A Study on Emotions in Advertising

Evocative Mediums or Evocative Sound?

By Wizard Partner Jane Fraser. 

In a study released in June 2007, The Radio Ad Lab states “an emotional reaction needs to be established before further cognitive processing of an advertising stimulus takes place. Emotions can be considered as the gatekeeper for further advertisement processing”.¹

This study compares the emotional impact of Radio campaigns against the emotional impact of television campaigns. What did they discover? Radio ads have emotional impact on consumers that is equal to that of television ads.

Interesting that this study compares Radio and Television… the two mediums that promulgate their message through sound. Intrusive, invasive sound.

Sound… it bypasses your cognitive thought process to cause your heart to clutch in fear, to stir your soul, to capture your imagination.

What's your first instinct when you hear a sobbing child? A screaming siren…? The voice of someone you love when you thought they were lost…

Roy H. Williams wrote, "Ads that twist our attention away from what we’d been doing are always a bit annoying. This is why ads that get results also get complaints. Learn to ignore complaints from controlling people, or your ads will forever be emasculated.

Were you slightly offended by that last statement? That's exactly the kind of statement that'll get complaints. But it'll also get results."

You can twist attention with print ads or passive media but it is far easier to achieve using sound. (How many times have you ever heard someone say... "I wish the newspaper would stop printing that ad over and over again?)

A strong, wisely crafted message evokes emotion. A strong message delivered through sound intrudes on emotions.

More interesting is that the study compares two mediums that share the same strength.

Why not compare Radio or Television against a passive medium?

Another truism? Most mediums will work, if you use them for what they do best…

It’s just easier to evoke emotion with sound.

¹ Poels, Karolien and Siegfried Dewitte, “How to capture the heart? Reviewing 20 years of emotion measurement in advertising,” Journal of Advertising Research, vol. No. 1 (March 2006), pp. 18-37.