Why does your rosé taste better in the South of France than back home? Leif Stromnes, managing director, strategy and growth, DDB Australia, explains that it’s all to do with your mood state. And that’s a powerful force you should be tapping into.
You’re on holiday along the French Riviera, you are having a glass of crisp, ice-cold Provencal rosé. It is the most glorious of sunny days and you are having a spectacular seafood dish to go with your wine. The setting and view are nothing short of breathtaking.
Somewhere in the back of your mind, the idea is forming that this could be the best rosé you have ever tasted. So, when offered the chance to purchase a case of wine, you cannot believe your luck.
With great difficulty you drag the case of wine with the rest of your luggage for the remainder of the holiday and all the way back home.
Here you open the wine with great anticipation only to find with even greater disappointment that it has lost its allure. It is the same wine but tastes nothing like the wine you had on that special day in the French Riviera.
What’s going on?
Most wine snobs will tell you that for a wine to be enjoyable, it has to be balanced; the tannins must be evenly poised with the acidity; the fruitiness must be subtle, the oak must be soft on the palate and the glass must be delicately swirled and sniffed before sipped.
But there is a much more powerful force at play that effects how much we enjoy our wine. Our mood.
When we’re sipping on our wine in the French Riviera looking over the coast of St Tropez, we are happy and relaxed, and this feeling of happiness translates into us actually enjoying the wine more.
When we get home to our responsible lives, and the weather is cold, and the setting not as glamourous, no amount of convincing or reminder of practical wine-making perfection comes close to that magical day in St Tropez.
Our emotional state is such a powerful influencer of the enjoyment of many products and services, that it has its own psychological label – the aptly named Provencal Rosé Effect.
By making our customers feel good, we enhance their enjoyment and likelihood of buying the product. This is a powerful mechanism to create customer satisfaction, repeat purchase and positive word of mouth. By creating these emotions we add value to the brand in ways rational attributes simply cannot.
“Happiness” is by far the most powerful emotion in advertising, comfortably trumping “anger”, “fear”, and even “surprise” for moving sales. But message is only half the battle. Media context can arguably play as important a role.
If we can craft messages that make people feel good, and then create the right conditions for this message to land with maximum good feelings, we invariably have a slam dunk on our hands.
This final point is the most important reason why creative and media should work hand in glove with one objective in mind – giving customers the feels.
When in doubt, subordinate everything else.
Read more from Stromnes: The Unthinking Good Choice: Why It’s Better To Be Famous, Than It Is To Be Better
