Confidence vs. Arrogance: The Tone Problem in Modern Advertising

Confidence vs. Arrogance: The Tone Problem in Modern Advertising - How many people in marketing actually stop and ask: what is the tone of my advertising? This seemingly small question is in reality lying at the core of advertising. Your advertising doesn't just communicate what your brand sells; it communicates what kind of brand you are. Furthermore, the consumer doesn't separate your brand from the behaviour of the people representing it in your advertising. And that is where the tone comes in – what you say, how you state it and in what context – all three are vital elements to brand communication

 

 

 

Take a step back from the job for a second. Put yourself in the audience's seat. You come across an ad whose central characters — through their expressions, their hand gestures, the whole setting — carry a feeling of being superior to anyone not using the product. Or the ad looks down on the competition, openly or through implication. Now ask: how does that reflect on the brand? (That is what is meant by tone, in a very broad sense). What does it do to how the customer feels about themselves in that moment? What association is actually getting built? That – the associations that are inadvertently built - is the value and role of tone.

 

Take many of the advertisements you'd call genuinely good, and you'll find some form of positive emotional payoff running underneath them — even when the advertising itself uses tension, anger, conflict or provocation. Anger, arrogance, condescension — these have no place in advertising, unless it's a piece of social-change communication, and even there it has to be handled with real care. You are trying to build space for your product in the mind of the consumer. Do that through a feeling of superiority, and the number of people who'll actually be attracted is far smaller than the number who respond to positivity. That's not a marketing rule. That's a basic human one, and it doesn't change just because a category is crowded.

 

Advertising creates brand associations, whether the marketer intends it or not. Therefore, the emotional and behavioural tone of an advertisement must be evaluated not merely for attention or engagement, but for what it makes the audience feel about the brand. There is nothing inherently wrong with negative emotion in advertising. The question is: whose negativity is the audience experiencing, and what does it make them associate with your brand? Anger, arrogance and condescension are particularly dangerous territory in advertising — because the audience can easily associate the emotion with the brand itself.

 

Who's the joke on?

Here's the fair objection: if a thousand ads in your category are all speaking positively, how does yours stand out? It's a real problem. But the answer isn't to break the basic rule of engagement with customers — it's to notice that "positive" and "safe" aren't the same word, and that plenty of bold, memorable advertising is still bold without making the audience feel small.

 

The difference usually comes down to who the ad's edge is aimed at. Zomato and Swiggy have spent years publicly ribbing each other in their ad copy and social posts, and nobody ordering off either app feels small for it. Amul's decades of topical cartoon ads needle politicians, events, and rival brands through pun and wordplay, but the tone stays affectionate — you're laughing along with Amul, not being laughed at. The audience is in on the joke, not the butt of it — that's confidence. Arrogance is different. It's when the ad, in tone or in visual grammar, tells the person watching that they're lesser for not already belonging to the club. One invites you in. The other looks past you.

 

A brand I don't buy — and why

Take Axe. I'm not calling their advertising arrogant — I'm using it to explain how brand associations actually form. Axe's communication has always leaned on a stand-out, aggressive, macho male persona. That's not me. I'm a fairly sensitive person, and I lean toward a positive, confident, but subdued vibe. So what did years of that tone build in my head? An association I have no interest in attaching myself to. I don't use perfume very often, and out of the small, select few I do wear, Axe is the one I've never even considered — not once. That's tone doing its job, just in reverse.

 

Tone is one input. Everything a brand does builds the association.

It isn't only tone that does this — product behavior does it too. Milky Mist and Amul both launch new ice cream flavors regularly. The moment a new Milky Mist flavor shows up in my feed, I hit the purchase button. Why? Because the brand's whole personality, in my head, is "something new is always happening here" — I'm someone who likes experimenting with new food, coffee, cheese, milk alternatives, all of it, and Milky Mist has become the brand I associate with that itch. With Amul, a new flavor gets a "yes... no... yes... no," and I usually go back to what I already trust.

 

Amul earned a different association — steadiness, dependability, durability — largely through consistency, not through its (genuinely witty) advertising tone. Same principle, different lever: whatever a brand does consistently — in voice or in behavior — is the association it's building, whether it means to or not. And every way you communicate – even without giving a single ad – builds your brand’s tone; yes – even your packaging and market tactics contribute to the brand tone. And that is where Milky Mist’s overall proposition – with its quirky flavours, attractive packaging, superb placement all built a tone of “I am different – try me; not I am ultra cool and you are not, so come and join me”. That is tone in operation

 

Where this leaves modern advertising

Too much of what I see now is aggressive, condescending, or dismissive in tone — of a culture, a person, a viewpoint, a rival brand — used as a shortcut to standing out. It's a shortcut with a cost. The data backs the instinct here too. Les Binet and Peter Field's long-running IPA effectiveness work has repeatedly shown that emotionally engaging campaigns tend to produce stronger long-term business effects than campaigns relying primarily on rational persuasion.

 

The mistake isn't reaching for emotion to stand out. It's reaching for one emotion in a set of emotions— a feeling of superiority over your own audience, or irrational superiority, or ultra exclusivity applied in a snobbish manner, or insulting a particular personality etc etc — that almost nobody wants to carry home with them. It all boils down to human values - Individual consumers interpret brand behaviour through their own values, identities and accumulated associations. And, in general, such associated emotions do not make for building a lasting brand on their own. Such tactics in fact make building and maintaining the brand a much more problematic, consuming and demanding task…

 

The fundamental question isn't “Will this advertisement get noticed?” It is “What will people feel about my brand after they have noticed it?” Because attention is temporary. Associations are not. Thus, every brand behaviour creates an association. Advertising is therefore not merely a vehicle for delivering a message; it is one of the ways the brand teaches consumers what the brand is.