Verified by 
Recently an ad for a Peloton stationary bicycle went viral for all the wrong reasons, precipitating a drop in their stock of more than a billion dollars. Not since 2017 have we seen a company succumb to the firestorms of social media, when United Airlines’ stock plummeted more than a billion dollars in the wake of another viral video. That viral video featured a United passenger being dragged off a plane for refusing to be “re-accommodated”. The unsuspecting passenger suffered a concussion, a broken nose, and the loss of two front teeth. The viral video for Peloton was an advertisement that features…wait for it…a husband gifting his wife a brand new exercise bike.
In the Peloton commercial, an already fit and lean wife vlogs about her year-long experience exercising with Peloton as a way to thank her husband for the gift. The ad generated a storm of criticism accusing the brand of being sexist and tone-deaf while promoting an unhealthy body image. While others were not offended, Peloton stood by the ad and expressed disappointment in how some have misinterpreted it.
If this all seems irrational to you, you’re right. Feelings drive our markets and our brand opinions. The hard lesson for advertisers is that in our hypercritical online world, insinuations loom way larger than the explicit messages themselves.
Some companies have become adept at managing backlash through the clever use of innuendo. For example, when the tech company Samsung tweeted about the new Galaxy S8 and invited users to share the first photo they took with their brand-new phones, one user chimed in: “It was a dick pic.” Samsung clapped back within minutes with a savage reply in the form of a single little emoji, a microscope! A picture is worth a thousand words, in this case, 13,000 retweets and 22,000 likes. The power of the emoji in this context is that it is not only obliquely pushed the hot button of sexual suggestion, but more importantly, it was an artfully brutal and effective way to cut down a detractor. There are few better ways to shoot a man down than to publicly shame his penis size. And for this response, there was no better way to take him down a notch than using the provocative powers of indirect inference.
The unconscious is the domain of most of our behaviors and actions. And the majority of a brand’s, and market’s equity resides below the surface. Brands are essentially memories. And the unconscious mind works through a process of implicit memory. Because it is not consciously recalled, it is often referred to as nondeclarative memory. That is, consumers may be unable to declare these memories whether good, bad, or indifferent. But the impact of these positive or negative feelings determines how they respond in-market – online and at retail.
What is critical to know is that implicit memory is produced via indirect processes. The best way to activate these involuntary automatic memories and responses is through indirect, implicit suggestions. This is why a metaphor like a microscope is such a valuable creative device in driving and mitigating response. You infer the meaning of one thing by comparing it to another – rubbing off the emotional coloring onto your message and your brand. And this is why a story like the Peloton ad can be taken differently as viewers go inside their own minds and give it their own meaning.
In summary, think connotations over denotations.
If you want your message to light up social media with advertising for all the right reasons, you first need to light up the brains of people. But in order to do so, brands must recognize that our brains process denotations and connotations differently. Denotations — the literal meaning of words — are concentrated in the conscious thinking part of the brain, also called the neocortex. Connotations — the emotional coloring on top of the literal meaning — are spread across the limbic system, the emotional center of the central nervous system, in addition to the neocortex. And the more you fire up the brain, the greater the response in the marketplace.
If you would like to learn more, check out my book: Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing
Or follow me on Twitter.
