If you’ve found yourself on this page, it is likely a safe assumption that you (or whomever you work for) are in the business of selling something. That something could be cars, balloons, insurance, caregiving services, equipment repairs, or even selling someone on why they should watch your YouTube channel. My other assumption is you are most likely selling this item, service, or idea to humans. Even if you sell dog biscuits for adorable pups, I’ve never seen a dog walk in to a store unaccompanied to buy his own snacks, so you must be selling to a human. Safe assumptions? Okay, great. Now, let’s dissect how humans make decisions. 

Since the dawn of time, humans have been driven by emotions & feelings. Passion, fear, anger, joy, sadness, trust, love, envy…. the list goes on. Emotions have been a driving factor for most of our decisions throughout our existence. From the bigger decisions like marriage or where to live to the smaller decisions of which insurance coverage you should purchase that’s going to give you the most peace of mind and security.

Some emotions trigger larger responses in our brain, stemming from our cave man days. One of the biggest, is fear. Fear brought on by environmental factors and imminent danger triggers our fight or flight response that has been engrained in our brain since the beginning, and calls for us to make an immediate decision on whether we stay and fight it out or run away.

As our brains evolved and developed, a second decision factor came into play: logic. As we experienced more scenarios, we noticed patterns and began thinking in terms of logic. “If I touch the flame of this fire, it will burn my finger, therefore, I will choose not to touch it this time.” Obviously, our ability to logically think has become a little more involved these days. 

So, how can we incorporate these two decision factors of emotion & logic into an effective marketing strategy to sell your product or service to other humans? And should we appeal to one over the other?

Because emotions and emotional response are buried deep within our primitive brain, they tend to hold the most influence over us. Emotions typically trigger our need to use logic and reason, and as many of us have witnessed in the past, our emotions can sometimes outweigh our logical brain. (Impulse buys in the ice cream aisle? Just me?)

Marketing that appeals to the emotions of our audience is typically more effective for this reason. 

When we find ourselves truly relating to marketing on an emotional level, we tend to picture ourselves within the marketing, using the product or service or thinking the way that they want us to think. 

In the year 2020, our world was rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. I, personally had just found out that I was pregnant with my first child, and all of a sudden the world shut down. It was just myself and my husband in our protected bubble we call home, and it was my baby in her protected bubble. The ways we communicated and interacted with the outside world changed completely, and it felt as though we were missing out on loved ones lives, and that they were missing out on what’s supposed to be the happiest time of our lives.

As I was watching television one night, a commercial hit me right in the emotions