If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…
It’s only a day since the confetti settled, mercifully, on the closing ceremony but Olympics withdrawal symptoms prompt me to blow the digital dust off the Marketing Talk blog for a nostalgic reflection on the 30th games.
There’s plenty of marketing we could talk about Olympics-wise: the hilarious legislation aimed at limiting the use of terms such as ‘London’, ‘gold’ and ‘medal’ to official sponsors, the exclusive deal struck with McDonalds over selling chips onsite (the 799 other food retailers could only do so if combined with fish – so British!), or the Byzantine pricing and distribution policies which left vast tracts of embarrassingly empty seats early on after droves of disappointed fans had been denied tickets.
What I want to talk about is, in fact, the Olympic marketing legacy… of tears. Can there ever have been such a lachrymose Olympics in the 116 years of the modern games? Weeping has become the new rock and roll for any self-respecting sporting hero – whether inconsolably because you’ve just won silver (!) like cycling superstar Victoria Pendleton, or uncomprehendingly like Chad le Clos (the one with the Dad) having pipped his hero Michael Phelps to the gold by a fingernail in the 200 metre butterfly. Spectators wept, commentators wept, even this blogger had to wipe away a furtive tear at key moments. It was emotional. It was cathartic. It brought us together as a nation. In fact, if you weren’t weeping on (or off) a podium, there might have been the suggestion you weren’t taking it seriously enough.
The podium antics of two of the record-breaking Jamaican sprint relay team were a case in point. Usain Bolt’s trademark ‘lightning’ stance and Yohan ‘The Beast’ Blake’s bizarre clawing routine seemed over-rehearsed next to the impassive but misty-eyed demeanour of their team mates Carter and Frater. And even Mo Farah — much, much credit as he is due — gave us a bit more ‘Mo Bot’ than we really wanted. Come on lads, stop messing about and shed some manly tears!
Given marketing’s concern with emotional impact, it’s surprising we don’t see more tears in advertising. Casting my mind back more decades than I care to count, I remember a touching TV ad featuring a small boy coming to the aid of his tearful grandma with a box of tissues (to the strains of the intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana). It turned out she’d been chopping onions, something Italian grandmothers apparently spend most of their waking hours doing, but the little lad’s generous instinct chimed with Kleenex’s then tag line ‘softness is our strength’. More recently, circa 2004, we’ve had people shedding appreciative tears over Clover (a buttery spread), as served up by their loved ones. A very popular ad, it underlined the strong connection between informal meal times and caring (by a mum, a husband and a wife). That I can remember these ads so many years later suggests their power (or my sadness) but, unless I’ve not been watching enough TV of late, it also suggests they stand out because of the sheer rarity of commercial crying.
Perhaps now that the Olympics have got us in touch with our tear ducts, that is all going to change and the floodgates of emotional marketing are about to open. A case of cry before you buy?
