Companies use the element of emotion when advertising their products or services as it is likely to make them more desirable and lead to increased sales figures. Although it depends what kind of emotion is being used to sell a product. There are generally six core emotions that people recognise and associate with their daily lives. These are:
Happy
Sad
Afraid
Disgusted
Angry
Surprised
The way a product is promoted influences the way the target audience feel about it and imagine the kind of emotions they will feel when they consume or use the product. If a product is advertised using a smily face or in an advert where the people using it are smiling, this is likely to make it more sellable as people will believe they will get that feel good factor when they use or consume it.
This in turn influences the way the products target audience behave as more people will want to feel good about themselves than not. If the same product was marketed using a sad or angry face, this wouldn’t sell as well as when the product is being marketed using a smily face proving that there is a strong link between emotion i.e. the way people feel about particular products and the numbers that are used or sold in a market place.
1) Happy
Brands want to be associated with smiling, laughing, happy customers, and positivity has been shown to increase sharing and engagement. A study in 2010 of the most-emailed New York Times articles found that emotional articles were shared more often, and positive posts were shared more than negative ones.
The most-shared ad of last year — and of all time — was Android’s Friends Furever, showing clips of unlikely and undeniably cute animal friends.
When Coca-Cola recently changed its tagline from “Open Happiness” to “Taste the Feeling,” it maintained its focus on happy images of people connecting and engaging one another, such as the below ad showing the bond between siblings.
adverts which turn people into into a blubbering, emotional wreck are more likely to question people’s emotional stability or mental state and this wouldn’t be a good image or profile for any product to have as it would decrease the sales figures for that product and more than likely reinforce any negative stereotypes which may be associated with it.
In the past few years, there has been an increasing number of companies that have used inspirational or moving adverts to sell their products or services. MetLife Hong Kong produced this heartbreaking ad featuring a daughter who describes all the things she loves about her dad, yet the story breaks down when she also describes all the ways he lies to her.
For the Sochi Olympic Games in 2014, P&G continued its theme of recognizing mothers and their unwavering support.
Fear could also be used to sell products as it would give that particular product an element of survival i.e. someone would use it if they were in danger or needed to get away from something or someone in order to survive. This would have a very intense effect on the target audience as more people in the world want to stay alive than die. An example of this could be an advert for a new kind of face mask which is meant to protect people better during the current Covid 19 pandemic. Since everyone wants to get back to our normal way of life when there were no restrictions on what we can or can’t do, they are likely to do what ever they can and take the necessary precautions in order to help it happen.
