Thinking Rationally About Emotion

This article is an abridged version of ‘Thinking Rationally about Emotion’ by Epoch’s Strategy Director, Alex Murrell

Introduction

In advertising, using emotion is entirely logical.

In The Long and The Short of It Les Binet and Peter Field analysed 30 years of IPA effectiveness award submissions and found emotional campaigns outperformed their rational counterparts on every brand and business metric that was measured.

But why? Here’s Robert Heath, in his book Seducing the Subconscious:

“Everyone in the ad industry agrees that emotion is important to advertising. Quite why it is important is the subject of considerable debate.”

This article argues that emotional communications are more effective because they attract more attention, create stronger memories and are more likely to be shared.

Emotional ads garner more attention

Studies have found that attention is directed by emotion.

We evolved in environments where our survival relied upon our ability to distinguish resources from threats. The two, however, are not of equal importance. If we couldn’t find food for another hour, we’d be ok. If we didn’t spot a predator, we wouldn’t have another hour to keep looking.

So we evolved two ‘modes’ of attention. We use slow and deliberate ‘active attention’ to search for resources and fast and automatic ‘passive attention to survey for threats.

To test this, researchers exposed people to two 3x3 grids of images. One grid featured eight non-threatening images (e.g. flowers) and one threatening image (e.g. a snake). In the second grid the proportions reversed.

Participants proved faster in detecting snakes among flowers than flowers among snakes. Their passive attention was at work. The researchers concluded that we are neurologically wired to give attentional priority to emotional.

But does this apply to advertising?

In a study by Professor Karen Nelson-Field PhD and ThinkTV Australia , subjects were exposed to over 18,000 adverts and used a grid of 16 emotions to label their response while eye-tracking measured the attention each ad received. Ads that illicitde a strong emotional response received 16% more attention than those that did not. This effect may not be as large as our ability to spot a snake in the grass, but it is significant nonetheless.

Emotional ads create stronger memories

As a child Stanford University neuroscientist David Eagleman climbed onto the roof of a half-finished adobe house. But as he stepped onto the newly laid tar paper, it tears. He reaches forward, the floor floats up, and his body rotates weightlessly. Eagleman remembers a moment of absolute calm and eerie mental acuity. In moments of great danger time seems to slows down and our ability to think speeds up.

Phil Barden , Managing Director of Decode, provides a succinct answer to why this happens:

“If we are in a state of high arousal, our attention span increases and our senses are sharpened to be able to deeply process the object that triggers that arousal.”

When we find ourselves in a dangerous situation (like spotting the snake in the grass) all of our cognitive resources focus on the stimulus to ensure our safety. This ‘deep processing’ of emotional stimulus happens in the amygdala, our brain’s ‘emotion centre’, which is located next to our hippocampus, our ‘memory centre’. The result is that emotionally stimulating experiences forge stronger memories.

Barden explains how this relates to advertising:

“To survive, and to optimise future decisions and actions, it was especially important to store and remember those objects and situations that evoked a strong emotional response. Hence, we are more likely to store episodes (e.g. TVCs) and objects (e.g. brands) if they are delivered with high arousal.”

Emotional advertising embeds our brands in the minds and memories of our audiences. Or, to put it another way, more affective advertising is more effective.

Emotional messages are more widely shared

For hundreds of thousands of years stories have been used to share information, as they allow people to remember information more effectively than facts alone.

But not all information is worth sharing.

In the early 20th century, the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt argued that emotions could be plotted along two axes: valence (positive to negative) and arousal (strong to weak). But which quadrants elicit the most social sharing?

To find out Jonah Berger , Marketing Professor at Wharton, ran a series of studies. In one, Berger split subjects into two groups: a control group who was asked to sit still and another group who was told to jog on the spot (which boosts physiological arousal). Both groups then read a neutral article and could share it with anyone they wanted.

Here’s Berger:

“Compared with sitting still, running in place increased the percentage of people who e-mailed the article from 33% to 75%.”

In another study, Berger coded almost 7,000 articles published in The New York Times based on the emotional grid. Berger then calculated the likelihood that articles triggering each emotion had of appearing in the publication's “most emailed” list. Again, more emotional articles were more likely to be shared.

The transmission of highly emotive information improved the survival rates of those in our group. And in turn, of ourselves as well.

Conclusion

Emotional advertising is effective because it attracts more attention, creates stronger memories and is more likely to be shared.

In their book Unlocking Profitable Growth, System1 push this to its extreme.

“If you feel more, you buy more.”

But despite the evidence, most advertising doesn’t make the most of emotion.

System 1’s methodology codes emotional responses to TV adverts. In 47% of ads in the USA, and 52% of ads in the UK, System 1 found the dominant response was neutrality.

If you’re a strategist, this should make you angry. But if you’re a marketer it should make you happy. Because this represents a significant opportunity for you and your brand. Half of your competitors are not benefitting from the triple win of emotional advertising.

So it’s time to embrace emotion. It’s time to uncover the effectiveness of the affective. It’s time to get attention, get remembered and get shared.

Because if you want your brand to move the needle, you first have to move the people.