Positive Emotions Make Advertising Work Like Magic

We love advertising! And we love advertising that generates emotional reactions. I wrote some time ago about a particular case when using negative emotions in advertising works and received plenty of comments about the role of positive emotions in advertising. This article makes justice to the role of positive emotions.

Negative storylines are not common in advertising; positive stories abound in the world of marketing communication. That’s because, in most cases, the role of advertising is to lift up consumers and elicit positive emotions, preferably linked to the brand. Advertising is one of the last bastions of positivism in today’s overloaded media world. The never-ending news cycle gets rarely interrupted by positivity, except when an ad break starts. I see a wide gap in the media spectrum for inspiring and happy moments, and advertising should own that gap. It can become the entertainment of the future, however uninspiring that might sound today.

Neuroscience convinced us, at Mars, that positive messages work best. They elicit positive feelings of love, happiness, empathy, pride, belonging, hope, and joy, to name a few. We also learned that positive emotions are better flows to encode in memory the brand messages.

A function of advertising is to make the viewer feel slightly better after seeing the ad compared to how she/he felt at the beginning. The ad becomes a success if the brand message is understood and highlighted at the moment of high emotional load. That’s the magic of positive emotions.

What example of uplifting advertising with positive emotions inspires you?