Engaging emotional responses from your audience

The other night, I watched a documentary on Netflix called Seaspiracy, a recommended watch for anyone interested with a spare hour and a half. It was about the fishing industry and how it affects climate change, livelihood, food chains and the natural environment. It painted a very bleak picture with some shocking revelations, which made me feel angry, sad and disgusted. From illegal fishing fleets, stripping swathes of ocean of their natural habitat, to artificial fish farms, which cause more pollutants and disease than you’d think. The ultimate message was to avoid eating fish altogether, but offered alternatives to this, such as plant based products, with the same nutritional value.

At the end of the documentary, I sat there thinking about what I had just seen and something dawned on me; it had caused an emotional response, which in turn made me want to take action. Had this just been a simple message about how fishing was bad, I most likely would not have felt anything or wanted to take any kind of action. It would have just barely registered before I move onto the next thing, but here I am writing a blog post about it. Suffice it to say, I won’t be eating fish for the foreseeable future and have a keen interest in the plant based alternatives.

But what has this got to do with visual media and marketing? Any online content, in best practice, should have a conversion goal, which can be micro or macro. The action can be as simple as page views, traffic acquisition, or larger goals such as converting sales leads or newsletter sign ups. Again, this should all be outlined in your content plan from the very start, but the message in your content will determine the conversion rate and an emotional response from the audience can improve this.

Now I’ve used one example from a documentary I watched, which caused a negative emotional response in a way. I was disgusted, shocked and fearful, due to the problems caused, but at the end, the narrator addressed the viewer and said there was something I could do myself to help the situation. However, could positive emotional responses, such as happiness, humour and wonder inspire the same results? There is no doubt that humorous content has gone viral, which is fantastic for brand awareness so it doesn’t always have to be doom and gloom, like the Old Spice tv adverts or the annually anticipated Christmas ads from John Lewis or Coca Cola. One thing is clear, emotions get people talking and acting, but what’s the best way to get this into your message?

1. Tell the story - 90% of audiences want the brand to tell a story in their adverts. It engages and relates to the viewer. Start with your message and build the story around this. This allows people to turn the story into their own ideas and emotions, which is called neural coupling.

2. Use imagery - People process images 60 times faster than the written word. This reinforces the show don’t tell approach. Research also shows that viewers are drawn towards imagery which include people, rather than inanimate or abstract objects.

3. Using all the brain - Facts engage different parts of the brain to emotions. As the storyteller, it’s best to activate as many areas of the brain as possible including the motor cortex, sensory cortex and frontal cortex. This gives a higher chance of a dopamine release, which is the emotional response.

4. The sound of music - Ever had the hairs stand up on the back of your neck when listening to music? This is called frisson and is a huge emotional response which gets embedded in the listeners memory. The right choice of music in a video can make all the difference.

5. Structure the message - Audiences find it easier to follow a linear narrative which expresses a clear message. Determine the introduction, follow it up with supporting material and finalise on a goal or action.

A lot of this has changed my perception on marketing. People don’t want to be continually sold stuff, but rather feel emotions. Tom Fishburne from Marketoonist said “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing”. When we see tv adverts such as the examples above, they aren’t going for the hard sell, but instead, they’re showing an idea with passion, engaging the viewer on a whole different level. This gets people talking, sharing and acting.

Want to tell your story? We’d love to go on that journey with you. Get in touch with Snap Animation.