The Complete Guide to Emotional Advertising

Emotional advertising lets you use emotions to encourage customers to purchase your products. One way to approach emotional marketing is via the rhetorical triangle. This triangle’s three sides are the speaker (ethos), audience (pathos), and message (logos). Your advertising strategy will include all three of these elements, and emotional advertising lets you create a message that connects with your audience.

You can also learn to understand emotional marketing without the rhetorical triangle. This guide will help you understand what it is, why it is important, and showcase some emotional marketing examples for inspiration. 

The emotional advertising framework: How it really works

Most emotional advertising that lands well, and a lot that doesn’t, follows a recognisable structure once you know what to look for. It starts with an emotional trigger, a moment, image, or line that provokes a genuine feeling in the first few seconds. That trigger sets up a short narrative, even a ten second one, that gives the feeling context and makes it feel earned rather than manufactured. The message follows once the emotion is established, connecting that feeling to your brand or product. Only then does the call to action arrive, asking for the click, the visit, or the purchase.

The order matters. Ads that open with the call to action and try to bolt an emotional appeal onto the end tend to fall flat, because there’s been no time to build the feeling the message is relying on.

Emotions are rarely used in isolation either. A well built ad often layers a primary emotion, say trust, with a secondary one, perhaps mild urgency, to both reassure and prompt action in the same breath. Getting the layering wrong, stacking fear with humour, for instance, can undercut both.

A weak emotional hook tells the audience how to feel: “This will make you smile.” A strong one simply shows something that makes them feel it without narration, a genuine reaction, an unscripted moment, a detail that feels true rather than staged. The difference between the two is usually the gap between an ad that gets skipped and one that gets shared.

What is emotional advertising?

Emotional marketing refers to when your message uses human emotion to connect deeper with your audience. It is very common for emotional marketing to just appeal to one emotion, such as joy, anger, or fear. However, it can appeal to multiple emotions, and you can technically use any emotion you want.

The core emotions found in advertising, and when to use them

Different emotions push customers toward different outcomes, which makes choosing the right one for your specific goal more important than simply picking whichever feels good.

• Joy drives sharing and engagement. Happy, upbeat content travels well on social media and tends to attract likes and shares without much friction, making it a solid default for brand awareness campaigns.
• Fear drives urgency and conversion. Used carefully, highlighting a real risk or a limited window, it’s effective for prompting immediate action, though it needs a light touch to avoid feeling manipulative or off brand.
• Trust builds long term loyalty rather than an immediate spike in activity. Consistent, honest messaging over time does more for trust than any single ad, which makes it better suited to retention campaigns than one off promotions.
• Surprise grabs attention and travels fast. An unexpected twist or reveal is memorable precisely because it breaks a pattern, which is why surprise heavy ads tend to perform well for launches or announcements where standing out matters more than anything else.
• Sadness builds empathy and prompts action, particularly for causes or services where the audience genuinely wants to help. It needs to be handled with restraint, since sadness used purely for shock value can come across as exploitative rather than genuine.
• Anger drives advocacy and sharing, often around a cause or an injustice the audience already cares about. It’s the least common emotion used deliberately in advertising, and the easiest to get wrong, since misdirected anger can just as easily turn against the brand as for it.

The importance of emotions in marketing

Emotional appeal advertising can play a key role in marketing for several reasons, including the following. 

Emotions make your product more memorable

When you play on emotions, you will get the advantage of your advertising being more memorable. Research shows that people are more likely to have long-lasting memories of emotionally charged events.

This translates into marketing as well. Simply put, by creating advertising that has an emotional impact on your audience, it is much more likely that your content and, therefore, your brand will stay in their heads.

Emotions forge connections

When you trigger emotions in your audience, you help form connections with them. This, in turn, leads to customer loyalty and a likely increase in brand advocates. In fact, one study found customers who emotionally connect with a brand’s lifetime value is 306% higher. The same study found that 71% of customers with an emotional connection are likely to recommend the company. By contrast, the average rate of people likely to recommend a given company is just 45%.

Emotional content is more shareable

No matter the type of emotions you convey in your emotional marketing, this strategy makes your advertising highly shareable. That is because people love sharing content that makes them feel something. This applies to both positive and negative emotions.

It can deliver better results

One study even found that ads with emotional pull were more effective than those with more rational content. That study found success rates of 31% and 16%, respectively. In other words, an emotional message almost doubled the success rate when compared to only rational content.  

6 Examples of brands that nailed it

To get you started on your journey to using emotional marketing, take a look at some examples of brands that did an excellent job with it. Some also incorporate tips you’ll find in our attraction marketing guide. Most of these are well-known brands, but their strategies can work just as well, if not better, for small, local businesses.

Consider exploring the following marketing efforts to gain inspiration for your content marketing strategy.

Spartan’s “Grow Young” Instagram ad

Spartan, a tough racing community, shows that your brand doesn’t need to be a household name to harness the power of emotional advertising. It taps into the concept that everyone is young at heart and that anyone can participate in this activity. The ad showcases videos of people overcoming challenging races and obstacle courses, featuring individuals of all ages, sizes, and ethnicities. The ad also emphasizes the emotion of happiness, as nearly everyone in the video is depicted with a smile. 

Code Salon’s pride month Facebook posts

In 2021, Code Salon tapped into emotions and connected with the public during Pride Month through a series of Facebook posts. The series featured LGBTQ+ employees and staff, each sharing “what makes them proud.” This evokes feelings of happiness and a sense of community connection. Customers experience joy when they see this content, leading to positive brand associations. 

How to apply emotional advertising across channels

The same emotional principle plays out differently depending on where your audience encounters it.

• Meta ads, spanning Facebook and Instagram, are built for emotional storytelling through visuals. Video and image heavy formats give you room to build the narrative arc before the message lands, which is why Meta tends to be the best home for the joy, surprise, or sadness driven campaigns discussed earlier in this guide.
• Google Ads work differently, since the audience arrives already searching with intent. There’s less room for a slow emotional build, so the emotional framing needs to sit inside otherwise practical, intent based messaging, a headline that reassures (“trusted by thousands of Australian families”) rather than one that tries to tell a story in ten words.
• Email is where trust and nurturing emotions do their best work. The format allows for longer form storytelling over multiple touchpoints, building a relationship with a subscriber over weeks or months rather than trying to land an emotional hit in a single message.
• SMS is the odd one out, and arguably the most important for Australian small and medium businesses given how heavily local SMEs rely on it for direct customer contact. There’s no room for a slow build in 160 characters, so urgency and simplicity carry the emotional weight instead, a short, direct message that creates a genuine sense of immediacy without needing a narrative to support it.

Matching the emotional approach to the channel, rather than repeating the same message everywhere, tends to produce noticeably better results than a one size fits all campaign.

Wren’s first kiss video

In 2014, Wren, a clothing brand, demonstrated how emotional marketing can go viral. Its “first kiss” video portrayed two strangers kissing and resulted in a significant boost in sales of nearly14,000%. Its success comes from the intense emotions in the video and the fact that the brand was only mentioned subtly. 

P&G’s “Thank You, Mum – Strong”

P&G offers a great example of emotional marketing in its “Thank You, Mum” ad from before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. This ad plays on the emotional connections of mums and their children. It features Olympians and highlights how their mums supported them to get where they are. This plays into the emotions of one of P&G’s target audience groups, mums, making them feel particularly valued by the company. 

Lysol’s “Protect Like a Mother”

Another example of emotional marketing that plays on the emotions of a mother comes from Lysol. Their ad “Protect Like a Mother” features a mum standing in front of dangerous animals, indicating she protects her children from them. This example aims to empower mothers while also building trust in the brand. 

Apple’s “Think Different” campaign

Apple’s “Think Different” campaign was so successful that it earned the 1998 Emmy for Best Commercial. Apple used the slogan between 1997 and 2002. This campaign played on the satisfaction of changing the status quo and innovating. 

How does emotional marketing work?

While most of the above examples of emotional marketing are for major international brands, it works just as well for small businesses. In fact, many small businesses may do even better with emotional marketing because they are more likely to have a closer relationship with clients already.

You can take advantage of a few trends in emotional marketing to get the results you want for your small business. You’ll notice that these cover all of the basic emotions, with each type of emotional response leading to a different result. That being said, any strong emotional reactions can lead to the positive results you want. 

This comes from the fact that sadness leads to connections and empathy. Importantly, empathy leads to the motivation to help others and altruism. This is why the ASPCA’s ads use sad photos and music to encourage donations.

Although your business probably doesn’t need donations, the use of sadness still translates into clicks. It is the way that people can give back after feeling these emotions. 

Anger/disgust = viral content

When people feel anger or disgust, they tend to vent about it, which leads to content going viral. So, you should consider incorporating anger and related human emotions into advertising when you want to take advantage of viral marketing. 

This connection between eliciting anxiety and anger and increasing your content’s spread or viral nature has even been confirmed inresearch. 

Happiness = more shares

If you want to encourage more shares for your content, then focus on happiness. Research shows that positive content and good news travels more quickly on social media. Harness this to get more shares for your content and advertising.

This is also related to the idea of the “social smile.” This refers specifically to babies smiling when others smile, but it also applies to adults. In adults, it is the fact that happiness tends to spread, so if someone else feels happy, you tend to feel happy as well. This, in turn, encourages sharing of the content that made you smile. Companies can take advantage of this by including happy customers in their marketing. 

Fear/surprises = loyalty

When people experience fear or surprise, they want to stick to familiar and comfortable things. Using those emotions in your advertising encourages people to stick to your brand, as it is familiar. That leads to brand loyalty.

Many marketers feel hesitant to use the emotion of fear, as you don’t want negative feelings associated with your brand. But when done right, you can make your business seem like one of the few good things in the scary or surprising world. 

Keeping track of emotional advertising performance

Emotional advertising can be harder to measure because its impact often extends beyond immediate conversions.

Click-through rates and conversion rates should be analysed together. An emotional ad may attract attention and clicks without directly driving purchases, as the emotional connection and buying decision happen at different stages.

Engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments and saves often provide an early indication of whether emotional messaging is resonating. Sentiment analysis can also reveal whether the audience response matches the intended message.

Brand lift, measured through surveys or increases in brand searches, captures the longer-term value of emotional advertising by showing changes in awareness and preference.

The most effective approach is A/B testing, comparing emotional and rational versions of an ad and measuring performance across multiple metrics rather than relying on one result.

Emotional advertising mistakes to stay clear of 

Several common mistakes can reduce the effectiveness of emotional campaigns.

Overusing fear or negativity can damage brand perception over time. Emotional triggers should create a connection, not rely on constant pressure or anxiety.

Choosing the wrong emotion for the audience or stage of the buying journey can also weaken results. Different situations require different emotional approaches, from trust and reassurance to excitement and urgency.

Inauthentic storytelling is another major risk. Audiences quickly recognise exaggerated or forced narratives, which can harm trust rather than build it.

Finally, ignoring audience context can lead to messaging that feels irrelevant or insensitive. Emotional campaigns should always be tested with the specific audience they are designed to reach.

Applying this to Australian businesses 

Different industries in Australia benefit from different emotional approaches.

• Tradies often perform well with trust-based messaging that highlights reliability, professionalism and genuine availability rather than artificial urgency.
• Healthcare providers should focus on empathy and reassurance, addressing patient concerns with clear and supportive messaging.
• Retail businesses can use seasonal emotions such as excitement, celebration and anticipation to connect with customers during key shopping periods.
• Real estate businesses often balance aspiration with urgency, helping buyers imagine their future while avoiding overly aggressive FOMO tactics.

The key is choosing emotions that align with the industry, audience and customer journey rather than applying the same approach everywhere.

Conclusion

Emotional appeal advertising is successful because people tend to have stronger memories of events connected with strong emotions. Emotional content is also highly shareable, as shown by the viral examples of good emotional advertising mentioned above. 

Local businesses can harness the power of emotions across their advertising campaigns, from SMS to digital ads to social media posts. Develop emotional marketing strategies that create positive feelings in your target audience, and you’ll notice an increase in sales and engagement thanks to those emotional responses.