Why do you feel like buying a Porsche?

March 5, 2008

Emotions are important to marketers because customers buy products based on emotion, although they use reason to evaluate what products to buy. Exactly what is emotion?

Anyone can give examples of emotions (fear, love, hate, excitement, sadness etc…). Emotions are feelings but not all feelings are emotions (Millward Brown’s Erik Du Plessis). And emotions are shorter in duration than moods, but longer in duration than a facial expression. Emotions are also caused by specific things including chemicals, exercise, eating, shopping etc…(people eat, go shopping or go for a run in order to feel good).

According to Oatley and Jenkins, emotions are defined as follows:

It has been difficult to define emotions and this difficulty continues. We will be rash and start this chapeter with a working definition of a kind that has been gaining acceptance. It goes something like this:

1. An emotion is usually caused by a person consciously or unconsciously evaluating an event as relevant to a conern (a goal) that is important; the emotion is felt as positive when a concern is advanced and negative when a concern is impeded.

2. The core of an emotion is readiness to act and the prompting of plans; an emotion gives priority for one or a few kinds of action to which it gives a sense of urgency - so it can interrupt, or compete with, alternative mental processes or actions. Different types of readiness create different outline relationships with others.

3. an emotion is usually experienced as a distinctive type of mental state, sometimes accompanied or followed by bodily changes, expressions and actions.

The major step forward for science is that a necessary condition for an emotion is the change in readiness for action.

Advertisers therefore take note:

Advertising does not first get attention, and then create an emotion.

Advertising creates an emotion which results in attention.

There have been a recent flurry of advertising from banks in particular that impact on emotion.

Du Plessis asks “Does the fact that there are so many emotions one can name mean that the brain generates so many emotions?” Why have many emotions? Can emotions be boiled down to two simple concepts: pull toward or push away from? The way the limbic system and the amydala work is to act quickly: either attractive or repulsive. What then is the point of multiple emotions?

People pay attention to advertising messages they like (and the same is true for any form of message, web copy, or other form of communication). If you like something you pay more attention to it. Or if you fear something you pay more attention to it. For marketers, there is no worse fate than to be ignored, to make no emotional impact whatsoever.

Professor Antonio Damasio, author of Descartes’ Error, suggests that when we make decisions we fundamentally only use one criterion (even after application of rational thought): How will I feel if I do that?

We can only rely on our past experiences to predict how we will feel after we make a decision and act on it Every decision we make has an emotional outcome, to some degree.

A French play has the following line: “How do I know what I think before I know what I feel?”

There are a larger number of dendrites leading from the limbic area of the brain towards the frontal lobes than there are leading the other way. This suggests that the traffic is largely headed from the area of emotion towards the area of rationality. Emotions can sometimes overpower rationality (as occurs when you act on road rage)

Domasio also hypothesizes that somatic markers highlight visceral sensations when decisions are made - acting on a “gut” feeling. These somatic markers forces you to focus on the negative outcome from your decision - a survival response. Beware! Danger! This allows you to narrow your choices to other less doom-filled options. Positive somatic markers are “beacons of incentive” - do this and you will feel good again. Emotion therefore ASSISTS in the decision making process, and is not in opposition to it.

With thanks to http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/millwardbrown/

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