Content filled with emotion is typically shared more often than any other type of content and has the best chance at going viral. According to a study by the University of Indiana, there are six primary emotions that humans have including: Surprise, Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust.
Surprise and Joy
Brands should focus this Valentine’s Day on entertaining audiences with real, heartfelt content that triggers readers to have an emotional reaction with the brand. Of course, for a romantic holiday such as Valentine’s Day, it’s common to stick to the first two emotions of Surprise and Joy.
One great example of a brand evoking these emotions with Valentine’s Day content was the #WestJetLove Valentine’s Day campaign (2015). The video created for this campaign received over 1.2 million views and detailed two couples’ surprise proposals. Canadian airline WestJet flew two couples out to Barbados with the catch that the men had to propose when WestJet asked them. The results were a tear-jerking, beautiful video of two couples’ love stories that tapped into a surprise and joy emotional reaction from viewers.
As a Valentine’s Day campaign, #WestJetLove succeeded because it focused on the emotional connection with its customers. The ad does not focus on WestJet’s services, instead the attention is on a genuine and tender love story that touches the hearts of its customers.
Sadness…and maybe even Disgust
If done right brands can also connect with audiences using other emotions such as Sadness or even try a bit of humour and connect with people’s Disgust of the holiday.
The candy brand Sour Patch Kids, used “Singles Awareness Day” to engage its fans to share their own failed stories of romance. The winning story was made into an Instagram video series.
This content did well because the brand understood its audience, and was able to tap into an emotional reaction based on that understanding and insight. Brands should start every successful campaign with an audience analysis to be sure they know their audience, understand the demographics, interests, and know the who and where when targeting the campaign. It is critical to know your audience not only for targeting but when creating your content and engagement strategies.
Brands will go a long way to creating successful content this Valentine’s Day if they keep two key things in mind: understand your audience and connect with them in a personal, and emotional way.
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Interested in what The Social Element can do to help your brand understand the emotional impact your content has on your audience? Get in touch!
The Social Element can also help your brand better understand your audience. Our audience analysis report provides you with the data and insights needed to understand your target audience so that you can improve and refine your social media strategy, content and media spending plans. We’ll look at your owned social profiles and the audiences of your competitors as relevant to provide an analysis of your audience demographics and interests to help you make smarter decisions.
