This third post on types of advertising appeals covers rationality and emotions.
If you missed the first two posts, you can access them below:

Types of Advertising Appeals 1
Types of Advertising Appeals 2

People don’t buy based on rational thought. They buy for emotional reasons. Then they justify their purchasing decision with rational thought. However, both are important types of advertising appeals.

Types of Advertising Appeals: Rational

Rationality is an important advertising appeal because advertisements should provide enough information for people to justify what they want emotionally.

But with the Internet, many advertisements only hint at rational reasons for buying. Then they send perspective customers to a Web site to get more information. People who need more rational justification will go to the site and get it.

When people decide to buy a product because they want it, they will often then seek information to decide which brand to buy. Many will also check reviews of products online.

For example, I have several analog cameras so I put off buying a digital one for some time. I finally decided to buy one because I wanted one. But I justified it by telling myself it would be easier to use in my online business.

Once I decided to buy a digital camera, I went online to check reviews and read many. Then I found a site that convinced me to buy a Canon. It showed multiple photos of the same image taken by different cameras. So I was able to actually see the differences in camera quality.

I made the decision based on emotion, justified it with logic, and then sought information to determine the best camera to buy. What you can learn from my experience is that rational thought is a type of advertising appeal. But it’s most effectively used to justify an emotional desire for the product and to provide information that positions your brand.

Types of Advertising Appeals: Emotional

Most types of advertising appeals are based on emotions. For example, of the appeals covered in my first and second posts on “types of advertising appeals”, all four are emotional:

Fear is an emotion. We all fear something and spend time and money to lesson our fears.

Humor relates to the emotional need to have fun and to enjoy life. Laughing is more than physiological. It’s an emotional release that we all need in order to stay healthy.

Sex is a basic physiological and emotional need. Itinvolves many emotions from the need for love and intimacy to self-esteem.

Music fills an aesthetic and emotional need for beauty and pleasure. The type of music that we prefer relates to the emotion of belonging.

Scarcity, which I’ll cover in tomorrow’s post, appeals to our emotional need to be included and not to miss out on something good.

Outside of the rational appeal, most types of advertising appeals are emotional.

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Posted 8-28-08: Types of Advertising Appeals 3

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 6:13 am and is filed under Advertising.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.