Why Emotional Messages Beat Rational Ones

Advertising Age, 2 March 2009
There has been a debate between ‘hard sell’ and ‘soft sell’ ever since the DDB creative revolution in the 1960s. Though recently the tide has begun to turn in favor of emotional engagement, with some high-profile converts at Procter & Gamble, the argument is far from over.
Therefore the authors included this topic as a key issue in their book, "Brand Immortality" -- a manual on how to keep brands healthy in the long term. Their primary data source is the U.K.'s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Effectiveness Awards, which were founded in 1980. The book's analyses are based upon the accumulated learning from 880 case studies from the U.K. national and international competition.
The data shows that emotional campaigns are almost twice as likely to generate large profit gains as rational ones, with campaigns that use facts as well as emotions in equal measure fall somewhere between the two. They also help in reducing price sensitivity.
Emotional campaigns also help to create a sense of differentiation for the brand, one that can endure and will not disappear with the next product launch from a competitor.
Fame campaigns are a higher level of emotional engagement and they get the brand talked about. They amplify the strengths of "ordinary" emotional engagement -- especially the ability to reduce price.
The author’s analyses also show that emotional strategies continue to work well during downturns, although there is a need to match the competitive price and promotional messages that proliferate during these times. Nothing can guarantee brand immortality, especially in a recession, but powerful, emotionally engaging campaigns are proven to help. In addition, they say that emotional engagement increases in importance during the life cycle of market sectors, as persuasion-based strategies progressively lose the product differentiation they depend upon. There are very few effective persuasion campaigns in declining categories in the IPA Databank.