Brands can increase engagement with audiences by using creative storytelling to elicit emotions such as nostalgia and schadenfreude, new research from Topix has found.
Fifty of the highest-grossing stories were analysed to see what types of content resulted in the highest levels of engagement over a certain period of time, and four key emotions came to the fore: history and nostalgia, schadenfreude, humour, and pride of knowledge.
Emotions and gut feelings can play a major role in an end user’s decision about whether to buy a product or service, both in B2C and B2B marketing settings. It is no surprise then that a recent study by the Financial Times Commercial Insight Group found that feelings of uncertainty can make it harder to push a consumer along the sales cycle.
In terms of the feelings that lead to the highest levels of engagement, both nostalgia and schadenfreude lead the way as they featured in 30% of the top 50 stories. Humour was present in 24% of stories, while pride of knowledge was in 16%.
Monster’s VP of marketing Margaret Magnarelli touched on the importance of emotions and empathy and how they are linked to engagement and revenue at the Content Marketing Conference in Boston earlier this year.
She said: “We’re in times that are very challenging. If we don’t combine feelings with facts, we’ll lose customers. They want to feel validated.”
It appears that brands that take the time to tap into these emotions when creating content can really reap the dividends in the long term.
