Emotional Branding and the U.S. Open: How Evoking Schadenfreude Can Reinforce Brand Love

The final match of this year’s men’s U.S. Open was met with unsurprisingly high levels of excitement and anticipation as Novak Djokovic, the world’s No. 1 player, faced off against 17-time major winner Roger Federer.

A three-hour rain delay got the crowd’s emotions running high from the very beginning as frustrated fans waited impatiently for the match to start—like a bucking bronco waiting for the gates to open at a rodeo. Fans and players alike undoubtedly experienced a range of anticipatory emotions, from excitement to anxiety, as they awaited the opening serve.

When the match finally began, however, there was one surprising emotion the fans displayed unabashedly: schadenfreude, a German word that literally translates to “harm-joy.”

Although Federer had not won a Grand Slam title since 2012 (Wimbledon), he was the fan favorite for this match, and—unsurprisingly—a majority of the crowd cheered at each ace and winning shot he made. 

But the fans, showing a brutish delight uncharacteristic of tennis matches, also cheered wildly when Djokovic missed his first serve, and erupted when he double-faulted; a textbook example of schadenfreude.

What Can Brands Learn From This?

The study of schadenfreude has a long history, and its connection to sports’ allegiances has been analyzed before. A 2003 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology study examined intergroup schadenfreude within international football (soccer) competitions.

The study focused on the German and Dutch football teams and their fans. The results of the study indicated that the emotion of schadenfreude is highly influenced by surrounding circumstances, and whether those circumstances would make it more or less acceptable to feel such malicious pleasure toward a rival.

It is perhaps, then, less surprising that we would see this emotion on full display during a U.S. Open featuring one of the biggest rivalry matches in tennis history.

Galvanize the In-Group

Brands that can clearly identify their “in-groups” and “out-groups” can benefit from activating feelings of schadenfreude, which has the effect of coalescing the in-group and motivating them to reinforce their “brand love.” 

For evidence, look no further than Apple’s “I’m a Mac” campaign. The campaign leveraged feelings of schadenfreude among Apple users (the in-group) to position the brand as superior to the Windows PC.

Another more recent—and blatant—example is the sports channel DirecTV “Don’t Be Like This Me” campaign where well-known celebrities urge viewers not to be like their alter ego who has cable TV, like “Super Creepy Rob Lowe” and “Really High Voice Peyton Manning.”

Be Conscious of the Sympathetic Out-Group

The effective application of schadenfreude for branding depends on the degree of disdain that exists for the out-group. In 2013, Princeton University Professor Susan Fiske conducted a study using facial EMG to detect the electrical current displaced by muscles active during smiling. Participants were shown photos representing different groups that have strong stereotype associations and Fiske measured the level of the viewer’s smile-muscle activation.

The results showed a strong preference for suffering in enviable stereotypes (such as the wealthy) versus pitiable stereotypes (such as the elderly).

“If a homeless person, a poor person or an old person walks into a plate-glass window, it’s not funny,” Fiske says. “But if it’s a guy in an expensive suit it’s a little funny to people.”

Pleasure derived from another person’s pain is the definition of schadenfreude, but these results show that it can’t be just any person.

Schadenfreude in Politics

A 2009 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology study, titled “Politics, schadenfreude, and ingroup identification: The sometimes happy thing about a poor economy and death,” was conducted to determine whether or not events containing objective misfortunes (poverty, death, etc.) could produce feelings of schadenfreude.

Political campaigns are often characterized by the events that move the tide in favor of one candidate or another. Each event, depending on which candidate it favors or harms, produces either happiness or sadness in those who care about the outcome.

This research examined whether such reactions would hold for events that are misfortunes for other people, even when they negatively affect society more broadly. In-group (i.e. political party) identification was examined as an important moderating variable. In four studies, undergraduate participants gave their emotional reactions to news articles describing misfortunes happening to others (such as poor economic news and house foreclosures). Party affiliation and the intensity of the subject’s in-group identification strongly predicted whether these events produced schadenfreude.

The findings suggest that the domain of politics is prime territory for feelings of schadenfreude, especially for those who strongly identify with their political party.

With the Presidential race heating up, campaign managers would serve their candidates well to increase implicit associations of self-identification while evoking feelings of schadenfreude for their political opponents.

It’s a Guy Thing

Another factor to consider when activating schadenfreude on behalf of your brand is gender differences. Some results suggest that men are more likely than women to have feelings of schadenfreude depending on the context.

In a 2006 study published in Nature, titled, “Empathic Neural Responses are Modulated by the Perceived Fairness of Others,” social scientists planted actors among volunteers playing a game. Some actors played fairly, while others played unfairly. The researchers then delivered electric shocks to the actors while monitoring the brains of volunteers who looked on. 

Men and women both showed empathy-related activation in areas of the brain associated with pain (frontoinsular and anterior cingulate cortices) when the shocks were administered to actors who had played fairly. But when the shocks were delivered to the actors who had played unfairly, empathetic responses in men were significantly reduced, while the women’s responses remained close to the same.

In fact, men showed increased activation in reward-related brain areas (ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal cortex), demonstrating a desire for revenge.

These results raise interesting questions and opportunities for marketers. Brands that target men may find increased engagement in communications that evoke feelings schadenfreude, particularly within a competitive context.

The Truth Matters

While schadenfreude works well to captivate and motivate the hearts and minds of the in-group, it also serves to motivate the out-group into defending their position and decisions.

The out-group will seek to expose those in the in-group as being misinformed, or worse, as liars.  As such, brands that choose to leverage schadenfreude as part of an overall communication strategy must have the truth on their side or risk embarrassment, which could lead the in-group to rethink their allegiance.

Simply evoking feelings of schadenfreude is no guarantee of marketing success and utilizing it needs to be considered in context of an overall brand strategy. After all, Djokovic won the title in the end.