What is the attitude of the author to the issue mentioned in the essay? Support it with relevant clues in the essay. The assignment being that we needed to find one ad with a strong emotional appeal, and curiously enough, one ad from the same product category with limited emotional appeal. Now, this was very intriguing to me because my immediate reaction was why would you choose not to have emotional appeal? Why would you actually limit emotional appeal? Because the people who create these ads are not stupid, right. They are very intentional, they make very intentional decisions. At first you’re like, “Well, why would you take the emotion out?” Well, it’s because their audience is not as emotional. We know that some people are more emotional than others. A consumer trait termed affect intensity. Consumers higher in affect intensity, experience stronger emotions and are more influenced by emotional appeals.
That said, I want to point out two different products that are in the same group. You’ve got Audi, and you’ve got Honda. Both of these brands have very rich performance histories. Honda started on the tracks. But if you look at the ads that are going to be included both in the assignment, as well as on the front cover of the podcast, just for your reference, you’ll notice that they have 2 very different tones. There’s actually a breakdown of the dimensions in emotion, the emotions that are associated with it, and the indicators and feelings that go with those emotions. The dimension of pleasure includes emotions such as desire, affection, pride, duty, competence, and then you have other dimensions such as arousal and dominance. Arousal, including emotions such as interest, surgency, distraction, involvement, dominance, including conflict, helplessness, sadness, fear, and not depending on which you’re marketing, believe it or not, some of these may be relevant. If you look at the ads that these different products used, you’re going to see that they went down different pathways.
Okay, now again, the assignment is to find one that uses emotion. I’d like to point you immediately over to an ad that Audi debuted over in Germany. Okay, literally instead of must have, as in this is a must have, they used must have as an Elon Musk, and they used it to push and to market their E series. Their E line, which is their electronic cars. They’re pushing, they are prodding, and they are poking. This is the tone that Audi uses. A lot of their billboards are all about luxury and kind of arrogant. This has always been their tone. And they are not being shy in this kind of tone. This is the emotion, right? They’re literally poking the bear and they’re hoping that this kind of tone attracts their kind of customers.
Then you go over to Honda. Okay, now again, Honda has a very rich history of being competitive and mean in their performance. But right now their target market is very, very pragmatic. Their target market is very family oriented. So if you look at their current series of ads, it’s kind of the car of your dreams sort of thing. It’s very general. It’s very cheesy in a way because it’s kind of car of your dreams. You’re going to see a lot of color, a lot of dream-esque elements in a lot of their ads because frankly, they know the people that go into Honda for the most part. I say for the most part, there’s a lot of mean fast cars with Honda. But for the most part, people are not looking for speed. They’re not looking for performance. They’re not looking for luxury. They’re looking for style. They’re looking for safety. They’re looking for pragmatic use. And so you’re going to see a lot of this in their ads. There’s not a lot of emotion that they’re leaning on. If anything, they’re being cheesy to stir up and quote unquote emotion. So really, when we say limited emotion, I would kind of have to challenge that phraseology. There’s always emotion every single time. Okay, you can’t just take it out completely. Otherwise, there is no point.
But there is a different kind of emotion that is very, very subtle versus in your face. And this is the difference between these two ads. Personally, for me, there’s a reason I own Audi because I identify with the general tones that they use. I love being stirred emotionally this way. I’m a very emotional person. I identify well with that. Honda, well, is a great company.
So there’s this assignment comparing these two. Emotion plays a huge part in marketing.