If you run a brand, you have likely felt the squeeze. Your category is crowded; every competitor has copied your features, and your claims no longer set you apart the way they used to. Winning on “better” gets harder every year. The brands pulling ahead are winning on emotion instead, and the best teacher of that shift is a company that once stood for the opposite: Procter & Gamble. This page walks you through how P&G advertising moved from rational demos to emotional storytelling, and how you can build the same kind of advertising on your own brand.
Why "better" stopped working, and what P&G learned the hard way
P&G in the 1980s and 1990s
For decades, it was easy to spot a P&G marketer. They had “the” answer. The P&G way was to find something, almost anything, that you did better than the competitor, then prove it with a side-by-side demonstration, a reference to “the next leading brand,” and quite possibly some blue liquid poured on screen. All logic, all demos. It worked through the 1970s and 1980s.
To view, click on the > or volume controls to see the P&G advertising.
Then it stopped. By 2000, the formula looked worn out, and P&G hit a wall. Growth dried up, new launches disappointed, and several flagship brands lost their lead. Colgate was beating Crest. Listerine was beating Scope. Dove was beating Ivory. The stock fell from $120 to $85 almost overnight. Competitors had caught up on the product, so the demo had nothing left to prove.
That is the trap every brand manager eventually faces. Strategically, your brand really has four choices:
- Better
- Different
- Cheaper
- Not around for very long
In a crowded category, “better” is the hardest to win, because everyone has copied every feature not locked behind a patent. More and more, what wins is “different.” Emotional advertising is how you get there.
Know your brand's core strength before you write a single ad
Before you reach for emotion, be honest about what kind of brand you run, because your core strength decides where your advertising should focus. There are four types:
- Product-led brands invest in R&D and communicate the benefits, features, and claims that make the brand better.
- Story-led brands invest in advertising, using a story, idea, or purpose to show what makes the brand different.
- Experience-led brands invest in culture and operations, building communication around the people who create the experience.
- Price-led brands invest in efficiency, explaining how they deliver the same quality at a lower cost.
Emotional advertising is the natural home of the story-led brand. When you can no longer win the product argument, you shift the brand’s core strength toward story, and emotion becomes the tool that makes the difference felt. That is exactly the move P&G made.
The Dove campaign that woke P&G up
Dove's "real beauty" campaign taught CPG marketers a vital lesson
The turning point came from a competitor. Unilever’s Dove “Real Beauty” campaign showed the emotional side of a soap brand and built a far tighter bond with women than any lather demo ever had. As Dove overtook P&G’s Ivory, it sent a jolt through the CPG world and seems to have woken P&G up to what emotion could do.
To view, click on the > or volume controls to see how Unilever’s Dove impacted P&G advertising.
How to build an emotional ad: three moves you can make on your own brand
P&G’s comeback was not luck. It followed a pattern you can copy. Here are the three moves at the heart of it.
Move 1: Choose “different” when you cannot win “better”
P&G stopped claiming generic superiority and started showing how their products fit uniquely into a consumer’s life. Tide still removes stains in one wash, but the advertising shifted to the brand’s role in life’s pivotal moments, like getting a child’s baseball uniform clean for the big game. The product stayed the same. The space the brand owns in the consumer’s mind changed.
Your version of this move: stop asking what your product does better, and start asking what moment in your consumer’s life your brand can own.
Move 2: Trade product features for consumer insights
P&G stopped leading with features and started leading with insight, meaning the deep-seated needs, desires, and pain points that sit beneath the surface of the consumer’s life. “Thank You, Mom” never mentions a single product feature. It taps the universal truth of a mother’s love and support, and positions P&G as the quiet enabler behind her.
A consumer insight works best when you write it in the consumer’s own voice, starting with the word “I” so you are forced into their shoes. “I worry I am not doing enough for my kid” will move people in a way that “removes 99% of stains” never can.
Move 3: Tell a story built on a moment, not a claim or a demo
A narrative creates a stronger bond than a demonstration, because it lets the consumer see your brand inside their own life. The Always “Like a Girl” campaign tells a story of empowerment rather than showing a product at work. It opens by asking older girls to “run like a girl,” and they perform a weak, stereotyped version. Then it asks ten-year-old girls the same thing, and they run hard and proud. The ad ties that insight about confidence at puberty to the exact moment mothers and daughters are choosing a feminine care brand. The story carries the brand further than any claim could.
P&G's best emotional ads, and what you can steal from each
Thank You, Mom (Olympics)
Shows everything mothers do for their athletes, casting P&G as the enabler.
- The lesson: find the human role your brand quietly plays and dramatize it.
To view, click on the > or volume controls to see the P&G advertising.
Always "Like a Girl."
Built on a sharp insight about how girls lose confidence at puberty, tied to the purchase moment.
- The lesson: anchor the emotion to a real moment of accelerating need.
To view, click on the > or volume controls to see the P&G advertising.
The Beloved Brands playbook goes deep on consumer insights, brand positioning, creative briefs, and the decisions that drive advertising. If you want to lift how your team connects with consumers, that is where to start.
Old Spice "Smell Like a Man."
Quirky, fast-cut, over-the-top humor that was so different it reinvigorated a tired brand.
- The lesson: distinctiveness is itself an emotional lever, and humor buys attention.
To view, click on the > or volume controls to see the P&G advertising.
Whisper (India).
Tackles girls starting their periods as young as eight, a serious and overlooked subject, and turns the brand into a force for change and community.
- The lesson: a brand can earn deep loyalty by addressing a real social issue with honesty.
To view, click on the > or volume controls to see the P&G advertising.
It's a Tide Ad (Super Bowl).
Mocks the clichés of every other ad and reveals that the boring stain brand is behind the joke. With 99% awareness as the stain-fighter, Tide did not need to explain anything.
- The lesson: when your brand is already known, spend your ad on attention and surprise.
To view, click on the > or volume controls to see the P&G advertising.
Ariel (India).
A father watches his daughter juggle work and home, names his own guilt, and changes his behavior.
- The lesson: layering insight through a character’s emotional realization pulls the viewer in more than any voiceover.
To view, click on the > or volume controls to see the P&G advertising.
Is your Marketing Team meeting your expectations or holding you back?
To view, use the arrows to see our Beloved Brands Marketing Training program brochure.
It's time to elevate your marketing team's performance with our Beloved Brands Marketing Training program.
Our Beloved Brands training builds marketers who think through data rather than guess, use analytics to trigger strategic thinking, build positioning that actually sells, create plans that link to financial results, and execute in ways that move consumers. Emotional advertising is one of the skills your team will practice on their own brands.
How to judge whether your emotional ad actually works
Emotion is not an excuse for a pretty film that sells nothing. Hold every ad up against four questions, the ABCS of good advertising:
- Attention: Does it grab people in a crowded ad break?
- Brand Link: Will viewers remember it was your brand, not the category?
- Communication: Does the main message land and connect to a benefit?
- Stickiness: Will it stay with consumers and build over time?
“It’s a Tide Ad” is a clinic in all four. It won the attention war, nailed the brand link through the reveal, communicated the one thing Tide owns, and stuck long after the game. That is the bar for your own work. If an emotional idea cannot clear all four, it is entertainment, not advertising.
Bring this into your own creative brief
Emotional advertising starts long before the agency gets involved. It starts in your creative brief, where you set the consumer insight, the emotional benefit, and the moment you want to own. Get the brief right and the emotion follows.
