In the fourth book of Plato’s Republic, he tells the story of Leontius and the corpses.

Passing along the edge of Athens’ city walls one day, Leontius sees some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He wants to look at them, and at the same time he is disgusted by them. He dithers and covers his eyes. Eventually his curiosity gets the better of him and he rushes up to the dead bodies, saying, ‘Look, you wretches. Take a really good look.’

Plato uses this story to illustrate his theory of the divided soul. We are all driven by appetites and desires, and at the same time by our spirit and will. Occasionally appetite and willpower can go to war with each other.

I first encountered Leontius and the corpses at school, and, though of course it’s a rather crude fable, I’ve always found it rather helpful. People are driven by conflicting needs and emotions. They may want to pursue a particular path, whilst at the same time knowing it to be wrong. They often do things despite themselves.

Occasionally advertisers recognise this fact and show consumers caught in a dilemma. Famously in the 1970s Salman Rushdie, then working at Ogilvy, described fresh cream cakes as ‘naughty, but nice.’ But for the most part brands tend to characterize consumers as driven by singular motivations. And sometimes they underestimate the basic compulsive power of appetite.

Many years ago we won a pitch for the Swiss chocolate brand Lindt. We based our proposals on the fact that Lindt was the first commercial chocolate to melt in your mouth. The earliest forms of chocolate tended to be hard and to require chewing. But in 1879 Rodolphe Lindt discovered how to make chocolate that melts at body temperature – the key to chocolate’s very particular appeal.

We suggested that a melt-based positioning elegantly married rational and emotional truths about the brand: Lindt chocolate was the first to melt; it still melts deliciously in your mouth; and when you eat Lindt you melt in your soul.

Having appointed us, our new Client told us there was just one last hurdle to overcome. We had to prove in research that our new sophisticated positioning could outperform the incumbent campaign.

Classically Lindt advertising featured a bunch of eccentric ‘chocolatiers’ sporting toques blanches and joyously making chocolate in a kitchen. Pretty pedestrian stuff, we thought, and we approached the head-to-head with some confidence.

In the first round of qualitative research our route came off best. Consumers were impressed by Lindt’s authentic credentials and moved by our resonant evocation of ‘the melting moment.’ By contrast they found the incumbent campaign comically conventional.

But the research company also employed a quantitative methodology, which required respondents to indicate their engagement with each specific part of the film via a joystick. Unfortunately for us the incumbent ad had a good deal of chocolate in it: chocolate being lovingly mixed; chocolate being gently caressed; chocolate being sensuously sampled. And every time the chocolate appeared on-screen, the engagement scores went through the roof.

We lost the research stand-off and were politely released from our contract with Lindt. I think it was the shortest appointment we ever had.

I guess the lesson here is that, however smart your thinking, however elegant your concept, however much consumers may claim to be bored with convention, you should never under-estimate the power of appetite. People like to see cold beer in beer ads and great looking cars in car ads. They also like to see chocolate in chocolate ads.

Sometimes they just can’t resist their appetites.

'If your eyes are wanting all you see,
Then I think I'll name you after me.
I think I'll call you appetite.'

Prefab Sprout, ‘Appetite’ (Paddy Mcaloon)

No. 175