NEW commercials for BlackBerry feature young go-getters, like a woman joining an all-male break-dancing group, a pair of designers sewing fabric for a triumphant fashion show, and a fledgling rock band performing for an ecstatic audience. The company’s smartphones make only the briefest of cameos.
The real star, it turns out, is love.
“All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles is the only audio in the spots — by the Toronto office of Leo Burnett, part of the Publicis Groupe — and the ads culminate with the slogan “Love what you do.”
It is just one of a spate of campaigns focused on love, a sentiment enthralling Madison Avenue in spite of — or perhaps as an antidote to — a downturn and two wars. Love is selling cars (“Love. It’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru), LensCrafters eyeglasses (“See what you love, love what you see.”) and Payless shoes (“I [heart] shoes.”), not to mention long-running campaigns for McDonald’s (“I’m lovin’ it.”) and Olay (“Love the skin you’re in.”).
How the word for the most profound of human emotions came to be so popular for peddling consumer goods has less to do with linguistics than psychology.
“There are left-brain and right-brain approaches to advertising,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, part of the Publicis Groupe. “For a long time, there was a left-brain approach” that highlighted “rational reasons and good selling points, but in the last several years studies have shown that emotional attachments really are a crucial factor in purchasing decisions.”
Jerry Della Femina, chief executive of Della Femina Rothschild Jeary & Partners, is dubious about some love-themed ads.
“I wouldn’t have the nerve to walk into a client’s and say, ‘Here’s the campaign: everybody loves your product,’ ” said Mr. Della Femina, who has worked on Madison Avenue since the 1960s.
But he is not surprised that such pitches are approved. “Is a client going to say, when that’s presented, ‘No, nobody loves us’ ”? asked Mr. Della Femina. “Of course not — they’re going to say, ‘Everybody loves us.’ ”
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In an ad for Subaru — by Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis, part of the Interpublic Group — a man drives his Forrester for two days to “Subaru Heaven,” a junkyard where Subarus are left for parts.
“You don’t just let some wrecker haul off your 300,000-mile Forrester to who knows where,” says the driver. “You give that car a chance to live on — one part at a time.”
The commercial is based on a letter sent by a customer, said Kevin Mayer, director of marketing communication at Subaru, which introduced the “It’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru” campaign in 2007.
“We think of our customers as experience seekers, and the response they fed back to us over and over is the love they had for the brand and how the product enables their lifestyles,” Mr. Mayer said, adding that many Subaru owners are skiers or kayakers traveling unpredictable roads, and they choose four-wheel-drive vehicles.
At Honda, a campaign that started in September — by RPA in Santa Monica, Calif. — features nonactors describing Honda owners, closing with the slogan, “Everybody knows somebody who loves a Honda.”
Tom Peyton, senior manager for advertising at the American Honda Motor Company, said that as domestic automakers have struggled this year, Honda, which has remained profitable, took a softer-sell approach. “It’s been such a difficult year that the standard car ad you’ve seen out there is some sort of incentive offer, some kind of lower-funnel, ‘come buy it now for this reason’ approach,” he said. “Not too many companies have had the luxury of having just an upper-funnel message that espouses love.”
A Nissan commercial that made its debut in October — by the Los Angeles office of TBWA/Chiat/Day, part of the TBWA Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group — shows an Altima enduring a pothole and a student driver, to the Nazareth song “Love Hurts.” It closes with Nissan’s new slogan, “Quality you can love.”
Asked how three automakers all arrived at love slogans, Erich Marx, director of Nissan marketing, responded, “Maybe we all felt there had been an emotional tug missing from the messaging.”
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“The morning is jealous of your relationship with running,” begins a recent New Balance commercial, as a woman on the edge of her bed ties her laces, sheets magically wrapping themselves around her, trying to draw her back into bed. “ ‘What do you see in running anyway?’ But somewhere in the back of your mind is the thought of the perfect mile, politely telling the bed — to shut up.” As the woman bounds from her front door, the voice-over concludes that with New Balance, “you can hate the morning less, and love running more.”
