Marketers have long understood that emotion can play a critical role in branding. To achieve brand persistence, the consumer must buy your brand and feel an emotional connection to it. People become emotionally attached to a brand for a number of reasons; the brand stands for something important to them, the brand never disappoints them or the brand just makes them feel good.
Chevy’s recent campaign slogan, ‘Chevy Runs Deep,’ does a great job maintaining the emotional connection their consumers feel when using their product. Although the campaign has received lots of criticism, the promotion has done exactly what General Motors and its agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, intended: It’s a campaign that is “anchored on heritage.”
On the new campaign, the one advertisement that excited my senses was the commercial Chevy True Stories, “My Dad’s Car.” It begins with a grandfather playing with his grandson on the swing set in the yard, when suddenly he hears the sound of his old Chevy. As he turns around, he witnesses his son getting out of his old 1965 Chevy Impala. The father nearly breaks out in tears when he realizes it’s the exact car he sold to pay for his son’s college education.
It’s not the high-tech engine or the specificities that makes the Chevy an emotional brand, it’s the memories and basis for what binds families together.
