Emotional advertising connects brands with audiences in a personal, human way. It’s a technique that dates back years, but has been used a significant amount over the past couple of years, particularly during the pandemic. In this article, you will learn what emotional advertising is, plus our top emotional marketing strategies, how they work, and effective emotional advertising examples.

Emotional marketing refers to advertising efforts that play on an emotion to make the audience notice, remember, share and take a more involved action like donate or buy. Emotional marketing can tap into emotions such as happiness, humour, sadness, anger or fear to elicit a consumer response. The idea behind emotional marketing is that it helps people to decide with their hearts, which is said to have more influence on decision making than their minds. Not only that, but emotion and memory are linked, so your audience has a higher tendency to remember your brand and the content.

In advertising, emotional strategies are used to stimulate the emotional triggers that influence how we make decisions. Content that evokes a strong emotional response is twice as likely to be shared or interacted with. Traditionally emotional advertising was about making people cry - the pandemic saw lots of this with nearly every other brand talking about community or togetherness and of course, the sad piano music. This video showcases it well.

Here at Don’t Panic, we always recommend flipping the traditional ‘think-feel-do' model so that content creates an emotional reaction, whether that be humour, a sense of injustice, shock and so on. We believe that you need to encourage people to feel something before you can get them to think about your product, company or service, or take action. The type of emotion used in your content will depend on your brand tone of voice and the message and there are various strategies you can use to build an emotional connection.

Emotional appeal advertisingputs the consumer first, and seeks to connect with the audience on a deeper level and generate an emotional connection with the brand.If you don’t know your audience, how will you know what kind of content they’ll respond to best? How will you know which emotion to target to elicit the best, most valuable response for both them and you? You want to evoke an emotion that resonates with their pain points or general desires. It’s important to understand where your audience are; what cultural touchpoints are relevant to them and what they will resonate with. Researching your audience will better inform your marketing decisions and eliminate any reason for consumers to go elsewhere.

Narratives and storytelling engage consumers’ subconscious and create an emotional connection with the brand and the story. Storytelling has a unique power to create a lasting impact on us. When we hear a story that resonates with us, it boosts feelings of trust, compassion and empathy. Because of this, stories have the unique ability to build connections, making it more likely that consumers will stick around to engage with the content on a deeper level and share.

Not only are the yearly ads a viral sensation, but John Lewis has married the ads to a particular time of year when people are at their most giving. Using emotional storytelling during this time to advertise its products effectively taps into the consumer’s Christmas.

Humour has an important role to play in effective advertising, particularly in an age where sad ‘togetherness’ ads have taken precedence. In trying times funny ads are a relief from all the trauma and are likely to be well received. It's a breath of fresh air to see content that entertains. Laughter is a powerful way to build a connection to a brand and good humor stimulates the parts of the brain which are responsible for memorising information, making your ad more memorable.If you’re keen to hear more on humour in advertising, our founder Joe Wade wrote a few words in The Drum here.

So, those are our top tips on executing emotional advertising. Using an emotional approach in advertising has the potential to improve the way consumers think and interact with your brand, but in order to achieve it you must plan your strategy carefully.

1. Taking small steps to humanise the campaign can lead to huge gains for your brand.
2. Knowing your audience is key in understanding how to capture their emotions - you need to encourage them to feel something before asking them to care about your brand and take action.
3. Humour is a powerful way to build a connection. In a sea of worthy ads, make the case for a little more humour.

If you’re looking to incorporate emotional advertising into your marketing strategy or want to learn more about emotional advertising effectiveness get in touch with one of our specialists here or, read more about our engagement strategy here and case studies here.