OPINION: Marketers must ask questions with only one answer

We tend to think of brands as making statements or promises. But it is more stimulating to think of brands as asking questions. One might argue that the defining quality of a great brand campaign is in fact that it asks a question to which there’s only one possible answer. 

Unilever’s Axe, for instance, asked: “Young man, do you want to get laid?” To which its target has only one possible answer’ “Yes! Yes please! As often as possible!” Johnnie Walker asks men: “Do you want to stay where you are for the rest of your life, or do you want to be someone?” Hmm, don’t have to think about that one too long. Coke asks: “Do you want to feel good?” Well, that will be a ‘yes’, on the whole.

Of course, it is the emotional charisma and creative charm with which they ask this question that makes it in part so compelling. But asking it they are. 

It’s stimulating to look at our brand promise through this lens. What is the question we are asking of the consumer with our brand communication? Why is there only one possible answer to it? 

If it is hard to answer the question, it will either be because we are simply mirroring the consumer in our communications (in which case we are asking a much weaker question: “Is this you?” — “Well, yes, but so what?”), or we simply have a very blunt proposition. But we can’t live with blunt. We have to stimulate to grow. We have to find a more provocative question at the heart of our promise.

We are told that this is the age of dialogue between consumers and brands, and of course there is a truth to this. But I wonder if it is sometimes more useful to think of the interchange as a dialogue of stimulating questions, rather than informative statements, and see how that sharpens the way our brands provoke penetration and growth.

Follow Adam Morgan on Twitter @eatbigfish.