Emotions in Advertising

A Story by amandasmith13

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There is a tendency among companies to market their products by promoting the rational elements of their products. They do so by focusing on facts such as functions, pricing and features. Unfortunately, this style of marketing does not create an emotional connection between the customer and the product as facts are rarely able to create brand loyalty (Cope, 2017).

The notion of building an emotional connection between an individual and a brand was introduced by Marlboro in 1954 (Hafez & Ling, 2005). Marlboro had to switch their advertising campaign following studies that found links between smoking and lung cancer. Competing tobacco companies continued advertising through product-oriented approaches whereas Marlboro innovated by tying the brand to a lifestyle.

Without realizing it, Marlboro had changed advertising forever with the introduction of lifestyle advertising. Lifestyle advertising happens when a brand tries to sell a feeling, identity or image rather than a product (Osman, 2017). This method has proved so effective that Marlboro was able to increase its market share from just owning 1% of the market to being the fourth largest cigarette company in the world within a year.

Another company which has been extremely successful in invoking emotions from their advertising campaigns is Coca-Cola. The company's most recent marketing campaign is their "Taste the Feeling" campaign which seeks to integrate their different products under a singular marketing campaign. This campaign looks to extend the iconic appeal of the brand across their highly varied product offering. The campaign seeks to bring the idea that drinking a Coca-Cola will be able to bring joy and to make everyday moments more special (Moye, 2016).

In conclusion, many successful marketing campaigns possess similarities. The similarity that these extremely successful campaigns have is that they tend to focus on tying the product that they intend to sell to an emotion rather than to focus on rational elements.