This third post on types of advertising appeals covers rational and emotional appeals.

If you missed the first two posts in this series, you can access the first one below:

Types of Advertising Appeals 1 – Fear And Humor

People don’t buy based on rational thought. They buy for emotional reasons. Then they justify their purchasing decisions 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 rational 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 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. It involves 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.

So most types of advertising appeals are emotional.

To read the next post in my series on types of advertising appeals, click the link below:

Types of Advertising Appeals 4: Scarcity

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Posted 8-28-08:
Types of Advertising Appeals 3
Rational And Emotional Appeals