Finding the emotional hook behind a new marketing campaign

Context & challenge

The organisation was preparing to launch a new marketing campaign in a highly commoditised market. While the product offering was strong, there was concern that existing messaging relied too heavily on functional benefits and struggled to connect with customers.

Stakeholders held differing views on what the campaign should prioritise. Some focused on features, pricing, and performance claims, while others pushed for more emotive storytelling without a clear line to brand strategy or commercial outcomes. This created tension around direction and risk, and made it difficult to align on a clear brief.

The challenge was to identify a marketing hook that felt authentic to the brand, relevant to customers, and strong enough to guide creative development while still standing up to scrutiny from senior stakeholders.


My role & lens

I was brought in to reset the direction of an existing campaign that was failing to resonate with customers. Initial messaging leaned heavily on functional claims and internal assumptions, and there were concerns it wasn't going to land as intended.

My role was to diagnose what wasn’t working, identify the emotional gap between the brand and its audience, and reframe the campaign around a clearer, more compelling emotional hook. I worked closely with product, brand, and customer-facing stakeholders to unearth assumptions, create a new direction, and reduce uncertainty around delivering the change.

Using new customer insights and traditional market data, I helped translate emotional opportunity into a defensible market and operational position. This work informed the revised creative brief and supported senior decision-makers in confidently shifting the campaign toward messaging that was both emotionally resonant and commercially grounded.

Approach

I began by diagnosing why the existing campaign wasn’t resonating, combining customer research, frontline perspective and competitor analysis to surface where assumptions had diverged from real customer sentiment. This created a shared, evidence-based understanding of what wasn’t working and why.

The work required navigating competing viewpoints across departments and differing levels of comfort with creative risk. I worked closely with product, brand, and customer-facing operational leaders to understand their priorities and constraints, address concerns, and align around a common goal. By grounding conversations in customer reality and honouring the perspectives of teams closest to customers, I was able to move discussions from opinion to impact.


Methods in practice

- Design and delivery of new customer research in a compressed timeframe
- Synthesis of qualitative insight to identify emotional drivers and unmet needs
- Engagement with customer-facing teams to validate insight against frontline experience
- Competitor and category analysis to understand positioning and white space
- Translation of insight into a campaign guide and practical sales and service scripts
- Iterative refinement of messaging direction with key stakeholders


Outcomes & impact

The work identified parents of older children and young teenagers as the key audience segment, with an emotional need for peace of mind when choosing a mobile plan. This insight became the core of the revised campaign and provided direction for messaging, visuals, and supporting materials.

The emotional hook was applied consistently across digital channels, in-store materials, and contact centre interactions, ensuring customers received the same value proposition regardless of how they engaged. Messaging was simplified and focused, helping the product stand out and making it easier to understand.

By translating the proposition into campaign guidance and practical sales and service scripts, frontline teams were better equipped to communicate the product’s value in customer conversations. Involving stakeholders from brand, marketing, and customer-facing operations throughout the process supported smooth implementation and alignment, contributing to a well-received campaign and product rollout.