Not all the emotions listed below are positive. Though you want viewers to have a positive association with you brand, negative emotions can be more effective in capturing your audience’s attention. You’ll need to strike a balance: while your video may stir negative emotions, your brand is there to make those emotions disappear.
Suspense
The best entertainers know the power of suspense, from campfire storytellers to Hollywood directors. Though your medium is shorter, you can still capture suspense in a marketing video. The viewer needs to care about the protagonist, while the video ends on a cliffhanger – to be addressed in the next video. Creating a video based on suspense gets your audience invested in your story and leaves them wanting more.
Hope
For decades companies have found success marketing to customers using hope. Hope is one of the strongest emotions for connecting with your audience. Consider what your audience truly wants and what their hopes are. How do these hopes align with your company’s mission? If you can show how your own hopes complement theirs, you can build a strong connection with your brand.
Fear
Though it sounds negative, using fear in your marketing can be a powerful tool. Employing fear doesn’t mean your ad is full of ghosts and zombies; rather, you’re creating a sense of fear that the viewer is losing something by not using your product or service. This could mean fear of missing out on a great deal, or fear of what will happen if the customer doesn’t use your product. Like suspense, fear creates a sense of urgency.
Empathy
To forge an emotional connection, the audience must be able to see themselves in the video. The video should feature a situation that the audience has experienced or can at least understand. The audience wants to see the main character succeed and is happy to see the issue resolved with the help of your product or service. Empathy puts the viewer into the mindset depicted in your video and makes the viewer receptive to the message of how your company will solve the problem.
Guilt
We all strive to be better, but daily life often gets in the way. Use video to demonstrate how your product might assuage the viewer’s guilt. If your product can help with the guilt of too much screen time, eating unhealthy meals or not going outside, use the guilt your audience experiences to drive your narrative.
Love
Everyone loves a good love story, but using love in your marketing doesn’t mean your video has to feature a wedding. Love could be love for a project, for an activity or for a community. It could also look like buying quality products to care for loved ones. Adding a little love to your video marketing will help your audience feel warmly about your brand.
If you’re curious how emotional marketing can help your marketing strategy, Spin Creative can help. Say hello!
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Spin Creative is a video production company and creative agency helping marketers create winning video and creative strategies that engage, inspire and activate targeted audiences. Spin is headquartered in Seattle with offices in San Francisco and London, serving brands around the globe.
