Marketing The Relationship

Companies today are turning to the breakdown of a relationship to reel in customers through their advertising campaigns. Fashion houses encourage shoppers to give their jeans a second life and not their ex, whilst fitness brands get fitness freaks to swap heartbreak for gains. What is it about relationships ending and flirty taglines that ensure attention from shoppers and demands to be seen when on a billboard? Lucy explores.

The other day I was waiting for the tube and I felt like I was being watched. Not by someone of sorts, but by something and it was big. The watcher was a humungous advert showing a woman looking dishevelled next to her wardrobe and it posed the question ‘Stop giving your ex a chance and give your wardrobe one instead’. I immediately related to the advert as I too had been left looking and feeling dishevelled at one point in my life within a relationship (of sorts) and I admired how the company had played on the concept of heartbreak to connect with a wide audience of fellow heartbroken northern liners to promote sustainable fashion. I believed that it was this advert in particular that caught my eye and not the frequent face of Tess Daley who urges me to consume WellWoman gummies by flashing her pearly whites due to it’s jumpscare of emotional connection. It is both eye-catching and witty and puts a more personable spin on the floods of images and messages we are fronted with every day of our lives, especially when living in a city like London. The campaign amassed a lot of traction online, so it didn’t surprise me when I started to see more popping up (and it wasn’t even around the same time as Valentine’s Day).

The concept of advertising within itself is inhuman naturally. Whether it is exposure on social media through influencers promoting wellness gummies, or in the Kardashians Kase, waist trainers, the amount of involuntarily product messaging the human brain digests is scientifically unnerving and it’s a relationship that has been going on way before we realised. One of the first adverts ever discovered was in the history of ruins in Thebes created from Papyrus in 3000BC by a slaveholder trying to find a runaway slave whilst also promoting their weaving shop. Although an advert of this kind does not reflect the marketing environment of today in every ethical sense (Ofcom would have a field day), it shows how humans have been reachng out through a variety of messaging since way before the likes of the opera GoCompare man and the John Lewis christmas ad. Back in the 70s, the average person encountered between 500 to 1,600 ads per day, and today the number sits at a hefty 6,000 to 10,000. It has become a habit of many to ignore any ads that come their way- yet in the face of immunity comes the likes of Burger King who are reeling us in with flirty taglines that preach cheating on your partner with a whopper. No seriously. Their latest ad found me whilst strolling around Camden, sneakily interrupting my thoughts with it’s gigantic ‘IT’S OKAY TO CHEAT’ messaging. When advertising over-saturation becomes a problem, the flirty and the dirty seems to be the crisis route to take.

Before Valentine’s Day the online car marketplace CARWOW launched a ‘breakup campaign’ that made headlines. It featured an image of a car and urged consumers to explore the ‘single cars in their area’, whilst also emblazoning ‘BREAKING UP NEVER FELT SO GOOD’ and placing (with your car) strategically tiny down below. CMO of Carwow Ben Carter expressed why the company tapped into the concept of a relationship for the ad stating “For many motorists, selling a car has been an emotional, angst-ridden process; much like a break-up”. As many like myself have become immune to the advertising we are fronted with on the daily in whatever public space possible, Carwow is going deeper and combining human emotion and the emotional toil of a break-up to connect with consumers like myself who are switching off. It is engaging, slightly traumatic (depending on your relationship status) and shows that a new dawn of deeper and more personable advertising has arrived.

Connecting my commute to my ex has never been so prolific- my best bet is to stare at the sky and hope this doesn’t get taken over next.