Emotion will give your marketing message a real kick – don’t be afraid of digging deep!
It seems that for once John Lewis has got the tone of its last Christmas TV commercial spot on. If you haven’t seen it, it depicted a GenX male putting on a vinyl record that took him back to a youth spent on the dance floor. As he’s grooving away his son comes into view. In short, his son shows his love through the gift of retro-vinyl.
Cue side eyed sniffs from parents across the nation – not only does it appeal to that wistfulness of a generation teetering on the brink of middle age, but also the often inaccessible affection of their teenage children. John Lewis had struck a masterclass in appealing to the emotions of more than one generation of family.
The emotion powerhouse in marketing
Emotion – probably the most important element of getting your message across. Emotion is the element that connects you with your listener. It can evoke a visceral reaction that goes beyond logic. It brings relatability. Understanding.
That’s not to say that a more practical message is not important – time and place is everything. But even the driest of messages can be elevated by injecting a degree of emotion – be that humour, humility, pride – all wrapped up in a job well done.
To really grasp why emotion is so important in business and marketing, let’s look at the root of the word itself. Emotion literally means ‘energy in motion’ – from the Latin ‘emovere’ – to move outwards. By generating that energy, you move someone towards an action – that action being to make a purchase.
But it can also lead to a negative action – or not making a purchase. An evoked emotion can also repel, incite disappointment or disgust, divide an audience. While this in itself is not a bad thing (you can’t please all the people all the time), it highlights the importance of knowing your target audience inside out, and focusing on messaging that is specific to them. The alternative is a messaging that is so bland and vanilla that you fade into obscurity.
Revealing the relatability
I once attended a week long public speaking course. A significant part of that course was spent on crafting your ‘story’, developing a narrative which would allow you to connect emotionally with your audience, learning the techniques that would draw out those within the audience to listen with empathy and intention, who would be able to relate to your own experiences and choose to come along for the ride.
Personally, it was the most difficult part of the entire process. Coming from the uniquely British ‘stiff upper lip’ background, I found it a profoundly difficult process to put my own experiences front and centre. Which is probably why I am so good within the PR profession – as a natural empath, the telling of other’s stories and recrafting them into something relatable is a part of the process that I enjoy the most.
Think about the emotions that might drive your audience to a buying decision. Are they driven by fear, pride, safety, happiness. This is not just a remit for those selling direct to the consumer – it works just as well in the business to business world that many of you operate within. It’s simply a case of reframing those emotions within a different context.
Deepening the narrative
Understanding the emotion and using this knowledge to build stories around your marketing message will immediately allow you to approach all your marketing with a much clearer picture of what you are offering your customer base – whether you are creating efficiencies, securing a family home or adding value to a property. The emotion is the story, and one which people have been buying into for generations. How powerful is that!
I’m pretty good with my emotions if you need some guidance!
