JOY brings results, and results bring JOY,” a power-packed phrase that is all about how focusing on JOY in marketing builds an emotional connection between brands and people. Shifting focus to JOY ensures your brand (or your client’s brand) stands apart among the noise and carves out its own piece of the “attention economy.”
So, what’s “JOY marketing” anyway?
“JOY marketing” is any marketing (ad campaign, activation, experience, etc.) designed to elicit a positive emotional response from a brand’s audience. In other words, JOY marketing specifically aims to leave customers feeling happy. It’s nothing new really. Companies have been trying to associate their brands with happiness for a long, long time.
Turning JOY into a platform
So why are we so sure it works? It’s pretty simple, how often do you choose to engage with people, brands, or activities that make you sad. Have you ever bought a product that made you feel down? Of course not.
However, marketing with JOY does not have to be an intangible metric. It’s not just a buzzword, it’s a platform. Turning it into a platform means tracking it.
Key performance indicators have tracked the same metrics for a decade. The most important KPIs fall under the “strategic” category. KPIs like “brand-awareness,” “campaign performance,” and “lead development” shouldn’t be ignored by any means — the new thinking is to include JOY in the mix as well.
According to a recent article by Michelle Edelmen, CEO of the PETERMAYER advertising published in Adweek, bringing JOY has a significant business impact. In their research, the agency studied thousands of consumers and dozens of industries and found an 80% correlation between purchase intent and the joy factor ascribed to a brand. And 63% of that purchase intent is ascribed to the JOY experienced first in a brand’s communications.
Creating JOY in practice
So, what does this look like in practice? Here are a few successful examples.
In advertising, David & Goliath has brilliantly shaped the likeability, or JOY factor, of Kia America over the course of two decades with fun, likeable, and JOYFUL advertising. Remember the hamsters, the robot puppy, and this year’s standout Super Bowl ad featuring a granddaughter ice skating for her housebound grandpa.
All these ads, and many others, are JOYFUL masterpieces that helped Kia America achieve its current lofty brand status along with record sales.
In the experiential world, which is where I live, one of my favorite examples is the Taco Bell Hotel in Palm Springs. The activation is a case study in focusing on the pure JOY of a brand’s fans. It was a millennial /Gen Z targeted activation created by Taco Bell with Edelman and man, was it effective.
The experience turned a Palm Springs resort into “The Bell.” The Taco Bell themed hotel came complete with Taco Bell room service, hot sauce packet pillows, themed bathrobes, Baja Blast frozen drink machines, hot sauce pool floaties, an original hotel menu, Taco Bell themed bikes, cocktails, and all the other trappings of a resort stay designed in line with the brand’s aesthetic.
Reservations sold out in the first two minutes. The experience created around 4.4 billion earned media impressions and was featured in an estimated 5,000+ articles. It even took home Event Marketer’s 2020 Grand Ex Award.
This is a great example of what creatives can do when they lean into JOY marketing because “The Bell” turned Taco Bell fandom into an activation. Eating Taco Bell brings its fans JOY. So, the brand created a space designed to make that feeling last more than a meal. Instead of a few minutes of happiness, “The Bell” provided a whole weekend. Its results speak for themselves.
In the b-to-b world, building JOY into an activation also helps make a complex idea simple to understand and infinitely more likable if done well. Case in point is our work for Ricoh USA at SXSW.
Ricoh’s goal for the project was simple — raise awareness about their suite of intelligent business solutions and new “TMI” ad campaign with millennials. So how do you showcase Ricoh’s incredible cloud-based digital capabilities at SXSW in a fun and JOYFUL way? We leaned into JOY during concept phase and designed an activation for the SXSW Creative Industries Expo called DIGITALMANIA. It was inspired by Austin’s dozens of unique and iconic murals:
So SXSW participants teamed up with our AI artists to quickly create a digital mural of their own design. Each mural was displayed on a large LED screen bordered by a faux brick wall where attendees could pose in front of their creations for photos to be shared instantly across social channels.
In this activation, leveraging JOY gave attendees a link to the conference’s host city and a digital souvenir. The DIGITALMANIA activation created thousands of social media impressions and the experience conveyed a complex idea — RICOH USA offers cloud-based information management and digital solutions operating at the same level as other leading technology and enterprise business service providers— in a joyful and engaging way.
The time for JOY is now
Agencies and brands of all sizes are shifting their platforms to focus on “JOY” marketing.
And why shouldn’t they? Recent research shows us 93% of Americans want to find JOY every day, and only 40% think they have enough JOY in their lives. Research more specific to marketing shows the same: 78% of Americans say they prioritize experiences over products and 70% percent say they can’t remember the last time a brand excited them. These stats are pretty dire, especially considering most folks feel brands should be aiming to excite them (via VML).
In response the different sectors of the marketing and advertising world are shifting towards JOY. Thomas Vig at Jack Morton feels, “goosebumps should be your next KPI.” CMOs like Aaron North at Mint Mobile are moving creative strategy away from traditional KPIs towards things like “jaw dropping and spine-tingling.” Even household name brands are getting in on the action. At the end of 2023, Frito-Lay kicked off a new campaign titled “MY JOY.” The campaign is dedicated to amplifying diverse creative voices by showcasing their own personal stories of JOY.
Today’s audiences want genuine emotional connections — and when the audience is “live” the more exciting the better. To achieve this outcome, creatives need to rethink their KPIs, better consider their audiences, and give themselves and their teams the freedom to mine their work for spine-tingling excitement.
At Velocity XD, we’re committed to building genuine connections between brands and their audiences (see more of our thinking about it here).
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