Emotions and marketing? Communication with clients and contractors, searching for new customers and markets for goods or services, public relations policy, social media activities, advertising and generally building the company’s image – these issues require business to collect data and make informed decisions based on them leading to the development of the organization. Today, thanks to Sentimenti’s emotion analysis tools all these activities can be conducted more effectively.
Emotions in brand communication
The capabilities of the tools for analysing emotions in text developed at Sentimenti are still being tested and extended by our research team. We decided to examine advertising content with them. This is a demanding area. The advertising message has to be short, catch the attention, be memorable. Above all, it has to be suggestive so as to induce a specific behavior of potential customers. To do this, it is best to hit their emotions. From the research conducted in this matter it is known that the marketing message with an emotional foundation is more effective, and from practice – that emotions, even the negative ones, sometimes can provide a brand with exposure in the media and social media for a long time.
We analyzed the content of several advertisements in terms of their emotional overtones and the valence of 8 basic emotions from the Plutchik model. For the study we used advertising content related to AA Prestige (cosmetics line), Plus (telecommunications), Citi Handlowy (external factoring), Renault (Kangoo Express model) and Shell (Shell Helix oil).
The analysis confirmed the results of the research – advertising content characterized by positive emotions (joy, trust, expectation) is more likely to be remembered by recipients and to inspire trust in a given brand. But that’s not all – the in-depth analysis of emotions in advertising content has also shown that even a single word (also a function word!) can be associated with several emotions at the same time.
Consequently, it is not always possible to avoid negative sentiment in advertising content. You can always check this content with Sentimenti. In this way you can better match the content and form of your marketing message to your target group. Sentimenti will show you emotional connotations where the popular two-dimensional sentiment analysis does not show any. This is a big advantage when you have more cross-sectional data to analyze. Interestingly, however, some advertising campaigns (especially in political marketing) are based on negative or at least controversial emotions. Why?
The recipient processes them faster. They are more memorable and evoke a desire for action: most anger and the repulsion leading to it, fear and…. surprise. Research shows that the recipients will remember above all this negative emotional environment, not the brand and the advertised product. Unless, of course, we skillfully reverse the sign of emotions. But to do that you need to know what words evoke what emotions. We at Sentimenti have such knowledge, we also have algorithms to evaluate emotionality in content. We can share them with you.
Emotional targeting now works
Emotions transfer easily. And not just between people, but also, as research shows, between words. Based on this insight, the NYT, USA Today, The Daily Beast and other U.S. editors have begun emotionally positioning advertising content around articles with a given message. Algorithms built in collaboration with the editors analyze readers’ opinions of articles and try to answer the question of what their reactions will be in similar content so as to match them later with the best possible ad content placed in the vicinity.
This solution allows you to create and place content more contextually, which translates into greater brand marketing effectiveness. At Sentimenti we understand the needs of both publishers and advertisers in this field. That’s why we started working with Interia Group in the pioneering InteriaEmotions project on the Polish market. Together, we work on matching the emotional context of advertising content with the content of publications. All this so that companies and agencies can benefit from the advantages of this type of positioning. We presented the results of our work at the IAB Conference in Warsaw.
Why should you start working with Sentimenti? Algorithms, machine learning and other modern technologies are increasingly active in the public space. Business is increasingly willing to use these methods. A human being cannot analyse a huge amount of data quickly. He needs to use artificial intelligence to do it better and more efficiently. This is especially true for emotions, which are perceived individually and therefore difficult to objectify.
At Sentimenti we understand this direction. Therefore, while maintaining scientific standards, we develop algorithms to analyse emotions in content of various types. Our tools have proven effective at analyzing emotions in ad content, comparing them, showing correlations, trend direction, etc. This is a massive range of data. It usually takes months to acquire and analyse. It requires an objective indicator to measure emotions. After all, several people, independently of each other, may evaluate a text in a similar or different way. The goal of effective emotion analysis is to understand what the standard is for such evaluation.
If you are interested in improving the emotionality (and thus the effectiveness and increasing the reach) of your advertising messages, if you want to write more engaging posts in social media, if you need an analysis of your current activities or an indication of the direction of their development – we invite you to contact Sentimenti!