Instead of chasing instant gratification, brands should harness the power of anticipation

Opinion

Media channels are now able to handle a constant stream of content, making it easier than ever to provide instant gratification. Brands need a different strategy to stand out.

Groceries delivered to the front door in eight minutes flat – the epitome of the instant gratification world we now live in. It’s an immediacy that we’ve grown accustomed to across so many aspects of daily life.

Why wait until next week for an episode of a much-loved TV series when the full series is available on iPlayer? Or leave the family home to watch the latest blockbuster movie on its release day when it can be streamed in the comfort of your own home? The list goes on and is endless.

Brands have felt the need to deliver on this demand for immediacy with both product innovation and marketing activations, because instant gratification has fuelled consumers addictive natures –  the constant dopamine hit from encountering the new (whether in content or with a product in hand instantaneously) almost daily has consumers seeking the next hit soon after.

And it’s the resource intensive new that has shifted the dial: new movies (which take months the produce), new products (which can take years to develop), new technology (which can take months to manufacture and ship), all on demand (and in abundance) at the click of a button which has established this immediacy norm.

As such, brands find themselves chasing a constant stream of new branded content to be the service that offers the next instant (and often daily) fix –  in the hopes that this will build brand affinity.

But brands are struggling with the pace, which is taxing and resource intensive, and often null and avoid if the next encounter is subpar, to paraphrase the Harvard Business Review ‘you are competing with the last best experience your customer had’.

More significantly, such a constant barrage in instant novelty is numbing consumers to its impact: content isn’t as surprising because it seems to be served every minute by brands, and so it takes more to cut through.

Be more Disney+

As humans, we do thrive on anticipation – biologically because it releases serotonin (the satisfaction neurotransmitter) more steadily; emotionally because of the sense of having worked or waited for the reward. Think of the iconic marshmallow test, where children are promised two marshmallows if they don’t eat the first one when the tester (or parent) leaves the room for 15 minutes.

It does pay to harness the power of anticipation. Look back to the Harry Potter phenomenon – the annual (sometimes biannual) releases of each book from 1997 to 2007 resulted in record breaking sales, which have yet to be surpassed.

Delayed gratification isn’t a vestige of the past: the latest Bond film, No Time to Die, saw the best opening weekend of any Bond film in history, demonstrating how the two-year anticipation for its release (albeit an unwitting result of the pandemic) resulted in business gains.

The Disney+ strategy of releasing episodes weekly has led to a low attrition rate of 4%, just 18 months after its release in the UK. This is currently better than its competitors – and subscribers keep coming back for more.  In the world of FMCG, Cadbury Twirl saw 2% growth in a declining on-the-go market by implementing a festival-like pre-selling strategy for Twirl Orange.

Media that works harder for longer-lasting creative messages

Instead of chasing instant gratification and trying to keep up with the relentless pace with fully formed products and films for every minute brand encounter, let’s harness the power of anticipation in this post-Covid world.

Lengthen the brand relationship with delayed gratification, utilising the slow build up to the event (content or product) with teasers and trailers, alongside the accompanying buzz, to help build excitement that is longer lasting and more rewarding to the consumer.

Harness the power of the big reveal that captures attention and the imagination. Not only is it more sustainable for brands, but it also helps to trigger a positive feedback loop in the human brain that thereby builds greater, longer lasting, affinity with brands.

To do this, brands need to pause and ask themselves some searching questions:

1. Do you need to offer immediacy to stay competitive?
2. Is your content strategy resource intensive by chasing frequent interactions?
3. Could your activity be more impactful and have higher ROI if you lengthened the consumer experience?

Brands should re-evaluate what elements need to deliver instant gratification (i.e., UX) versus benefitting from delayed gratification (content strategy). Media channels are now able to handle a constant stream of content, whether in social channels, in OOH or even VOD.

Dynamic Creative optimisation can help minimise the resource needed to make multiple variations of the core creative. And AI developments are promising to ensure that DCO can be dynamic beyond text, including actors, settings, languages, and products. But historical approval procedures will need to change if we want to embrace this inflated need for new content.

Brands need to evaluate the balance of resources to the interactions they are trying to encourage with it. It’s vital that brands have the right measurement and testing practices in place to monitor consumer sentiment, and if audiences are drifting into snow blindness with a constant stream of new content.

We can make creative messages work harder and last longer if we think about anticipation rather than chasing the next dopamine hit.

Monica Majumdar is head of strategy at Wavemaker UK

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