DMN3 Blog

There is a dichotomy of thought on whether rational or emotional advertising appeals result in increased sales. Research studies indicate that it depends…

If you are a marketing professional, you should know that emotions are a large part of why people behave a certain way. That includes why people buy or don’t buy a product or service. An accepted axiom in marketing is that consumers buy on emotion and justify the purchase with rational reasons.

A marketing nirvana is conceiving a marketing message that is effective in creating:

• Awareness among unaware consumers
• Preference for your product or service among undecided consumers
• Positive reinforcement among those already positively predisposed to your product or service
• Conversion among those negatively predisposed to your product or service
• Motivation for consumers to take action regarding the purchasing decision

I’m not aware of any rational or emotional advertising appeal or combination thereof that has achieved all of these goals in one message.

In fact, what works for one goal may actually hurt your efforts with another. If advertising were simple you wouldn’t need professionals such as DMN3.

When and why advertising works has mystified many marketing professionals. The reason is that it is difficult to run controlled studies on the impact of advertising parameters on actual sales.

Internet advertising and the analytics available today to test various advertising appeals provides us with better data for this particular medium. It still doesn’t always answer why it works.

The old adage of “Half of my advertising budget is wasted…I just don’t know which half” has been around for decades.  Unfortunately, marketing research studies have often given conflicting results regarding the “rational” versus “emotional” argument for advertising message appeals.

I suspect that the reason is that consumers, markets and products vary widely. Awareness, market maturity, predisposition, level of involvement and other factors influence how a consumer responds to advertising messages.

Add to these factors the fact that consumers are also very different as to how they arrive at decisions. That’s why it’s so important to understand your customer. Good customer insight is fundamental to good marketing. I’ve written a number of posts on this subject. You can find them here:

Social Media: Do You Know the Social Technographic Profile of Your Customers?

Customer Insight: Marketing Research You Should Be Doing

Customer Insight: Why a Little Research Pays You Big Dividends

Marketing: It All Begins with Understanding Your Customer

All of the above variables explain why is it is so difficult to design research studies on the impact of different marketing appeals on sales.

That said, there have been a number of marketing research studies that examine the impact of rational versus emotional advertising appeals. While some of the findings are conflicting, there are some generalizations that can be gleamed from it.

The variables for which we can make some generalizations regarding effectiveness of rational versus emotional advertising appeal effectiveness include:

• Market Maturity
• Predisposition
• Level of Involvement

Based on the marketing research available to us, there are marketing appeal preferences that have been found to be more effective, given these variables.

In my next post, I will give you my take on what the research says about rational versus emotional advertising appeals for the above variables.

Stay tuned…