Brand Conversion

So I'm watching the Olympics the other night and this Nissan commercial comes on. I typically find car commercials occasionally entertaining but completely uncompelling. But as the next commercials continued I found myself thinking more and more about the Nissan tagline "Shift the way you move through the world." The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I was impressed. I didn't want to go buy a car, and I felt no particular interest in their cars, but I loved that tagline.

And then a Coke commercial came on. It was not extremely clever, and had no tagline, but I was compelled by it. Nothing sounded better to me in that moment than an ice-cold bottle of Coke. All I wanted to do was hold that bottle, remove the cap and hear that refreshing pop/hiss sound, tilt my head back and pour some down my throat.

The contrast of these two commercials got me thinking about brand images and what I call brand conversion, and it reminded me something from a class I'm taking. So we're making our way through St. Augustine's 'Confessions', and we continue to see him switching idealogies, from Manichiesm to Skepticism to Platonism etc. His continuous conversions however, are clearly not complete, or at least not lasting. He moves through all of these systems of belief in a matter of a few years. So I kept wondering, what is it that finally makes Christianity stick for him?  Well, I think Christianity was his Coke, whereas the Philosophical idealogies were his Nissan.

I had an intellectual connection with Nissan as a result of their commercial. The problem was, it had no motivating power. I had an emotional connection with Coke.  Emotional conversions motivate and compel people to act in a way intellectual conversions never do. In Augustine's case, his emotional conversion to Christianity motivated him to finally give up his all-consuming sexual escapades.

Now there may be something more to the Coke vs. Nissan problem, it is entirely possible that the difference in the purchasing process between a car and a drink has something to do with the intellectual vs. emotional marketing.

But here's what I know: Coke's got me. I count myself among the devout.