In my earlier post discussing emotions in advertising I made the point that advertising that connects with us emotionally is more effective than advertising that promotes product features”. This is a fairly accepted point but how true is it? For some campaigns, such as UK Cancer Research, the use of powerful emotional appeals is congruent with the subject matter. However how does this work for Businesses looking to make emotional connections? Coming on too strong would no doubt turn consumers off.
For me Dove’s campaign for real beauty is a great example of a brand that was able to successfully make a powerful emotional connection.
By transitioning their messaging away from the typical features and benefits to a more emotional level Dove’s brand became much more differentiated. This emotional connection ensures customers have a higher recall of the advert and impacted their purchase behavior. These effects have been observed in a variety of advertising.
The ads that performed well on the traditional system two measures (persuasion, cut-through, brand linkage, message delivery) were actually less effective in market than the nine ads performing poorly on these measures. In fact, designing the advertising to perform well on such measures may work against effectiveness. Meanwhile, the nine most emotional ads delivered greater business effects than the nine least emotional ads.
– Let’s get emotional about ads
For businesses making a strong emotional appeal can move the needle, if it is congruent with their brand. So should we neglect rational adverts? Research suggests that actually a balanced approach works best. Emotional adverts tend to outperform purely rational adverts, but a combination of emotional advertising that clearly communicates rational benefits performs best.
