Empathy.
Psychoanalysts for years have debated the role it should play in treatment: how empathy does or does not, should or should not, impact their work with patients. But recently, in the world of advertising it's been empathy—hands down, no debate—that enabled an internationally renowned ad agency to build a successful and sophisticated campaign for its Fortune 100 client.
If you tuned into the television broadcasts of Wimbledon 2003 or the U.S. Open, you might have caught the clever campaign for IBM e-Business on Demand Solutions, developed by Ogilvy & Mather, New York. The setting for the award-winning commercials (Adweek Campaign of the Year) was none other than the “therapy room.” Here a shrink, personifying IBM, is the listener who projects a sense of caring and support to the “patient,” i.e., the IBM customer or potential customer.
In the commercials' therapy room, these customers emote about their anxieties, describing to the shrink an actual business situation topped off by the all-too-familiar “What does it mean?” “What do I do?” The well-cast actor playing the shrink calmly replies with a statement or two of support and observation, often imbued with a subtle twist of humor.
Viewers cannot help but feel the empathy. Even if one doesn't understand exactly what IBM's e-Business Solutions are about, one still has a sense that the commercials are about people's anxiety—but that yes, with the right kind of support, there just might be a solution.
“We've worked with IBM for a number of years,” remarked Chris Wall, senior partner and co-creative head of Ogilvy, who has been behind most of the agency's work with' this company. “Increasingly, we had become aware of our empathy for the poor schmuck who has to make the decision for his/her firm of choosing a company who can work with them in solving particular business problems that require extensive levels of services.
“These decision-makers have nightmares,” continued Wall. “The scale of their decision really grips them, as well as the decisionmaking process itself. These people are often writing seven-figure checks and their anxiety at times seems to them almost unbearable.”
Ogilvy wanted a campaign that conveyed IBM's empathy for and support of its customers. To do that in the realm of television commercials, what came to mind for Ogilvy was the therapy room with a patient telling a shrink about his/her dreams and anxieties … and finding a listening ear.
“The use of dreams gives us permission to make the anxiety real,” Wall said. “And the use of a shrink and therapy gives us permission to say that the service provider is empathetic to the customers' business situations. These are sophisticated ads that speak to a sophisticated audience. The ads also show that high-level business executives are no different than you and me—that they are just as anxiety-ridden as we are and share the same vulnerabilities.”
In the IBM commercials, Ogilvy has used the same cast for a year Last October, Ogilvy began the campaign with a “gizmos” campaign, a series of ads in which inventions were pitched to the management team to solve all problems. But this year, Ogilvy wanted to take the ad campaign beyond gizmos, recognizing that business solutions come about by people helping other people, and so came up with the idea of the “Dreams” campaign.
Seeking a top notch cast for this campaign, Ogilvy reviewed the character actors who had appeared in the previous IBM ads. They chose “the best of the best of these actors—kind of the greatest hits of the IBM cast,” Wall said.
Through the well-chosen character actors and the therapy room venue, the audience experiences the anxiety of the patients as real and feels that the shrink (IBM) is there to help and LISTEN.
According to his Ogilvy bio, Wall's first love is technology especially as it relates to popular culture. He's been the creative director on IBM, Lotus Development, Microsoft, and Apple Computer.
Imbued with humor and speaking to a human truth, this most effective use of the shrink and therapy room in popular culture works to engage the public.
Dottie Jeffries is staff director of public affairs for the American Psychoanalytic Association.