5 Emotional appeals

The use of emotional appeals in marketing communications speaks to the wider role and importance of symbolism in advertising. Marketers seek to utilise signs and symbols that appeal to the target audience and transfer those same meanings to their own products or services. After all, most products and services have no literal connection to the images used to market them – what do meerkats have to do with financial services (comparethemarket.com) or a cartoon tiger to processed cereals (Kellogg’s Frosties)?

Consumers come to accept these associations because the most successful campaigns align their brands with these meanings so effectively that the artificial connection between them becomes real in our minds. The use of emotional appeals is a key component of this process. Figure 6 shows some of the most commonly used emotional appeals. You will explore each one in the following sections.

Figure 6 Types of emotional appeal

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This figure shows a visual representation of the different types of emotional appeal. In the centre of the image is a large purple circle with the words ‘emotional appeals’. Emanating out from this circle are a series of arrows that point to six more coloured circles, each containing the name of one form of emotional appeal. Starting at the 12 o’clock position and moving in a clockwise direction, these read: fear; guilt; shock; sex; humour; nostalgia.

Figure 6 Types of emotional appeal