While many of us assume emotions like happiness are the best feelings to evoke in advertising, it is not the case. It’s actually energy (positive or negative) that makes people take action. Energy is the power to act, and like vitality, it is derived from the evocation of emotion, not a particular emotion. Energy is also what is responsible in large part for what a culture is and how it functions.
How ads work
Most of us are familiar with the mechanism of advertising: 1. find your likely people 2. excite them about who you are, and 3. help them associate positive emotions with your brand. The agenda: nudge people to take action and buy stuff from you.
Every advertisement, and every content post you put out to your audience, is an emotional evocation in addition to its words and images. Advertisements are a transmission of energy from you to your audience. And you have a choice how you approach this communication, not only in terms of maximizing efficacy in sales, but also how your work is contributing or eroding greater aims: like healing an ailing culture.
F, yeah.
All first-line media-makers are powerful contributors in creating culture. And this means marketing professionals.
Healing the ailing
And if you, the brand, the maker of things or ideas, have much to give, you can give comfort, balance, and positive emotional states within the very nature of your ads, not just calls to action to buy stuff.
Energy evocations: positive v. negative (and mops)
Consider an advertisement that starts with, “hate your dirty floors?” that then goes on to sell you a solution like a fancy mop. There is nothing positive about the emotional ping a statement like this will evoke, yet I won’t deny the ad can still nudge people along to buy stuff. The thing is, the process of negative-to-positive energy ride is a bit manipulative because the ad evokes an emotion of upset in order to move someone toward an imagined happiness – in essence, running them through emotional paces but only if they buy something.
Reality: While a person viewing this kind of ad may truly have been contemplating their hatred of their floors (and you are helping them escape this negative experience), it’s even more probable, they didn’t notice their floors before they saw the ad. Before this ad’s existence the person may not even care about their floors, but the ad itself gave them energy to notice and care, and feel discomfort. And it evoked a harsh feeling to tweak their ability to act and buy a mop.
This is energetic evocation, and it is what makes the ad work. And this is the thing mindful advertisers should understand and approach with care if they want to make a positive contribution in their society in addition to doing their job well.
Another mechanism of influence
We’ve experienced in our country recently what propaganda can do. The mechanism of propaganda is closely related that of advertising: 1. find your likely people 2. excite them about who you are, and 3. help them associates emotions with your brand to “buy” stuff from you. The “buy” is in this case an ideology. The thing that is missing: positivity
Unfortunately, when a culture leans a bit dark, folks may respond more favorably (that is, give their money and energy) to negative ads and propaganda. People who harbor a prolonged state of anger, grievance, resentment, blame, or discomfort are likely so energetically drained that ONLY tweaking their negative emotions will move them to action. The promise is they will feel better after they ‘do the thing,’ but the second emotion in the energetic exchange is not guaranteed, and this is an odd promise since all we know it can do is evoke fears and negative energy.
Propaganda and negative ads can work for the sake of ‘sales conversions’1, because people respond to ENERGY first. And in these cases, the positive emotion is promised second. Energy is felt as vitality and experienced in the body.
You could say, what makes your body move, makes your body move: whether a click, a buy, a march, or a vote.
Mindful approach (if you want better things for your brand, your community, and your culture)
In my professional marketing life, I’ve focused on making my content pieces (ads, posts, graphics, etc. ) as ‘gifts’ that evoke positive energy by design. These ads have tended to lean into excitement and anticipation as well, and that has also been a part of the effectiveness equation.2 The reason this works is that Excitement and Anxiety are so close on the spectrum of physiological experience (heart beating, chest breathing, rapid thought), that they both bring energy to the viewers whether they are positively-moved or negatively-oriented (carrot v. stick mentality).
If your advertisements and products are made with ‘gifting’ the public energy, then you also stand a chance of converting negatively-oriented ‘haters’ into positively-oriented ‘enjoyers,’ and this will have a positive effect beyond just your brand’s success.
Marketing as a human service
On my best days, I construct content around evoking ‘truth’ and ‘good’ from the base of respecting and assuming self-determination of the audience. This is because I want my culture to be happy and healthy full of functioning individuals who make great choices for themselves and their communities.
- The language of “conversions” is so interesting in terms of sales. We value those we’ve ‘converted’ to an ideology or a sale and the near-religious terminology is important. But self-determination, I think is still a higher value: offering people good information, a ping of energy in the form of interest and excitement and then helping them find out how they too, can “enjoy” their experience of your product or idea. ↩︎
- Caveat to a signature approach. I’m revisiting my usual excitement-building advertising sequences. While it works to get real bodies in real doors (not just clicking around on a phone), it can be tiresome to folks who are weary of having their emotions pinged. And sometimes, supporting calm & balanced folks is most desirable in a cultural healing process. I’ll let you know what I discover. ↩︎
