The role of emotion in marketing

Posted by: David Hall

Watch the television ads by the big spenders—you’ll notice that almost all of them are geared to create an emotional impact. Effective marketing professionals understand that this is what works. Neuromarketing teaches us that emotional appeals work much better than logical appeals. (Neuromarketing is the science of applying studies of unconscious brain activity to marketing.)

Renowned marketing expert Roger Dooley, in his bestselling book, Brainfluence, states:

“The idea that ads that engage us emotionally work better than those that don’t should not be a big shock to anyone who’s spent time in advertising.” (Dooley, Brainfluence, p. 241)

In spite of that, he states that he still finds business executives who have a hard time believing in the power of emotional appeals. So he cites a study by the UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. This is the leading marketing association in the UK. Analyzing a data bank of 1400 case studies of advertising campaigns, they learned that campaigns using a logical appeal resulted in large profit gains for the advertiser 16% of the time. Campaigns using an emotional appeal, however, brought large profit gains 31% of the time, almost double.

A Personal Experience

Let me illustrate this with a personal experience. A number of years ago, my wife and I decided to sell our home and build a new one to accommodate our growing family. We found a realtor to list our home and shared with him a key concern we had. The carpeting in the home was worn and unattractive, and we asked him how we should handle that. The solution he suggested was to post a notice on the front door that our asking price included a carpeting allowance sufficient to re-carpet the entire house.

So that’s what we did. However, several weeks passed with no stirrings of interest in the house. So I told the realtor that this approach wasn’t working and I had a different idea. With the goal of creating a strong first impression, we went ahead and had new carpet installed in the living room area that people saw when they opened the door, the stairs that led up from the entry, and down the upstairs hallway. At the end of the hallway we posted a sign inviting the prospective buyer to include in their offer a stipulation that we would finish carpeting the entire house.

The house sold within a week.

The realtor’s approach was pure logic, and if you believe in the power of logic in marketing, it should have worked. But it didn’t. Studies show that marketing decisions are powerfully influenced by first impressions and, if you make a poor first impression, it is extremely difficult to overcome that. We flipped the approach, focusing on creating a strong first impression, and later making the logical appeal.

Applying Emotional Marketing to Website Design

Research at Carleton University in Ottawa determined that 50 milliseconds (one-twentieth of a second) was sufficient to create a first impression of a website. Other research shows that the first impression has strong sticking power in determining the visitor’s overall opinion of the site. This is all validated by our experience. For maximum conversion, the design of your website needs to be crafted to accurately and favorably brand your business. The first impression then created can be reinforced with logic to “close the sale.”