What Drives More Sales - Emotion or Reason?

There is no readymade or universal answer to this question. And to add to this, this question does not help you to get the best way to pitch your message to the target audience. However, if you do not really understand this question or situation, than you might be missing a lot of things.

In traditional advertising or product based advertising, the advertisers mainly focus on rational decision making ability of the target audience. They often try to portray why their product is superior to the competitor's product depending on different statistics. You might have noticed some advertisements that compare different products from different companies under the same category.

However, a lot of high end products do not normally focus on why and how they are superior to the competitors' products. On the contrary, they portray how they can change your life. For example, think about an advertisement for a diamond company. Do they really compare their diamonds with diamonds from other companies on the pricing ground? To put it simply, money is not the problem for their target audience and at the same time diamonds are not products of regular needs. People buy diamond because they love to wear it. And thus, if you start comparing your diamonds with your competitor's diamonds, it will not serve any purpose. On the contrary, the advertisers try to appeal to their senses and desires - to their emotional self. They try to communicate directly with an individual like a conversation in a one to one environment. And more importantly, these sorts of advertisements focus mainly on brand advertising rather than product based advertisement.

In traditional advertisement, where you are comparing your product with that of your advertiser, you are actually sharing your advertisement space (paid) with that of your competitor's product. These sorts of advertisements may have a potentially negative effect on your brand. People already know that it is an advertisement run by your company and thus the spot is primarily biased about your product. And, thus, in this process you are actually limiting your standards or reach. You are actually identifying an area to rate or rank your product. Now, I do not mean to say that these sorts of advertisements are not good. This can be a good strategy to divert the focus of your target market from a weakness of your product.

However, things would have been different if a reporter published the same comparison within an article - you would have got a huge mileage depending on the positive review of your product or services because a news story have a pre-owned truth claim. These news stories actually work as a peer review. And people are more inclined to listen to a peer review than regular advertisement.

So, why are you running the advertisement? What do you want to get in return to your investment? What does your target market demand from you and your product? You must answer these questions to launch a better performing advertisement campaign. You can try a unique mix of emotion and logic in your advertisement campaign depending on your product category and target audience. You can also read some advertising trend reports to find out latest developments.