Fool of one’s own Brain?

Have you ever been overwhelmed by seeing a video or by reading? For most people the answers would be YES!! You will be able to recollect it so easily even after a long time. This happens when your emotional senses are activated.

What is Emotion???  It is a strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others. It is an instinctive feeling which is not based on the factual or logical reasoning. There are eight basic, universal emotions – joy, surprise, anticipation, acceptance, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. Successful appeals to these basic emotions consolidate stories and the desired calls to action in the lasting memories of audiences.

The fact that the emotion works outside the factual and logical reasoning is an added advantage to the companies, as it makes the customers to be loyal to their brand. Consumers buy because of what they’re feeling — not necessarily what they’re thinking.
Emotion in Consumer Decision-Making

Most people believe that the choices they make result from a rational analysis of available alternatives. Encountering an abundance of options and information, instinctual and emotion-based perspectives truly assist persons to determine their loyalties as well as purchase choices. In other words, when we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous experiences affix values to the choices we are contemplating. We were unlikely to reach a decision without a subjective point of view based on our experiences.

In the realm of consumer product marketing, there is an established and well-documented relationship between the emotional impact of a brand’s messaging and demand for products. Thus, most marketers avail themselves of this relationship to design emotional ads which can exert influence on customers’ perception and sensation. The theory of perceptual fluency in customer behaviour reveals that customers may pay the most attention to the content of a message. However, an advertising research demonstrates that the emotional response to an ad achieves far greater impact on a consumer’s reported intention to purchase a product than does the ad’s content.

Celebrity

Have you ever purchased a product just because your most-liked actress is a user of that commodity? Or would you choose a pair of sneakers on the grounds that it can make you become a fashionista? In today’s the complex marketing landscape, one such pre-placement decision which has someone endorse the product, is still of benefit to brands. The ability to build brand equity is a valuable asset. Besides, celebrity endorsement can enlarge consumers’ remembrance of the ads, connect the product to the celebrities’ skills, and help advertising stand out the surrounding clutter.

Let’s look at an example of a famous celebrity endorsement by Justin Timberlake.

In the three-minute spot, Timberlake’s face is literally converted to the shape of a lime. He plays the part of Rick “Sour” Vane, who once reigned as the perfect complement to tequila by curing ‘pucker face.’

Regular People

A regular person acting in the commercial is a trend which is catching up. Studies have proved that when a regular people act in a commercial, it’s easy for the audience to relate to. It helps the audience to put themselves in the shoes of the person in the commercial. Emotional senses are stimulated more in an advertisement when comparing to celebrity acting in the same advertisement.

The above commercial is for a security camera brands known as Vizer Camera which is based in Thailand. This commercial employee regular people and the emotional effect it has on the audience are astounding.

By nature, human beings are emotional creatures. Businesses use a variety of techniques to appeal to consumer emotions. Advertisers take the time to carefully choose every detail, including the tone, lighting, colour scheme and mood the advertisement sets.

Hope you have all seen the Budweiser ad at start of the blog. Budweiser is a beer brand. All though the ad never mentions about the beer, the commercial has emotional appeal that makes it hard to forget the brand. The main idea is to engage the audience in emotional appeal that enables the brain to process more information than a rational commercial. Pringle and Field attribute this split to our brain’s ability to process emotional input without cognitive processing, as well as our brain’s more powerful recording of emotional stimuli.

According to Institute of Practitioners in advertising (IPA), conducted a study to analyse the profitability boost of campaigns which relied primarily on emotional appeal vs. those which used rational persuasion and information. IPA compared about 1400 case studies of successful advertisement over past three decades. The results shows that Campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) with only rational content, and those that were purely emotional did a little better (31% vs 26%) those that mixed emotional and rational content.

Marketing isn’t rocket science, but it is neuroscience. We feel first and think second. Any decision is made up of thousands of micro-decisions and a huge number of these will be sub-conscious. Therefore, longer-term campaigns that use concise and emotive messaging that appeals to our subconscious mind will be most effective. Adding an emotional context to your marketing will not just make your campaigns more touchy-feely, but make them more engaging and effective. Emotion-based ads may be more difficult to create, but the stats say it’s worth the effort.

You just can’t say it. You have to get people to say it to each other.

– James Farley, CMO Ford

It is not what advertising does with the consumer; it is what the consumer does after watching the advertisement.

References:

Ghanadan, H 2015, Beyond Speeds and Feeds: The Impact of Emotion in Product and Brand Marketing, The Linus Group, retrieved on 01 September 2015, < http://www.thelinusgroup.com/beyond-speeds-and-feeds-the-impact-of-emotion-in-product-and-brand-marketing/&gt;

Neil Patel and Ritika Puri n.d, The complete guide to understand customer psychology chapter-2, Quicksprout, retrieved 30 August 2015, <http://www.quicksprout.com/the-complete-guide-to-understand-customer-psychology-chapter-2/&gt;

Schwab, D 2015, Keeping Up With the Evolving World of Celebrity Endorsement, Forbes, retrieved on 08 September 2015, <http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2015/06/27/keeping-up-with-the-evolving-world-of-celebrity-endorsement/>.

Roger Dooley, Emotional Ad Works Best, Neuromarketing, retrieved on  01 September 2015, < http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/emotional-ads-work-best.htm&gt;