Emotional Advertisements and their Effects

How Emotion Can Become a Strong Communicator

Oct 26, 2009

Emotional advertising has the basic responsibility to deliver desired information to the targeted audience, by eliciting an appropriate communication effect.

Modern advertising makes the consumer the focus of the marketing process, where products are designed according to consumers' desires. From the viewpoint of a business, advertising is important as it helps to bring new products to the attention of customers. It should strive at being fast enough to make up the cost of the product enwrapping costs for creating, developing, manufacturing and distributing.

The buyer is first exposed to the advertisement through media. The next step is to process one or more element(s) in the advertisement if it is to have an effect. Processing consists of immediate responses to the elements of an advertisement- such as attention, learning, acceptance and emotional responses.

All advertisers have to determine which communication effects (brand associations) need to be established in the prospective buyer's mind in order to cause him or her to take action.

First, the advertiser tries to create / increase category need if it is not already previously established at action-taking strength. Now, to consider a particular brand within the product category, the buyer has to be first aware of it. One of the primary functions of advertising is to create and maintain brand awareness. It occurs through brand recognition and brand recall. In case of recognition, brand is first encountered, then the category need is perceived; whereas in case of recall, need is encountered first, followed by brand recognition. But, this is not enough to induce purchase.

Prospective buyers have to develop a favorable attitude towards the brand before buying. Attitude is a complex communication effect with both logical and emotional components, which can be influenced by communication messages.

Attitudes strongly affect consumer behavior. Marketers use advertising to create favorable attitudes towards the company and its products. Brand attitude is the company's evaluation and expression of inner feelings that reflect whether the consumer is favorably or unfavorably predisposed towards the brand. Attitudes can only be inferred from what people say or how they behave.

Emotions enter into decision making whenever a trade-off is made. When consumers are doing a trade-off, they are considering the values, behind which are emotions. The values reflect what people seek to preserve or enhance and a gap between the expectation and reality arouses emotion. The aroused emotion causes motivation and act as guide to wants. Again, emotional responses can reinforce some values. Whenever there is a perceived threat to values, emotions are created.

An emotion is a complex feeling of mental agitation usually tinged with pleasure or pain, which is excited by some idea and accompanied by expression and strengthened by organic sensations. Emotion compels to action. It causes some internal changes, for which some organic movements are generated. Hence an emotional state, from psychological point of view, has three components: cognitive, affective and conative. Emotions can be primary or secondary. Primary emotions include which are excited by the operation of a single instinct like joy, sadness, anger, fear etc.

The cognition exerts a steering function. Cognitions arising from the situation, as interpreted by experience, provide the framework within which one understands and labels his feelings. It is the cognition, which determines whether the state of arousal will be labeled as 'anger', 'joy', etc.

Emotions intensify wants and desires and intensify motivation. It is not an aberrant element when buying decisions are made but a necessary condition so that the decisions are not continuously postponed.

Emotion as a whole can be a powerful communicator. Copy using psychological appeals to love, hate or fear has great impact.

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