About Face

Make an Emotional Connection

A television commercial begins with several beautiful women in colorful dresses swaying to an upbeat rhythm. At first glance, you might think that this commercial for a diet drink is right on point. Research proved it was not. When middle-aged women watched the spot, they didn’t feel uplifted; they felt depressed. The tagline, “Pump it up,” made them feel inferior to the lithe women in the ad, whom they assumed spend hours at the gym working on their perfect figures. The commercial’s target group felt excluded and sad.

Although the TV spot was “on-message,” it failed to be “on-emotion.” It never made an emotional connection with its target viewer. Research shows that emotionally engaged consumers are more likely to buy a product than those who merely know about it. This failure to connect emotionally might explain why so much advertising fails. A quote attributed to both William Hesketh Lever and John Wahhamaker says that half of all advertising is wasted, but marketers don’t know which half.

Researchers have learned to identify consumers’ emotional reaction to advertising through “facial coding,” a noninvasive technique that experts...