WHY ARE EMOTIONS INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT IN THE PR WORLD?

We are living in an era of emotion.

According to Nielsen, ads with the best emotional response generate a 23% lift in sales volume. This is supported by recent research released by ‘The Benchmark Series’ from ThinkTV, which showed that ads that generate a strong emotional response are likely to drive a 30% higher sales boost than those that don’t make people feel as strongly, and that ads which provoke a strong reaction attract 16% more attention than those with emotionally weaker messages.

Why have we become such emotional junkies?

Amid digital transformation and the proliferation of digital media, consumers today are confronted by ads and news on all fronts, but particularly from their constant companions — their phone screens. From the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep, we are bombarded with persuasive sales attempts from an increasing number of brands. While around 5,000 messages reach us every day, only 1 to 2% of these reach our conscious.

This is a highly competitive situation for brands and can be overwhelming for consumers. In this context, content needs to do more; it needs to connect consumers with the brand, sell a lifestyle rather than just a product, stand out from the clutter, and reach not only minds but hearts. Emotion has always been used as a tool for getting the consumer’s attention, but as social media breaks down the barriers between consumers and brands, it is becoming more direct and provocative than ever before. Today, brands are using emotional messages to reach consumers on a more meaningful level, and consumers are seeking out emotion-led content to relieve them from the white noise.

What does this mean for the PR world?

In short, it means that we need to be tapping into the consumer thirst for emotion-led content to distinguish our clients from the masses and heighten engagement; however…

Should we be worried about it?

While emotion-led content is important in the communication world, it has the potential to be manipulative and unethical in a number of ways. As brands anxiously scrabble for attention and throw one emotional punch after another, it’s worth slowing down for a second to consider whether misusing emotions could trip brands over in the long run.

In the next part of my blog, I’ll be sharing a few tips on how to create emotion-led content while remaining sensitive and ethical.
 
 

 
 
In the last part of my blog, I discussed why we have become such emotional junkies, what it means for the PR world, and whether we should be worried about it. While we need to use emotion-led content to distinguish our clients from the masses and heighten engagement, we also need to face up to some tricky questions about where to draw the line between engaging and manipulating.

Here are my top five tips on how to get ethical about emotional content in ads and campaigns:

1. Sensitivity: Some emotions are simply off limits, and this is where it’s important to think about sensitivity. There is a huge difference between appealing to human values and exploiting human suffering to pull at heart strings, which is particularly important to bear in mind for any charity or CSR campaigns. Always put yourself in your audience’s shoes.
2. Relevance: Always ensure that your emotional content makes sense in light of your brand’s offering and identity, rather than just using irrelevant emotional messages to boost sales. If the content you are creating does not reflect your brand then you are doing it wrong, and irrelevant emotional ploys are also likely to spark suspicion in consumers.
3. Tone: Any emotional content must be genuine and heartfelt, not preachy or judgemental. We all know how important it is for each brand to create its own tone of voice when it comes to communication, so while being creative and innovative is always good, it is important to stay true to your tone of voice. This allows your target audience to engage with the emotions in a real way, and relate to your main messages and your brand identity.
4. Reason: Emotional content can quickly become sentimental or even outright cheesy, which is not the aim of the game. In fact, at the end of 2017 The American Council of Emotionally Manipulative Advertisers issued a special directive banning ‘cry before you buy’ commercials in response to Windex’s manipulative ‘The Story of Lucy’ campaign. Carefully crafted emotional content is never over-stated — keep it reasonable.
5. Positivity: Negative emotions like guilt, negativity, sadness or shame should never be preyed on by emotion-led content. In fact, ‘Joy Marketing’ has been a major element in the success of campaigns like the ‘Pepsi Generations’ Superbowl campaign, which linked consumers to their past, present and future in a joyful way that created a sense of closeness between the brand, its audience, and their friends and family.

Harnessing the power of emotion is about knowing where to draw the line; engage don’t manipulate, reach out don’t overwhelm, and spread positivity not negativity.

Rima Al Jareh is Senior Account Executive at Cicero & Bernay Public Relations. An independent PR agency headquartered in Dubai and offering new-age public relations consultancy to the UAE and across the MENA region. | www.cbpr.me