In 1979, a little-known artist recorded “Escape”, a song that went to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Here, Leif Stromnes, managing director, strategy and growth at DDB Australia, explains why the song captured our ears but sold hardly any units.
Despite high rotation on all the major radio stations, sales of the single (in the days when we actually bought vinyl records) were abysmal.
Getting increasingly desperate, the record label suggested a change to the name of the song, but the artist was having none of it. He had written the song about an escape from a stale relationship, and with an odour of creative disdain, the discussion ended.
Undeterred, and perhaps fearing for his job, the label manager arranged for a further run with a small amendment to the name of the song. This was a massive risk because his company was sitting with hundreds of thousands of unsold records on consignment in music shops all over the US and the UK.
Escape (The Pina Colada Song), immediately sold out, and millions more records were pressed with the song going quadruple platinum.
The addition of four little words had unlocked millions of dollars of profit. How?
People remember and act on the emotional peak of any experience. Despite loving the song, and wanting desperately to buy it, the thing they remembered and played back was the emotionally sticky hook, “Do you like Pina Colada?” No amount of intellectualising or persuading that the song was called “Escape” would change their minds. When they couldn’t find ‘The Pina Colada Song’, they just gave up and bought something else instead.
Emotion pays back right through the purchase journey, and continuously reminding people of the good feelings the brand generates is critical to realising sales. Brand assets play a crucial role, and if they are aligned to the core emotional benefit, they can work very powerfully indeed.
Kit Kat’s famous “Have a break, have a Kit Kat” cues the physical act of snapping the chocolate coated wafer, but more powerfully, it reminds people of the emotional reward of a moment of blissful self-indulgence.
Brand assets are hard to create and once established they should be nurtured and exploited at every opportunity. Even in a high interest category like music, when distinctive brand assets are ignored, sales are lost.
In a world that is increasingly busy and distracted, memories are fragile and brands have to work extremely hard to get noticed and remembered.
When Rupert Holmes finally released his greatest hits album, the canny record label manager called the compilation Pina Colada. He wasn’t going to make the same emotional mistake twice.
