Emotional marketing: what it is and how it works

Ever heard of emotional marketing? Yet it is a

‘science’ that is gaining ground in commerce of all kinds, as it refines sales techniques by leveraging emotions.

‘Even the most determined of consumers is misled and devoured by irrationality at the time of purchase, becoming predictably irrational,’ wrote Dan Ariely, a professional behavioral economist and University Professor of Psychology. In fact, it has been estimated that over 90% of purchases take place under the emotional pressure and not under the rational one. Although we like to think otherwise. Why so? ‘The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action, reason to draw conclusions’. Word of Donald Calne, Canadian neurologist, now over eighty and author of a beautiful book on human reason and behavior. The first to talk about emotional marketing was Bernd H. Schmitt, a professor of international business at Columbia University. A new approach to the consumer, therefore, given that emotional marketing must give ‘a memorable experience that the customer must experience, one that exceeds his expectations’. In other words, marketing must be able not only to anticipate the consumer’s unconscious desires, but also to satisfy them.

Neuroscience has found that emotions play a vital role in decision making. As fundamental as the rational system, which, however, is slower in perfecting a decision, given that it is conscious and controlled and does not move on the emotional wave. Hence, catching a potential buyer by leveraging emotions is the task of emotional marketing. Many purchases occur on impulse, others less so, but it has now been established that the emotions in the purchasing decision-making process do matter. The password, therefore, becomes: to generate emotional triggers through the advertising words. What are emotional triggers and how are they used by marketers in contemporary advertising strategies?

At least a dozen of them have been identified and they rely on deep, not very rational emotions: Fear  Confidence  The sense of belonging  The sense of guilt  Instant gratification  Lack of time (which goes hand in hand with the  previous one) The desire for competition  The desire to be trendy / to be fashionable  The desire to be a leader  The value (for example of the product and of the  money, an emotional trigger better known with the formula ‘satisfied or reimbursed’).