Be more Bosch: Why marketing needs more emotion

In 2014, the Pilion Trust released an awareness campaign to raise crucial funds for the charity. 

The hero video sees a man, charity bucket in hand, wearing a sign saying, “FUCK THE POOR”. As the video progresses, he incites anger from passersby, who confront him for promoting such a heinous message. The video changes, and the sign now says “HELP THE POOR”. The more he shouts it, the less people acknowledge him. Eyes to the ground. No response.

So much brand content leaves us feeling absolutely nothing. We see it. We scroll past it. We forget it.

In just seven days, the campaign generated over £160K in donations, more than tripling its target. What interests me is how it got there. It wasn’t trying to make people feel hopeful or inspired. It made them angry. Then guilty. Ultimately, it made them care.

Above: The Pilion Trust's campaign from 2014 was a controversial, but successful approach. 

This all feels particularly relevant in today’s landscape. We live in one of the most attention-rich moments in history. Unlimited access to more content, more entertainment and more information than any other point in history. And yet, so much brand content leaves us feeling absolutely nothing. We see it. We scroll past it. We forget it. We’ve found ourselves in a sea of content that’s inoffensive. Pleasant. Fine.

Artists, preachers and politicians have all spent centuries wrestling with the exact same challenge: how do you actually make another human care? 

But fine doesn’t get shared. Fine doesn't get remembered. Fine doesn’t change behaviours or challenge perceptions. Fine is largely invisible. This is by no means a new problem. Artists, preachers and politicians have all spent centuries wrestling with the exact same challenge: how do you actually make another human care? There’s one person in particular who became exceptionally good at answering that question.

Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch painter, born in the 15th century, in a period shaped by plague and the constant fear of damnation. What made Bosch so unique wasn’t his background, but his imagination. He simply refused to paint like everyone else.

Above: A member of the public views The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch

Much of Bosch’s work was produced to unsettle people. Depictions of chaos. Weird little creatures. Scenes that feel almost nightmarish. While others created art that reassured, Bosch deliberately unnerved his audience. In that sense, he was the OG rage-baiter. He wasn’t chasing likes, but he was competing for attention, and he understood that making people feel something was a pretty effective place to start.

Plenty of artists have followed suit. Take Tracey Emin, who exhibited her unmade bed for the Turner Prize. People were furious. How could this be considered art? And yet, crowds flocked to see it. People who had never stepped foot in a gallery before had an opinion about it. The power of provocation.

We are hardwired to pay more attention to negative experiences than positive ones. Psychologists call this negativity bias.

Damien Hirst suspended a 14-foot-long tiger shark in formaldehyde, confronting viewers with their own inevitable mortality. Banksy plays with tension. Take Girl With Balloon; the balloon drifts away, but is she losing something, or is she letting it go?

None of these pieces provoke the same emotion, but they all tap into something fundamental about human psychology: we are hardwired to pay more attention to negative experiences than positive ones. Psychologists call this negativity bias, and artists understood it centuries before science gave it a name. And no amount of marketing optimisation is going to override thousands of years of evolution.

Above: Tracy Emin with her 1999 artwork, My Bed, and Damien Hirst with his piece, Death Explained.

But marketing has spent years measuring success via overwhelmingly positive metrics - improved sentiment, or brand love - and in doing so, we’ve removed the tension and made it safe. We’ve made it fine. This isn’t a suggestion that you should be controversial for the sake of it, but there is a disconnect. Artists spent centuries exploring the emotions that humans can’t ignore. Marketing tends to focus on the emotions easiest to approve.

Don Draper famously said “advertising is based on one thing – happiness”. But that’s incomplete, because it assumes we’re simple.

Sure, Don Draper famously said “advertising is based on one thing – happiness”. But that’s incomplete, because it assumes we’re simple. The reality? We’re messy. Contradictory. Layered. Great creative respects that complexity instead of trying to simplify it.

So, my plea to you: let’s stop flattening human emotion by;

1. Respecting the humanity

An audience persona that says, “Erica, 34, lives alone”, hardly tells me what it’s actually like to be Erica. What keeps her awake at night? What tiny moments of relief make up her day? Perhaps Erica occasionally eats cereal for dinner. Maybe she never has to compromise on what she watches, or finds that home feels both like freedom and silence.

A person is rarely defined by their age, salary or media habits. They’re defined by these emotional experiences that make up everyday life. Ironically, the more specific we become, the more universally relatable the work can feel.