Imagine that you’re driving down a country road and you see a homespun, handmade cardboard sign that reads “Fresh Eggs. $2.99 per dozen.” If you enjoy a good omelet, you might be tempted to pull off the road and buy some eggs. You get in your car and continue down the same road and come upon another handmade cardboard sign that reads “Flying Lessons.” Most likely, few of us would take advantage of that opportunity.

This is because what you say often matters much less than how you say it. Advertising “flying lessons” on a cardboard sign is simply the wrong way to deliver that message, no matter how skilled the pilot teacher.

Experienced communications professionals know that every decision we make is ultimately an emotional – not rational – decision. Otherwise, no one would every buy a Porsche or shop at Tiffany.

This isn't to say we don't have logical reasons for making purchases. Once the emotional decision has been made, a Porsche owner can defend it with convincing reasons. However, none of them have anything to do with the real reasons for buying the car.

Neurologist Donald Calne puts it this way: “The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.”

Brands = Emotion

One could argue, in fact, that the very essence of a brand is emotional. Products may be tangible, but brands are intangible. Saatchi & Saatchi has built a global following for its concept of “Lovemarks,” which argues that the most powerful bands are “wrapped in mystery.” Products have buyers but brands have followings. Products present an argument, but successful brands tell a story. That’s emotion at work.

As evidence of the power of a brand, consider how consumers are willing to pay 30% more for a brand of premium-priced bottled water. Or vodka, if you prefer. A British newspaper recently reported that a man named Harvey Conroy made tens of millions of pounds producing vodka in a rat-infested distillery that they then passed off as well-known brands, selling it to clubs and storesⁱ. The buyers of this cheap imitation were buying not the product but rather the brand, as apparently no one could taste the difference. (It would be equally hard to argue that one can taste the difference between tap water and Evian water, which sells for a 10,000x premium.) In virtually every category, we make our purchases based on how we feel about what we’re buying, not what we think.

Research in the insightful book Predicting Market Success supports this point of view:

In light of today’s commoditization of virtually everything, the consumer decision process is driven more and more by emotional elements and values than by rational ones. We calculate that 70 percent of decision making is emotional.

Better results from emotion-based work in every category

The impressive work of British ad execs Les Binet and Peter Fields shows conclusively that emotional campaigns sell harder than rational campaigns on all business metrics, including the most important one: profits. They reached their conclusions based on the study of over 880 successful marketing campaigns extending from 1979 to 2006.ⁱⁱ

Binet says that marketers’ obsession with rational product messages is completely misguided. Writing with Sarah Carter in Admap, he says “Campaigns that contain little or no product message, but work instead by appealing to our emotions turn out to be twice as effective as conventional ‘message’ advertising.”ⁱⁱⁱ

A tale of two theories

In the U.K. especially, there has been a long-standing debate about two basic theories of how advertising works. One theory, that of “High Involvement Processing,” asserts that consumers read and view advertising with a relatively high level of attention, carefully weighing and comparing various competitive claims of the advertised products and services. The competing theory, “Low Involvement Processing,” asserts that consumers pay only passing, cursory attention to commercial messages and therefore ads only have the effect of producing unconscious feelings about the brand, not conscious opinions.

One of the chief advocates of the low involvement theory, Robert Heath, preaches that “brand decisions are driven more by intuition than by reason.”^iv Increasingly the evidence supports this theory. Hence headlines like this one in a recent issue of Advertising Age: “Why Marketers Are Redefining Growth and Revisiting Emotional Messages to Connect.”^v

Why this matters and what to do about it

This power of emotion is why advertising agencies, design firms, and other members of the creative services industry are so indispensible to manufacturers.

While most experienced agency executives understand the role and power of emotion, most don’t fully appreciate the incredible value this brings to agency-client relationships. Being able to craft powerful emotional concepts and messages is something clients really can’t do for themselves – they lack the skills, talent, objectivity, and artistry. The people who know how to leverage the power of emotion – the media artists in our business – are agency-side, not client-side.

This is important for agencies to understand as they seek to better monetize their services. Any moderately-talented in-house marketing department can produce fact-packed sales sheets. That’s why clients are so shocked by the idea of paying an agency $175/hour for that kind of work. But sales sheets don’t build brands. Big, emotional ideas do. And that’s squarely in the agency wheelhouse.

In economics terms, agencies have created a system that delivers them the worst of both worlds. For low-value work like sales literature they ask too much (more than the perceived value to the client) and for high-value work like insight-driven campaigns and programs, they ask too little.

As Ignition has written before, agencies must understand how they create value before they can begin to do a better job of capturing value. You don’t sell your services, you don’t sell deliverables, and you certainly don’t sell your time. You sell successful marketplace outcomes, and you should get paid for it.

A Short History of the Two Brains: Rational and Emotional

While advertising has been around ever since people traded pigs for wheat, our understanding of the left and right brains is as recent as the last few decades. And its impact on our understanding of advertising has been formidable.

The right brain -- which controls intuitive thought -- actually existed in humans first, millions of years ago. Living the simple life of gatherers, it's really all we needed to get along. The right brain even provided the thinking ability needed for an occasional hunting expedition, since throwing a rock or spear at the right speed and angle is really an intuitive process.

But then a remarkable thing happened. As hunting became more important, the human brain began to develop the ability to reason. It was no longer enough to know how to throw the spear -- humans needed the ability to out-wit their prey. The left brain rose to power, which means that today we can not only throw spears, we can plot their trajectory, velocity, and estimated time of arrival.

As a result, each of us literally has two different kinds of brains. The left brain is our logical, rational side. It works with information -- numbers, letters, and words -- in a sequential way. On the other hand, the right brain deals with intuition and emotion. It works with images, concept, and ideas.

While we all have elements of both brains, most of us are dominated more by one than the other. We all know people who are essentially "scientists" or essentially "artists."

Which brings us back to advertising. Which kind of person creates the best advertising -- left-brained or right-brained? The secret to successful messaging isn't just to get inside a person's head -- it's to get inside their heart. Again, research shows that messages that feature psychological benefits are almost always more effective than those with only rational benefits.

In other words, the rational promise "This detergent gets clothes clean and white" becomes much more meaningful when you also imply that your mother-in-law will have a better opinion of you.

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