

The entertainment of the advertising industry is both its success and its failure . If you want to "stand out", you must seek new ways out.

The success of Thailand’s “tear-jerking” advertisement gives us a good example. Pantene shampoo’s Thai advertisement – ​​“I Can Do It” is one such example.

The protagonist of the advertising story is a deaf-mute girl who loves the violin. Because of her congenital defect, the little girl's journey to learn the violin was extremely difficult. The hardships of learning the violin and the ridicule of her classmates made the little girl almost give up. Until one day, she met a violinist who was also deaf and mute on the street. With his encouragement, the little girl picked up the violin she had dropped and finally successfully stepped onto the big stage that attracted everyone's attention. While the little girl was performing, her hair fluttered in the wind like silk, and the little girl's difficult experiences when studying were replayed like a kaleidoscope.

As the audience's eyes filled with tears along with the little girl, the slogan of Pantene shampoo emerged. The reason why this advertisement is so impressive is not only because of its outstanding creativity, but also because it sets up a story scenario that allows the audience to be completely immersed in the little girl's joys and sorrows. The more helpless and desperate the little girl was during practice, the more moved the audience would be in the end.

This advertisement completely transcends the traditional advertising model. The audience's "empathy" for the little girl while watching the advertisement makes the touching feeling created by the advertisement linger in the audience's hearts for a long time, and the Pantene slogan at the end also becomes very impressive.

Creating appropriate "sadness" for the audience during the advertising process is more conducive to the audience remembering the content of the advertisement, and even appreciating the advertisement from an aesthetic point of view.

Some people say that this is an age of entertainment to death. Pan-entertainment and consumer alienation have made "happiness" cheap, and only "sadness" is remembered. There is a saying in the fan circle that "abusing fans" will actually make fans more united. Appropriately "torturing" the audience can sometimes achieve unexpected results.

2. Subtle sense of scale

Confucius said: "The Guanju is joyful but not lascivious, and sad but not mournful."

The highest praise for a work of literature is its ability to grasp the subtle "sense of scale" in writing. The success of an advertisement also lies in the control of the "sense of scale". Too much is as bad as too little. The key to the controversy caused by the cross-border marketing between Heytea and Durex some time ago was that they failed to grasp the scale in the advertisement and turned the creativity into a large-scale "sexual harassment".

“Tear-jerking” advertisements must also pay attention to this point, and “torture” fans appropriately. Over-creating a touching atmosphere may overshadow the advertisement itself; insufficient creation of a sad atmosphere may turn it into a gimmick.

There are two main methods used in "tear-jerking" advertisements to grasp the scale. One is to focus on transforming "sadness" into "touching", and the other is to make people sad and then happy.

The highest level of "tear-jerking" should make people laugh with tears, or make people laugh out loud because of the unexpected reversal before they have time to "cry". It is difficult to simply define this type of advertisement as a "tear-jerking" advertisement, but the trick of creating a "sad" atmosphere at the beginning is the same.

The Thai advertisement for Sony cameras is a good example. Under the dim light, a father sat on the sofa, watching TV attentively. The video tape of the daughter's childhood was playing on TV. The little girl in a white gauze dress was as cute as an angel. She would spin and jump, try on her mother's lipstick, and act coquettishly when her father noticed. As he watched, the father on the sofa couldn't help but wipe his tears with a tissue.

Viewers watching the commercial couldn't help but feel sad, wondering if something had happened to the little girl. At this time, a girl with earrings, nose studs, smoky makeup and a "Shamatte" hairstyle sat next to her father and asked, "Dad, look how cute I was when I was a child." The father cried even more sadly.

At this point, the audience realized with a mixture of laughter and tears that the father's sadness was due to the huge change in the little girl's image.

The sad atmosphere was broken before it was even created. Such an absurd "reversal" ending makes the final Sony slogan - "Good memories are valuable" particularly memorable.

The beauty of tragedy lies in destroying beautiful things in front of people. In this advertisement, the little girl's once innocent and lovely image was destroyed. Under the contrast of this image and the "comic" sadness of her father, people's most sensitive nerves were cleverly touched, and Sony's slogan became particularly impressive.

This advertisement, which evokes mixed feelings of sadness and joy, grasps the subtle sense of scale in "tear-jerking" advertisements, preventing the audience from truly falling into sadness and diluting the creation of the brand image.

3. Humanization of the brand

Thailand’s “tear-jerking” advertisements mainly show the joys, sorrows, anger and happiness of every ordinary person in daily life. They show the little troubles, little emotions and little sadness that everyone will encounter in our lives, and they show the little shortcomings and little virtues that each of us has.

The auntie in the vegetable market in that advertisement is simply a replica of the auntie next door to you. The protagonist in the advertisement experiences the same life and the same troubles as you every day. Even the background of the advertisement is our life scenes, and most of the actors in the advertisement are "amateurs" with no acting experience.

Thailand’s “tear-jerking” advertisement shows the daily lives of all the little people. The content of the advertisement is not so much about the shaping of individual images as it is an abbreviation of the group portrait of ordinary "little people". Everyone can find a microcosm of his or her own life in the protagonist of the advertisement and project his or her own values.

Based on this, "tear-jerking" advertisements have achieved a higher level of value sublimation, that is, by relying on the common values ​​and aesthetic synchronization with consumers, they have stepped down from the high hall and revealed the "truth" of human nature.

"Real" is also a kind of "down-to-earth" and "rustic". By stripping away the dross and replicating the lives of ordinary people, the advertisement further deepens the brand value, that is, humanizes the brand. A brand is no longer just a simple symbol, but a reflection of the lives of countless ordinary people and a concentration of their values.

The humanity of the brand appears particularly outstanding and shining in the alienated and indifferent modern society and the era of exaggerated and vain commodity economy.

The food advertisement made by Thailand's Charoen Pokphand Food Group is a textbook example.

After a heated argument with her mother, the girl decided to run away from home. After running around blindly for most of the day, hunger overwhelmed her, but she had no money. At this time, the owner of the fried rice stall offered to provide her with a free dinner. The little girl was deeply moved. It was not until the little girl was surprised to find that the proprietress knew that she did not eat onions that the hidden plot of the story was revealed. After the little girl ran away from home, her mother anxiously asked everywhere about her whereabouts. After failing to find her, she gave some money to the proprietress, hoping that she could provide her with a dinner when she met the little girl. Recalling all the sacrifices her mother made for her while she was growing up, the girl ate her dinner in tears.

It was not until then that the logo of Charoen Pokphand Group appeared and the slogan "Every bite has meaning" appeared on the screen.

This few minutes long advertisement contains foreshadowing, twists, emotions, and plots, and finally cleverly fits in with the brand's theme.

Most importantly, advertising integrates the life scenes of each of us and cuts into everyone's life. Each of us has had arguments with our parents and times when we want to leave home in anger, but after watching this ad, we just want to pick up our phones and call our mothers like the little girl in the ad.

Since then, the brand has achieved the sublimation of its values ​​and the emotional connection with the audience, becoming more humanized and becoming an old friend we have been communicating with for many years.

Conclusion : The popularity of “tear-jerking” advertisements actually reflects a resistance to the “entertainment” of advertising. When the false "happiness" created by the outside world overwhelms people's self-reflection and rational thinking. "Pain" becomes an eternal antidote. How to grasp the "degree" and show the "truth" of human nature is the key that brands need to grasp and is also worth learning from for enterprises.

Author: Fang Yun

Source: PR Home