Emotional reporting can influence your advertising

By: monika evers

The emotion your customer experiences will effect the influence of your advertising.

Imagine you are reading a newspaper or watching a documentary on Television and you are quite gripped by the reporting. Could your emotional state of what you are watching or reading influence the effectiveness of the advertising that follows?

Vladas Griskevicius from the University of Minnesota and a team of social scientists have just completed a research project on this topic. They tested the effect various emotional states of viewers had on ads and found the effect was dramatic both ways. Those with the right positioning won more interest. Those with the wrong one, lost influence

In this research, researchers showed participants short clips from either of two movies. “The Shining” which represented something quite fear provoking. The other movie  “Before Sunset” which was a romantic movie. In other sessions participants were asked to read a short stories that evoked the same kinds of emotions as the movie clips. (There was also a control group.)

Immediately, after seeing a series of movie clips or articles, participants were shown an advertisement. There were four ads used in this study. They had been designed to use either one of two different influence positionings namely “scarcity” or “social proof”.

Scarcity is principle of influence where you disclose what is unique or rare about your product or service offering. For example a secret that no one knows that you can share, or a limited supply perhaps.

Social proof is another principle of influence that offers security to prospective buyers from being proven by other purchasers before them. This could be couched in your experience. For example we often refer to having developed and launched over 100 brands, or being number one in Australia in influence. These are both examples of social proof.

In the study one advertisement promoted a Museum where the “social proof” positioning read “Visited by over one million people every year” whereas the “scarcity” positioning read “Stand out from the crowd”.

Alternatively another group was shown a restaurant review where the positioning read “many people gathered there” and it was “a most popular restaurant” (social proof). While the other group were shown reviews that positioned the restaurant as a “one-of-a-kind place that is yet to be discovered by others” (scarcity ).

What the study revealed.

The study clearly showed when people experienced feelings of fear prior to seeing the ads they were more influenced by the advertisements that used social proof as a positioning.

However the opposite was true of those that had feelings of romance. They were drawn to ads  that described features that were unique and scarce.

This has enormous implications for the web, advertisers, marketers, business people and even speakers. Not only do you now have to consider how you position you business or product but also where and when it will be advertised.

The research showed that the effectiveness of your communication relies on the emotion that your readers experience beforehand. Timing is everything if your ad is going to work.

Consider the Yellow Pages. Imagine the emotional states of people wanting to use your services. Buying a kitchen would be more of a dream romance kind of experience and scarcity might prove a better influence positioning. But on the other hand, finding someone at a moments notice like a plumber or personnel may need to use social proof as the influence principle for your positioning.

For those working in management and sales this research should make you consider how you are going to structure your communications.  Spend just a few moments describing a case study, a situation or even another persons's experience to create an right emotional response in your communications might just be a worthwhile thing to consider.

One way of improving the effectiveness of your communication would be to create your own emotional lead in. You could use an emotional story or image to reinforce the positioning of your campaign especially with web pages or email campaigns. Remember, even in writing internet copy. It all depends on the emotions that you create first up, that causes the eventual positioning you must take. Social proof comes off the back of fear. Scarcity on the back of warmth.

Similarly managers could also first understanding and assessing the emotional state of their teams before framing their communications or requests in terms of “social proof” positioning or “scarcity”. For example, consider the current uncertainty created by the GFC. People are uncertain and perhaps fearful of the future so they will be more persuaded and guided by messages that employ the social proof positioning.

Again make sure it is ethical to your business promise and uses the right positioning (scarcity or social proof) to follow.

 

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