If love is blind, should marketers leave more to the imagination?

There is no better TV to watch than Love is Blind.

For those unfamiliar, it’s a dating show where a host of slightly traumatised and lonely individuals are herded one-by-one into neon pods where they must speed date ‘blind’ through a thin wall. If they ‘meet’ someone they like, they are only allowed to see them in the flesh if they get down on one knee first. Then, and only then, after undying love has been declared, and after marriage proposals have been made and accepted, are they allowed to see what they are working with.

It is cruel. It is Shakespearean. And it is perfect (!!!)

What could be more entertaining than a modern day Pyramus and Thisbe, swilling spritzes in shiny goblets, getting self-consciously vulnerable, and pretending to care about what’s on the inside, whilst obviously freaking out about whether or not they’re getting hitched to an absolute munter! But... spoiler alert! Everyone is really hot, fillered, and Turkey Teethed in exactly the same way, so that they all end up satisfied with the goods.

Truly, it is a fairy tale for our ages. 

But the strangest thing of all, is that it kind of works, at least for a bit.

It’s hard to believe that anyone would get engaged without ever seeing the other person, but, each season a huge number of contestants do. And they aren’t just doing it for the cameras. They do seem genuinely in love enough to get engaged. You’d think that with such a high proportion of our communication and attraction being non-verbal, that it would be impossible to form such strong bonds. But you’d be wrong. If anything, the initial gap in visual communication seems to make them stronger.

So, what’s going on? The premise of the show is that by removing the visual aspect, people connect on a deeper emotional level. And I do think there is a bit of that, to be fair. But psychologically, I think there’s also different beast at play. And a powerful one – projection.

The partial form of communication through a wall creates a gap that can then be filled with all the hopes and dreams of what they want the other person to be. In the end they genuinely do fall in love. The trouble is, they fall in love, partially, with a vision of a person they have created in their own imagination. It’s not surprising they agree to marriage. It’s not surprising they say things like I thought someone like you only existing in my dreams, because, to a certain extent, they do.

But what’s all that got to do with shifting product? Well, quite a lot actually.

We have entered an era of marketing where creating maximum visibility has never been easier. We can create and deliver more visual assets at scale than ever before. We can employ the use of influencers to unbox and shine a light on every single aspect of what we are selling. We can visualise and create video tours of every miniscule detail without even needing to shoot a single thing. And our gut instinct is to do just that. The more we show, surely, the more people will desire, and the more they will want to buy.

But if we use every tool we have to put every aspect on display, we may end up leaving too little space for consumers’ imaginations to do their best work. No space for hopes, dreams, and desires. This is something that premium and luxury brands have always instinctively understood. The finest products in the world, the ones which should have the most confidence in being in the spotlight, have also always tended to be the ones to hold back a bit. Partial crops. Teases. Outlines. Highly limited access. And an affinity for words, not always visuals to allow for a richer collaboration with the reader’s mind. Luxury brands rely on people paying a major premium for something they want madly and deeply.  And Luxury brands know that nobody can ever manufacture desire as powerfully as consumers’ own imaginations.

As marketers, just because we now have the martech and the tools to visually put it all on display, it doesn’t mean we should. As I learned on the nudist beaches of Anafi this summer, and as this season’s couples of Love is Blind learned through their questionable life choices, to create deep desire, sometimes you need to leave a lot more to the imagination.

Matt Waksman is head of strategy for Droga5 London