According to a research study, “Reconsidering Recall and Emotion in Advertising,” published by Gallup-Robinson in the Journal of Advertising (March 2006),* neurologists believe that the attentioning process is largely out of the conscious control of an individual. Emotion rather than cognitive/rational response guides what people pay attention to.
So how do you tap into people’s emotional needs? First, it helps to understand exactly what those needs are. Behaviorists have identified the ten innate emotional needs, expressed as feeling:
- A sense of status within a social grouping
- Meaning and purpose
- Part of a wider community
- Friendship and intimacy
- Privacy
- Attention (to give and receive it)
- Security
- A sense of competence and achievement
- Emotional connection to others
- A sense of autonomy and control
Obviously some of these emotional needs are more intrinsic to some brands than others. For example, the car one drives may help define that individual’s sense of status within a social group — and may help define his or her sense of competence and achievement. Life insurance and other financial services products involve concerns about security and sense of autonomy and control. But every product or service you can name relates to one or more of these basic human needs.
Tapping into them can make your communications more powerful.
If you’re communicating to internal audiences, i.e. your employees, take some advice from Daniel Pink, the well-known author who writes about the changing workplace. In a recent talk to the RSA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc), Pink points out that in tasks involving cognition, what motivates people is not compensation but emotional needs like autonomy (the ability to be in control), mastery (competence and achievement) and purpose (the ability to make a contribution). In other words, people want to “feel” the reward.
So what does this all mean for your communication? You might have to dig deeper to consider your audiences and the emotional needs that motivate them — then address those needs in your marketing messages. It’s a good start for better and more motivational communications.