Successful advertising often plays on consumer emotions. So, what’s the best way to do that?
According to Martin Jones, a social media marketing manager with Cox Communications: “According to research in a University of Indiana study, our six primary emotions are primarily what determines viral behavior and reactions. Here are a few recommendations for creating content taking the six (surprise, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, and anger) primary emotions into consideration:
- Surprise – Surprise is the single common element of viral content. However; because surprise alone cannot guarantee success, it needs to be combined with other emotions.
- Fear — Fear is a great motivator and it causes people to take action. When using fear within your content, exercise caution, you’re likely to receive a mixed response. To increase your odds of creating a successful piece of content also include possible solutions that solve the fear-causing problem you’ve presented.
- Joy — Positive, uplifting, inspirational content will almost always become more viral than negative. If your content can make people laugh, or smile back at the computer screen, chances are they will also share the content.
- Sadness – Sadness is usually a response to unfortunate events and generally has a low chance of going viral. There are the exception to this including high-profile deaths, entertainment gossip, natural disasters, and other news-type events.
- Anger — Evoking anger is powerful in creating viral content, and by that I don’t mean ‘hostile’ anger. I’m speaking of an emotional response that occurs when someone strongly disagrees with your position or message. Adept copywriters know this and often use it in their headlines to grab the reader’s attention.
- Disgust — Content that evokes disgust may become viral among small groups, but generally does not appeal to the masses and is best to be avoided.”
Click the image to read more from Jones.
Post suggested by KCJ
That’s great, I never used to catergorize while writing copy. This post neatly sums it up for most of the primary emotions used in advertising these days, however one of my favourites is stark sarcasm. It is not primary but yes the advertising industry in India is picking it up.