Emotional marketing: Does it really work?

What is emotional marketing?

Emotional marketing is a strategy that uses emotions to make connections with consumers. It leverages happiness, fear, sadness, nostalgia, etc. to influence buying decisions and boost brand loyalty.

This type of marketing relies on:

Storytelling: This is about creating compelling narratives that resonate with your audience, mainly their experiences and emotions.
Relatability: You have to align your messaging with your audience’s values, challenges, or pain points to create that emotional bond.
Brand personality: Make sure you’re presenting your brand in a way that feels human, authentic, and emotionally engaging.
Visual and sensory appeal: This means using images, colors, music, design, etc. that evoke strong emotions.
Social proof: A key element of emotional marketing is leveraging testimonials and user-generated content to build trust and connections.

Does emotional marketing work?

The short answer is yes, it works (with a caveat: most of the time). Think about Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, which is meant as a positive message to inspire joy and happiness, or consider any insurance or cybersecurity ads you may have seen, which rely on people’s fears and worries to make them buy a product.

But how exactly does emotional marketing work?

First of all, it triggers decision-making. Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman says that 95% of our buying decisions happen in the subconscious mind. People tend to justify their emotional choices with logic.

Emotional marketing also boosts your brand recall. This means that content that is emotionally charged is more memorable since people can remember how a brand made them feel, even if they don’t recall what was said.

It also improves engagement, since emotional content tends to perform better on social media, generating more comments and shares than purely informational content. The concept of “rage baiting” comes to mind, where people create content specifically to annoy others into commenting and interacting with their brand.

Brands that evoke emotions like happiness, trust, or sadness can create stronger connections to keep people coming back – so, emotional marketing is good for customer retention and brand loyalty.

Emotional branding can also help you justify higher prices, as customers are happier to pay for products that align with their values and emotions.

Pitfalls of emotional marketing

However, while it’s clear emotional marketing has many benefits, it also comes with pitfalls to avoid. For example:

Emotional fatigue

Overusing emotional appeals, especially if you’re attempting to evoke sadness, can desensitize people. On top of this, people might also feel emotionally manipulated – in this case, they might develop a negative perception of your brand.

Concerns with authenticity

With emotional marketing, you also have to be careful when it comes to authenticity. People might consider your campaign insincere or opportunistic, which means appealing to emotions could backfire.

Overall, consumers are savvy and can detect when brands are exploiting emotions instead of being genuine.

Short-lived impact

Relying solely on emotional marketing might be an issue, since these campaigns might generate short-term buzz and engagement but might not translate into a long-term sales plan.

Misaligned with values

Another thing to take into account is that emotional storytelling should align with your core values and mission, and shouldn't feel disconnected, since that can lead to confusion – and you can also lose the trust of your consumers.

Negative emotional associations

Overly dramatic or fear-based campaigns can sometimes create negative associations with your brand. For instance, if you rely heavily on leaving people feeling guilty or anxious, they might become uncomfortable instead of inspired to buy your product or follow your brand.

When emotional marketing backfires

The 2017 Pepsi “Live for Now” campaign with Kendall Jenner is a famous example of emotional marketing gone wrong.

Pepsi created an ad featuring Jenner leaving a glamorous photoshoot to join a crowd of protestors, offering a can of Pepsi to a police officer to diffuse tensions and bring protestors and law enforcement together.

Instead of appealing to their audience, Pepsi was accused of tone-deafness to social issues, co-opting activism for commercial gain, using a celebrity with no known connection to activism (which came across as inauthentic), and mirroring and exploiting real-life events.

Pepsi quickly removed the ad and issued a public apology for “missing the mark”.

How to use emotional marketing effectively

1. Know your audience and their triggers

What makes your audience tick? What are their concerns and pain points? Carry out customer research and identify the key emotions driving their decisions. You can also make use of social listening and surveys. Once you’re ready, segment your audience based on their emotional needs, be it security or nostalgia.

2. Tell good stories

It goes without saying that good storytelling is key to a strong emotional marketing campaign. Use narratives that reflect real-life challenges, successes, and aspirations, and be authentic, so that people can connect with your brand. Incorporate characters, themes, and scenarios your audience can identify with.

For example, every year, Google releases their Year in Search, which highlights the most popular search trends and events of the year. 2024’s edition, like previous years, focused on emotions, driving nostalgia, happiness, and inspiration, just to name a few, to create a story of what the year was all about.

3. Choose an emotion to leverage

If you try to appeal to many different emotions, your message will be diluted. Instead, focus on what you want to achieve. Do you want to inspire action with a happiness-filled video? Do you want to create fear in order to encourage a sense of urgency? Or do you aim to surprise your audience so that you can better capture their attention?

Make sure your emotional triggers are aligned with your customer journey.

4. Consider the visual appeal

Colors, music, and tone should all work together to evoke a specific emotion. Also, images and videos can help tell an emotional story more effectively than just text.

5. Engage with user-generated content

Encourage customers to share their stories and experiences with your brand, and showcase testimonials and personal stories that evoke emotions and build social proof.

6. Choose emotional language

Whether crafting headlines or text to go on a video, make sure you’re choosing emotional language. E.g., instead of “buy now”, try “start your journey today”.

Examples of successful emotional marketing

We already gave you a few emotional marketing examples to inspire you, but here are some more to cement the idea of using emotions in your ads.

Dove

For many years now, Dove has focused on real beauty, and their #TurnYourBack campaign is no exception. It looks at the impact of social media filters on young women’s self-esteem, and encourages people to “turn their back” on unrealistic beauty standards perpetuated by AI filters.

The hashtag reached millions of views on TikTok.

@dove No filter should tell you how to look. 80% of girls are already using filters by the age of 13. It’s no wonder their perception of beauty and their self-esteem are distorted. Help reverse the damage. #TurnYourBack on the Bold Glamour filter and digital distortion. Real beauty is bold. #RealBeautyIsBold #Dove #LetsChangeBeauty #NoDigitalDistortion #BeautyCommunity #SelfEsteem ♬ original sound - Dove Beauty & Personal Care

Heinz and Absolut

Heinz and Absolut collaborated to create a “Tomato Vodka Pasta Sauce” which included a mix of both products. This partnership aimed to generate curiosity and nostalgia (on top of it being innovative and unique), so people became interested in the product and the brands.

1Password and Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds partnered with 1Password to create a funny ad in the football club he co-owns, Wrexham AFC – here, he delivers an unconventional team talk about cybersecurity, instead of the usual pre-game stuff.

The ad was creative while emphasizing the importance of cybersecurity in a fun, lighthearted way. Passwords aren’t the most exciting of topics, but the humor angle made it a memorable ad that helps people recall the brand too.

Specsavers

“Should have gone to Specsavers” is a fun, popular series of ads created by Specsavers to bring awareness to their products with a dash of humor, mainly showcasing people’s poor eyesight and how the company could have prevented the issue.

These ads are relatable, as they use everyday situations like mistaking objects and people, and have a memorable tagline, making it easy for people to recall the brand.

John Lewis

This UK-based department store creates annual Christmas ads that tug at people’s heartstrings, and use love and kindness as emotional hooks.

The ads tend to use popular songs mixed with visual storytelling, such as their “Man on the Moon” ad, where a girl sees an elderly man living on the moon and sends him a gift so he’s not as lonely or isolated (to a cover of Oasis’ Half the World Away).

Despite it being an older ad, it’s a testament to its emotional appeal that many people still remember it by name. Last year’s ad shows a woman on a last-minute quest to find the perfect gift for her sister.

In short

Yes, emotional marketing works, but only when it’s authentic, relevant, and includes a deep understanding of your audience.

Make sure your campaigns are genuine and aligned with brand identity, balance emotional appeals with rational elements (i.e., the benefits of your product), and be aware of feedback, so you can tweak and improve your emotional campaigns if they’re not working.

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