Why Emotional Messages Beat Rational Ones
Settling the Debate: 'Soft Sell' Can Reduce Price Sensitivity, Create an Enduring Sense of Brand Differentiation
by Hamish Pringle and Peter Field
Published: March 02, 2009
Hamish Pringle
Peter Field
Ever since the DDB creative revolution in the 1960s, debate has raged about the best kind of messaging for building profitable brands. On the one hand, devotees of the "hard sell," or persuasion-based communications, argue that facts and rational arguments sell products and services best. On the other hand, devotees of the "soft sell" contend that brands that can inspire strong emotional responses in consumers and create true engagement can transform businesses, turning the tables even on bigger competitors. In recent times the tide has begun to turn in favor of emotional engagement, with some high-profile converts at Procter & Gamble, but the argument is far from over.
So when we sat down to write our book, "Brand Immortality" -- a manual on how to keep brands healthy in the long term -- we knew this would be one of the key issues to address. Our primary data source is the U.K.'s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Effectiveness Awards, which were founded in 1980. The book's analyses are based upon the accumulated learning from 880 case studies from the U.K. national and international competition.
The cases cover two recessions and the occasional market wobble, so we can distinguish between strategies for the good times and the bad. By comparing the case studies that generated the largest business effects with those that generated less impressive effects, we have been able to explore which marketing inputs tend to promote success and which do not. We can also see how this varies during the life cycle of market categories, from birth and growth to maturity and decline.
What the data show us is that emotional campaigns are almost twice as likely to generate large profit gains than rational ones, with campaigns that use facts as well as emotions in equal measure fall somewhere between the two.
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