Both Coke and AT&T left the audience with a feeling that became associated with their brand. There is no better branding than that. None.

Today, we have a lot of creative stuff, but very few that leave you with an emotion. One exception is the VW The Force ad by Deutsch that debuted at the Super Bowl.

A couple that come close: TalkTalk is trying with this commercial. Google Chrome did a good job of explaining WHAT you can do with Chrome and the Google Cloud without every mentioning it – which is a huge point! – in this ad. Your prospects and Customers do NOT care about the technology. They only care about what they can do with the tech.

Back to Coke for a minute. Coke did a social experiment in Portugal this year – read about it here. It had nothing to so with selling Coke. It was a human interest story. It was about emotion. I think that’s the key to branding. Feel good, Grab a Coke.

Connect with People, pick up the phone. Voice is better than text because text has no emotion.

I like this new commercial from Subaru.

Subaru Baby Girl Driver

It reminds me of the long distance commercials from the mid-1980′s. Emotive.

Ma Bell’s Reach Out and Touch Someone

Or the Coca-Cola commercials from the 70′s

Coca-Cola Like to Teach the World to Sing
Coca-Cola Christmas ad from the 70′s

It is political ad time – now until November – and the ads all suck. Even the YouTube videos. It’s all about what the opponent did wrong. If only the People-in-Glass-Houses rule applied. Voters are scared to death. A couple of smart ads would be good to see. It likely would be one of the Differentiators.

I know that the CEO is from AT&T, so he hasn’t forgotten about AT&T’s Reach Out and Touch Someone ads that worked so well in the 1980s.  GM needs to have the CEO stand up and say, “Hey, GM was the heart beat of America. We screwed up. But we are turning it around. We thank you for the loans. We are improving our cars every day. Come see for yourself.”

Where’s the story about the new Camaro? Or where’s the story about the Corvette?

Publix supermarkets has learned how to create great touching commercials (see one here). why not GM?

So many dumb and worthless commercials on TV. You would think that some ad firms could do better. It’s about telling an interesting story.

Is it social commentary? Towards the end, it seems like the message is: “Connect with People”, not avatars, not via the computer or the Internet, but Face-to-Face. Personally, I think it is the biggest issue facing Gen Y and Z — not enough personal interaction. The number 1 thing about Social Networking, Social Media, or Social Communications is the word SOCIAL!.

Coca-Cola brought back the 1971 theme of “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” in 1984. It was a great creative message. The song, the lyrics, the costumes, and visuals.

Worst idea actually went to America’s Top Guerrilla Marketer (according to FastCompany), Sam Ewan of Interference.

By looking at good and bad pieces of marketing (and reading all that direct mail), you can get a feel for what might work with your audience.

This is the story about Organic cotton.  Some folks (like my wife) are in to the whole organic story. But how much is it a fable when only 5% of the fabric is Organic Cotton (or Bamboo) and the other 95% is regular cotton?? Would you buy a head of lettuce that was 5% Organic?

QuickSilver is dumb in doing this (which explains why it was on the clearance rack).