Marketing Is Familiarity, Safety and Comfort - Emotional Marketing
Stop Planning. Start Doing. – The Shark 13 October Marketing Series
I was watching a YouTube Short from Jamie Oliver the other day.
I've always liked Jamie Oliver.
Maybe it's an Essex thing. We're roughly the same age, we're both from Essex, although technically we're not Cockneys — we're Essex. Estuary, if you want to get technical about it.
I used to watch his shows years ago and always liked his style. Some of his recipes were a bit mental. You'd get halfway through one and realise you needed three ingredients you'd never heard of and couldn't buy anywhere within 50 miles.
But I liked him.
I especially liked his passion for getting kids to eat better and challenging the absolute rubbish that became normal children's food.
I've also always found what he says about dyslexia interesting, having grown up with it myself, and I agree with quite a lot of what he says about education and how badly the traditional school system works for certain kids.
Anyway.
This isn't a blog about Jamie Oliver.
Well, it sort of is.
Because he said something in this particular video that made my marketing brain switch on.
Kids Aren't Born Wanting Chicken Nuggets
Jamie was talking about how differently children eat around the world.
Go to parts of Italy, Spain, Portugal or Lebanon and you'll see young children happily eating vegetables, beans, fish, meat and all sorts of things we'd probably consider quite adventurous for a five-year-old in Britain.
It's similar here in Thailand.
Kids grow up surrounded by different flavours, textures, spices and ingredients. It's simply food.
Then you look at Britain or America and hear:
"I don't like that."
"I won't eat that."
"That's weird."
Give them some beige food, chips, nuggets, pizza or a burger and suddenly everyone's happy.
But Jamie's point was simple.
British and American kids aren't genetically programmed to only like brown food.
They've been marketed to.
And then he said something that really caught my attention:
Marketing is familiarity, safety and comfort.
That's bloody good.
Because when you strip away Facebook Ads, TikTok videos, SEO, branding, influencers, funnels, algorithms and all the other crap we marketers spend our lives talking about, those three words explain an enormous amount.
Familiarity. Safety. Comfort.
And all three are emotions.
Familiarity
Why do you pick the brand you've heard of rather than the one you've never seen before?
Familiarity.
You've seen the logo.
You've watched a few videos.
You've driven past the shop.
You've read one of their blogs.
Your mate mentioned them.
You've seen their Facebook posts ten times without ever clicking anything.
Then six months later you need exactly what they sell.
And suddenly they feel like the obvious choice.
You might not even remember why you know them.
You just do.
That's one of the things businesses misunderstand about social media.
They post something on Tuesday, it doesn't generate 15 enquiries by Wednesday and they decide:
"Social media doesn't work."
But marketing isn't always about making somebody buy something immediately.
Sometimes its job is simply to make your business familiar.
Because familiarity removes uncertainty.
And uncertainty stops people buying.
Safety
Safety doesn't necessarily mean physical safety.
It means:
"I feel safe making this decision."
If I'm booking a hotel I've never visited, can I trust it?
If I'm leaving my dog at a dog hotel, will they look after him properly?
If I'm putting my child into a school, will they be happy there?
If I'm booking a boat trip, is this company professional?
If I'm choosing a restaurant for an anniversary, am I going to regret it?
If I'm spending 100,000 baht with a business, are these people actually going to deliver?
Marketing helps answer those questions.
Not by screaming:
WE ARE THE BEST!
But by showing people enough evidence that choosing you starts to feel safe.
Reviews.
Real customers.
Behind-the-scenes content.
Staff.
Stories.
Experience.
Knowledge.
Consistency.
Answers to the questions people are scared to ask.
Good marketing reduces perceived risk.
Comfort
Then there's comfort.
This one gets overlooked.
People like knowing what they're getting.
It's why someone can travel halfway around the world and still walk into a McDonald's.
They know what happens next.
They understand the menu.
They recognise the branding.
They know roughly what the food will taste like.
There's comfort in predictability.
Your marketing can create exactly the same feeling.
Someone lands on your website and immediately understands what you do.
Comfort.
They send you a message and get a friendly, useful answer.
Comfort.
They've been following your social media for six months and already recognise the people working there.
Comfort.
They've watched videos showing exactly what happens when they arrive.
Comfort.
Before they've spent a single baht with you, you've already removed some of the anxiety around buying.
That's incredibly powerful.
Emotional Marketing
It's All Emotion
And that's the bit I really liked about Jamie's point.
Familiarity.
Safety.
Comfort.
They're feelings.
And I've said this countless times:
People buy with emotion and justify it with logic.
We marketers love talking about features.
The biggest.
The fastest.
The newest.
The most luxurious.
The cheapest.
The best.
But your customer is sitting on the other side of the screen thinking:
Do I know you?
Can I trust you?
Does this feel right?
That's a very different conversation.
Marketing Can Be Used for Good or Bad
Jamie's original point was actually quite uncomfortable.
Marketing has helped normalise some pretty terrible eating habits.
Put enough colourful packaging, cartoon characters, adverts, toys and repetition in front of children and eventually certain foods become familiar.
Familiar becomes safe.
Safe becomes comfortable.
Comfortable becomes normal.
That's incredibly powerful.
And yes, emotional marketing can absolutely be used badly.
But the mechanism itself isn't bad.
It's what we do with it.
You can use exactly the same principles to make healthier food familiar.
To make exercise feel accessible.
To make a nervous child comfortable around horses.
To make somebody confident enough to try a new restaurant.
To make a family comfortable booking their first trip to Thailand.
To make someone trust a small local business instead of automatically choosing the giant international brand.
The psychology is the same.
Stop Trying to Sell All the Time
Maybe this is the biggest lesson for businesses.
Not every piece of marketing needs to sell something.
Sometimes your job is simply to become familiar.
Show up.
Tell stories.
Answer questions.
Show your people.
Show customers using your product.
Show what happens behind the scenes.
Explain things.
Educate people.
Make them laugh occasionally.
Be useful.
Do it consistently.
Because every interaction is quietly building familiarity.
Familiarity creates safety.
Safety creates comfort.
And comfort makes decisions easier.
That's marketing.
Not algorithms.
Not hacks.
Not whatever bloody "secret strategy" somebody is trying to sell you on LinkedIn this week.
Just understanding human beings.
And apparently, sometimes you need Jamie Oliver talking about Italian kids pulling apart a pigeon to remind you of it.
And Jamie, if you're reading this, I still like your recipes.
Uncle Roger, lay off him.
Got it? Good.
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