Marketing to Make Your Audience Happier

Harvard Business Review interviewed the researcher behind a 30-year study comparing European life satisfaction with national levels of advertising spending. Andrew Oswald and his University of Warwick team evaluated survey data from 900,000 citizens in 27 European countries between 1980 and 2011, revealing that the greater the national advertising spending, the unhappier the people. The analysis concluded that “if you doubled advertising spending, it would result in a 3% drop in life satisfaction.”

According to Warwick, advertising makes individuals, groups, and nations unhappy because it “prompts us to measure ourselves against others” and to worry about our “relative status” compared to peers.

For the 7th consecutive year, Finland ranked #1 as the happiest country in the annual World Happiness Report. Whether or not all Finns are happy, the New York Times generally described the national character as one of contentment, or “knowing when you have enough,” due in part to a government that guarantees the necessities of life.

“The Finnish way of life is summed up in ‘sisu,’ a trait said to be part of the national character. The word roughly translates to ‘grim determination in the face of hardships,’ such as the country’s long winters: Even in adversity, a Finn is expected to persevere, without complaining… Maybe it’s that their expectations for contentment are more reasonable, and if they aren’t met, in the spirit of sisu, they persevere.”

The Alternative to Paid Advertising

The public relations field uses the PESO model, coined by Gini Dietrich in her book Spin Sucks, to differentiate among the media types: paid, earned, shared, and owned. We’ll focus on earned and shared media. If paid advertising makes us unhappy, earned media and promotion should, on the other hand, make us happier. 

Earned Media

Earned media is the mention of your brand’s product or service in the public domain (i.e., news media, social media, or community interest stories) free of charge. A positive, earned mention in public media can generate leads for your business, drive website traffic, establish you or your brand as a thought leader, build trust, and increase your brand's value.

Shared Media

When companies and individuals discuss your brand or share your content on social media and other digital platforms, it becomes shared media in the public domain. Types of shared media include links to your website, guest blog posts or podcast invitations, unsolicited reviews, or brand announcements shared by individuals or organizations that endorse your company and what it represents.

Another valuable form of shared media is user-generated content (UGC), which occurs when members of a community create and share social media content using your brand or service. While this form of shared media may be paid (i.e., a contract with a social media influencer), the best type of UGC is created at no cost to you simply because people like and trust your brand’s products or services.

A brand’s message evaluated and shared by a third party increases its credibility. A 2014 YouGov survey found that only 50% of respondents in the United States trusted paid advertising content. 1 out of 2 people has an inherent distrust of paid advertising. They are presumably unhappy with the advertising content they consume and thus less likely to refer the advertised brand or product to their friends and colleagues.

Conclusion

While paid media is a necessary and important part of your marketing strategy, you should also include earned media as part of your long-term, overall strategy. If you are receiving earned media, you know your organization’s mission and products or services are aligned with your target markets’ values and needs. Best of all, it’s cost-effective marketing that can reduce your paid advertising expenses, help your messaging contribute to your audience’s happiness, and build trust.

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