Emotions and Advertising

Creating an emotional response is incredibly effective in advertising. Against the important, hard business success metrics of sales and profit, campaigns with emotion and fame outperform more rational/information led approaches across the board. There are many theories about how advertising works, but the general consensus across all modern theories is that emotions are at the heart of the relationship we have with brands. They influence our conscious decisions and drive our nonconscious decisions.

Research from the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) in the UK, has shown that emotive and famous campaigns generate the largest business effects.  This was the case even in supposedly highly rational categories.

Thinkbox’s ‘TV Nation’ work showed that TV ads were by far the most likely to make people feel emotional, and creating an emotional response is incredibly effective in advertising. The results of this large survey found that TV is far and away the platform upon which people say they are most likely to find advertising that will make them feel emotional, make them laugh, that they like, that they trust and that will be memorable.

That is because TV is an experience: it has premium quality content, which provides high levels of viewer engagement and attention as well as level of receptivity and viewing time to allow for engaging, compelling storytelling. It affords brands the time and space to create a beginning, middle and end, build tension and resolution, triumph or loss in their advertising across all types of screens and devices.