46 Admap • July/August 2006 © World Advertising Research Center 2006

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THIS ARTICLE DEFINES two differ-ent types of persuasion: rationaland emotional. Rational persua-

sion, exemplified by performanceclaims, promotions, offers and the like,acts as an incentive for sales. But it isemotional persuasion that creates rela-tionships and builds strong, successfulbrands. An important new research sys-tem is described – the CEP™ Test –which is able to quantify accurately inadvance how well ads will perform oneach of these two different types of per-suasion.

Ehrenberg’s ReinforcementModelIn 1974, Andrew Ehrenberg wrote a con-troversial paper about how advertisingworks (1). He rejected the notion thatadvertising is capable of changing attitudes on its own, and proposed thatit usually worked by reinforcing opinions formed from what are oftenhigh levels of consumer knowledge andexperience.

Ehrenberg’s attack was focused onthe general assumption that advertisingwas a strong form of persuasion, and his theory gained much popularityamong advertising agencies. It was, bear in mind, a time when the saleseffects of advertising were seen by manyas longterm, hard to discern even inhindsight and virtually impossible topredict.

Ehrenberg had established that inmost markets there were few 100% loyalbuyers, and the majority bought morethan one brand. He found that brandusers held consistently stronger atti-tudes than non-users, but could notsatisfactorily explain how these atti-tudes came about. This led him toquestion the core assumption withinhierarchy-of-effects models: that atti-tude change precedes and drivesbehaviour change. He accepted thatadvertising can create, re-awaken orstrengthen brand awareness, and can beone factor that facilitates trial purchase.

But he also envisaged a defensive rolefor repetitive advertising as ‘reinforcingalready developed repeat buying habits’.Later, he developed this further toaddress split-loyal purchasers (who reg-ularly purchase more than one brand),and defined a further role for advertis-ing as ‘nudging’ split-loyals towards agreater purchase proportion of onebrand or another (2).

Recent experimental work byKathryn Braun (3) has confirmed thepower of advertising as reinforcementin a post-purchase situation. Braun cre-ated orange juice samples of varyingquality and gave them to subjects totaste. Half the subjects were thenexposed to advertising for the supposednew brand. It was found that the adver-tising confounded the subject’s abilityto judge accurately the quality of thejuice, leading to substandard samplesbeing highly rated.

The power of ‘reinforcement’ adver-tising was contested by Jones (4), whocharacterised it as a ‘weak’ theory ofadvertising, which contrasted with thetraditional strongly persuasive model‘universally believed in the UnitedStates’. Four key differences emergedbetween Jones’s ‘strong theory’ andEhrenberg’s reinforcement model. 1. Strong theory sees advertising as adynamic force, driving sales and catego-ry growth. Reinforcement identifies animportant additional defensive role,especially for repetitive advertising. 2. Strong theory sees advertising oper-ating on an ‘apathetic and rather stupidconsumer’ (sic.); reinforcement sees con-sumers as knowledgeable andintelligent. 3. Strong theory sees advertising work-ing by changing attitudes, which leadsto changing behaviour. Reinforcementrejects the idea that attitude changemust always precede purchase.4. Reinforcement sees persuasion asarising from advertising that takes ‘anemotional instead of an informativetone’.

Two definitions of persuasionThe above suggests that Ehrenberg doesnot see persuasion the same way as thestrong theory. The Oxford Compact Eng-lish Dictionary’s general definition ofpersuade is ‘Cause someone to believe,convince’ (OCED 1996). This clearlyidentifies persuasion as a rational, activethinking activity, which involves themanipulation of thoughts to createbeliefs and change attitudes.

But this ‘active thinking’ is not theonly definition. The OCED also definespersuasion as ‘to induce, lure, attract,entice’. This does not necessarily implythat a verbal or rational process is need-ed for persuasion to take place, as thewords used (induce, lure, attract, entice)all relate to feelings and emotions morethan thinking. Ehrenberg’s view of per-suasion arising from advertising thatuses an emotional tone suggests it is thisdefinition of persuasion he envisages. Itis this definition of persuasion that I call‘emotional’ persuasion.

In modern practice, the word persua-sion is used to encompass bothdefinitions, and is often used to describeany activity that changes the attitudesor behaviour of the recipient. But Ehren-berg sees reinforcement advertising asinfluencing behaviour without neces-sarily having to change attitudes. Thiscorresponds closely to the model thatdominates academia in the US, Pettyand Cacioppo’s Elaboration LikelihoodModel (ELM).

Elaboration Likelihood ModelThe ELM divides consumers into thosewho are ‘involved’ and those who arenot. Involved consumers tend to processadvertising using a higher level ofthoughtfulness, which they term ‘cen-tral’ processing. Uninvolved consumersuse a lower level of thoughtfulness –‘peripheral’ processing. The key differ-ence between the two is ‘the extent towhich the attitude change that results …is due to active thinking’ (5). Attitudechanges resulting from central process-

Robert Heath, University of Bath, explains what emotional persuasion is, why itmatters and how it can be measured

Emotional persuasion

July/August 2006 • Admap 47© World Advertising Research Center 2006

ing has been made by Bornstein (11), who discovered that affect is moreeffective when it is processed subcon-sciously: Bornstein found that consciousprocessing of affective elements weak-ens their potency, because it allows thesubject to evaluate rationally and count-er-argue against the influence.

This implies that the less attentionconsumers pay to affective elements inadvertising, the better they will work.Christie Norheilm (12) has confirmedthis experimentally. She has found thatif ads are processed deeply, repeatedexposure causes affective response tofirst rise and then fall sharply. But whenads are processed in a shallow, inatten-tive fashion, affective responses areenhanced, with no downturn from repe-tition.

There is also experimental confirma-tion that repetition at low attention hasan effect on decision-making. D’Sousa(13) found evidence of ‘small but signifi-cant’ increases in brand awareness andbrand choice arising from repetition ofradio ads in a divided-attention situa-tion. All this supports the Low-Attention Processing (LAP) Model (14),which suggests that advertising thatoperates emotionally can be processedwithout active attention and can exert asignificant influence on choice, oftenwithout the consumer realising it.Whether you call it reinforcement,peripheral processing or LAP, advertis-ing that works in this way is not weak, itis simply emotionally persuasive.

Emotional persuasionThe true importance of emotional per-suasion emerges from findings by PaulWatzlawick (15). Watzlawick identifiestwo distinct levels for communication: acontent level and a relationship level. The former he terms communication, the latter metacommunication. Rationalpersuasion takes place in the ‘content’area of communication, is easilyanalysed and classified, but is the fastestto fade in memory. In contrast, the ‘rela-

tionship’ metacommunication is oftensubtle and disguised, but it is this partthat endures and ultimately is mosteffective at changing attitudes. It is thisrelationship-building metacommunica-tion that is emotionally persuasive.

If you think about when you meetsomeone, you’ll realise that you mightbe influenced to meet them again bywhat they say, but you are influenced tobecome friendly towards them by theway they say things. Extending thisanalogy to marketing, brands can easilyget sales using the content of their adver-tising – by demonstrating added value,cutting price, improving performance,and so on. But brands build enduringrelationships and create loyal consumersonly by the ‘relationship-building’ meta-communication in their advertising. Forexample, Colgate didn’t become a super-brand just by preventing tooth decay likeevery other toothpaste. It became asuperbrand because, through years ofadvertising, it has built up a relationshipwith people, so that they now trust andlike it as a brand. This is exactly howbrands like Andrex, Olay, Persil, StellaArtois, Orange, BMW and many others,have become so strong.

Measuring rational andemotional persuasionPart of the problem with emotional per-suasion is that it is really hard tomeasure. It is relatively easy to measurerational persuasion – you can prettymuch just ask people if they feel moreinclined to buy the brand. But if you askthem if they feel inclined to form a rela-tionship with the brand they are likelyto think you are nuts.

Working in partnership with OTX,we have devised a research system thatsolves this problem: the CEP™ Test(patent pending). The CEP™ Test uses aset of ten dimensions to measure theCognitive Power™ and the EmotivePower™ of an advertising execution.Cognitive Power measures the rationalpersuasion of the advertising – how

ing are enduring, so it is a strongly per-suasive route. But an importantcharacteristic of peripheral processing isthat the attitude changes that result areweak and relatively transient, and theperipheral route also is one in whichrepetition of emotive cue-based advertis-ing is more influential than the actualmessage. So Ehrenberg’s reinforcementmodel in fact corresponds very closely tothe less strongly persuasive peripheralprocessing. This might seem to confirmJones’s opinion that it is a ‘weak’ model,but recent findings show otherwise.

Decision-making and emotionTraditional models suggest that behav-iour change is driven by changes inattitudes. Early models like Lavidge andSteiner’s (6) had decision-making drivenby affect (feelings and emotions), butaffect operated only as a consequence ofcognition (thinking). Zajonc (7) success-fully contradicted this in 1980, showingthat affect is generally pre-cognitive, notpost-cognitive. More recently, Damasio(8) has shown that cognition is ‘hard-wired’ via the emotions, and thatfeelings are therefore capable of drivingdecisions in the face of negative cogni-tion. This has since been validated byShiv & Fedhorikhin (9): by constrainingdecision time they found that subjectschose chocolate cake in place of fruitsalad, ignoring the sensible guidance oftheir ‘thinking’ brain, and giving way totheir emotions – exactly how busy par-ents act when shopping for grocerieswith their children. What this suggestsis that real-life decisions are very vulner-able to advertising that operatesemotionally.

Damasio (10) also found that, whilecognitive processing depends on work-ing memory and is enhanced byattention, affective processing is inde-pendent of working memory andattention. He established that emotionsand feelings are formed subconsciouslyand autonomically (independent ofwill). But an even more important find-

Robert Heath is a visitingprofessor at Copenhagen

Business School, andlectures at Bath School of

Management, where he is inthe final year of a PhD. He

also runs the Value CreationCompany, a brand

consultancy that specialisesin low attention processing.

48 Admap • July/August 2006 © World Advertising Research Center 2006

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well it will achieve sales. Emotive Powermeasures the emotional persuasion ofthe advertising – how well it will buildthe brand relationship.

In the first six weeks of the launch weperformed approaching 120 tests ofbrand communication material. Wehave found that the system works notonly on TV, print, poster, radio and cine-ma, but on internet ads, promotionalbanners – in fact, any form of brandcommunication. What is more, we havefound that high scores on cognitivepower or emotive power are validated in90% of cases by positive shifts infavourability between those who haveand have not seen the advertising. Butlow scores show no shift. Some resultsare shown in Figure 1.

Take as an example six of these adver-tisements we tested during ourdevelopment and validation phase. Inthe US, we tested a highly creative andquite well-liked ad for a burger retailchain. But the scores for CognitivePower and Emotive Power were waybelow average. And the advertisingshowed no shift at all on favourabilitybetween those who recognised and didnot recognise it. In contrast, DisneyWorld’s 50th Anniversary ad scored well above average on Cognitive Powerand Emotive Power, in fact it was thehighest-scoring of all ads we tested. Andit also scored the highest shift infavourability, among both users andnon-users.

In the UK we tested a corporate ad forBP. It spoke a lot about global warmingand what BP was doing to stop it, andscored very well on Cognitive Power, butthe Emotive Power score was below aver-age. This indicates the ad won’t makeconsumers like BP any better. This resultwas reflected in very small increases infavourability, mostly among existingusers. Sony’s spectacular release of thou-sands of coloured balls in San Francisco,for the launch of their Bravia TV, causedmuch excitement amongst creatives. Itdoesn’t explain why the Bravia is better,but it is emotionally persuasive, as wecan see from the very high score itachieves on Emotive Power. What’smore, there is a substantial upward shiftin favourability.

What about Guinness’ recent ‘evolu-tion’ ad? Very creative, but only averageon Emotive Power. Non-users rated itbelow average on both scales, usersrated it above. And when we looked atthe favourability shifts there was a bigshift amongst users and no shift at allamong non-users. So the message forGuinness is that if they want to rein-force their user base, this ad works fine.

The Honda Diesel ad also created astir, two minutes long and totally icono-clastic. And it creates a stir in EmotivePower as well, nearly as high as Andrex.But that’s not a recent Andrex ad, it isthe very first Andrex Puppy ad evermade. It is still as emotively persuasiveas it was 20 years ago.

Bottom right is a cosmetic ad. It gets overa lot of information but it is almost entirelylacking in empathy. This advertising isn’tgoing to score any relationship-buildingpoints with the consumers. In contrast, thestar award for relationship-building goes toone of last year’s British Airways ads, topleft. But what would happen if they decid-ed to abandon their wonderfully soothingall-important operatic music track?Wecould tell them! ■

1. ASC Ehrenberg: Repetitive advertising and the consumer, JAR 14, April 1974, pp. 25-34.

2. N Barnard & ASC Ehrenberg: Advertising: strongly persuasive or nudging?, JAR 37, 1, 1997.

3. KA Braun: Postexperience advertising effects on consumer memory, Journal of Consumer Research 25, 4 1999.

4. JP Jones: Advertising: strong force or weak force? Two views an ocean apart, Inter- national Journal of Advertising 9, 3, 1990.

5. RE Petty & JT Cacioppo: Attitudes and Persuasion: Classic and Contemporary Approaches. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.

6. RJ Lavidge & GA Steiner: A model for predictive measurements of advertising effectiveness, Journal of Marketing 25, 4, 1961.

7. RB Zajonc: Feeling and thinking: preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist 35, 1980.

8. AR Damasio: Descartes' Error. New York, NY: GP Putnam's Sons, 1994.

9. B Shiv & A Fedorikhan: Heart and mind inconflict: the interplay of affect and cognition in consumer decision making, Journal of Consumer Research 26, 1999.

10. A Damasio: The Feeling of What Happens. London: Heinemann, 2000.

11. RF Bornstein: Exposure and affect: overview and meta-analysis of research, 1968-1987, Psychological Bulletin 106, 2, 1989.

12. CL Nordheilm: The influence of level of processing on advertising repetition effects, Journal of Consumer Research 29, December 2002.

13. G D'Sousa: Can repeating an advertisement more frequently than the competition affect brand preference in a mature market?, Journal of Marketing 59, 2, 1995.

14. RG Heath: The Hidden Power of Advertising. Admap Monograph No. 7, World Advertising Research Center, 2001.

15. P Watzlawick, JB Bavelas & DD Jackson: Pragmatics of Human Communication. New York, NY: Norton & Co. Inc, 1967.

robert.heath@value-creation.co.uk

CEPTM test resultsFIGURE 1

Cognitive power

Em

otiv

e po

wer Sony

Cosmetic

AndrexHonda

BA

StellaArtois

Guinness

Burgerchain

DisneyWorld

BP–100 –80 –60 –40 –20 20 40 60 80 100

100

80

60

40

20

–20

–40

–60

–80

–100