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Is this the biggest Strategic Planning blunder of 2012?
While it is encouraging to see an attempt made at utilising psychological insights in marketing, dear oh dear you need to get it a bit closer to the mark than Mitsubishi Australia has done with this one.

See here how they got it completely wrong…

Given that the left side of the brain is dedicated to rationality, reason, and logic, the lady in the Ad should be picking up the apple with her right hand, and she should be picking up the doughnut with her left hand.

Oops, mega blunder. Should have hired a new-age Creative Strategist for the project.

Aside from the fact that it seems to be pilfering a Mercedes idea this Ad gets nothing but left and right thumbs down on the science side of things.

So she needed to pick up the apple with her rational right hand, the doughnut with her out-of-the-box left hand, but also she actually needs to use the right hand to smack the left. This is because in the pre-frontal cortex (where both sides have emotional control) the negative emotion of anger is a predominantly left brain activity (see Harmon-Jones, E.; Vaughn-Scott, K.; Mohr, S.; Sigelman, J.; & Harmon-Jones, C. 2004).

Now some of you in your wisdom of marketing and production might suggest that incorrect hand sides in the Ad could have been used on purpose in order to make things simple, such as when a teacher standing in front of her class indicates to her left but calls it her right so as to keep the class running smoothly from the kids point of view.

But unfortunately you’d be wrong.

The next shot in the Ad with the same lady now on the telephone positions the camera behind her in ‘first-person mode’ which leaves no excuses for getting the hands wrong.

And yup, she is spatio-creatively drawing with her right-hand (WRONG) as she jots down the logico-mathematical number with her left hand (…WRONG). Sadly it’s a quadruple whammy for Mitsubishi.

So the hands are wrong, but is the theory correct?
Nope.

Perhaps in seeking some originality over and above Mercedes, the new idea here from Mitsubishi seems to be that the right side of our brain controls emotions. Are we being re-trained on the construction and operation of the human brain here??

No sadly we aren’t.

Simply put, the right side of our brain actually does not hold the control of our emotions.

Emotional function, effects and memories are controlled primarily in the centre of the brain at its base, namely the DLS or Deep Lymbic System which is about the size of a peach seed and sits right schmakkety bang in our brain’s centre.

It’s better (and correct) to promote the right side of the brain as being “spatial” or “creative” or “aesthetic” as that’s what separates the right hemispheres in terms of mutually exclusive function. As Mercedes got correct with great precision.

Interestingly in the follow Ad in the same series promoting the Triton, yes the sides are wrong again, and yes again the narration goes with the word “emotional” when describing the right side of the brain, but there is a fishing net which conjures the idea of “spatial” at least…

However I do love that car.
In saying all this however it has to be said that Mitsubishi have evolved brilliantly as a brand and a company in recent decades.

Mitsubishi’s cars do indeed give our brains a formidable treat on both left and right sides, and they are exceptional value for money not to mention snazzy-looking.

Further, sadly there are too many Mercedes nowadays that look like either a golf club storage vessel for a burnt out fat cat executive or an overstated waste of money for a super cougar. A touch irrational. As well as lacking in aesthetics so badly in some cases you’d think they’d had their corpus collosum severed and a patch placed over their right eye.

The upshot is that Mitsubishi could well lift their precision methodology to a higher level, but at least their brand and creative concepts are true to form.

Mercedes shows great internal precision but externally and with their marketing they often end up trying to use a creative idea that isn’t so much true as it is a counter-acting sell point attempting to compensate for an obvious pitfall in the product.

In my view both would be best dropping the odd Nissan over-achiever a message on LinkedIn checking if they’d like a pay rise to a normal level in a relatively free working culture. Haha.

Or perhaps Mitsubishi could shake itself out of imitation mode and get more genuinely creative.

Okay that’s enough cheap shots for one day, love you all, peace.

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