Social Marketing and the Teenage

Mind: Are Logic-Based or

Emotion-Based Strategies More
Effective?
Lindsay LeTellier
Glenelg High School
Independent Research II G/T
Advisors: Ms. Chelsea Soobitsky and Ms. Kristina Schiller
Instructor: Ms. E. Leila Chawkat
May 2017
 Social marketing campaigns allow marketers to communicate to their audience ways in

which the audience members can improve their own lives and the state of the world as a whole.

Through the years, different campaigns have encouraged people to quit smoking, take better care

of the environment, avoid drugs, treat animals with respect, and have delivered many other

important messages about a plethora of other noble causes. It is important that social marketers

utilize marketing strategies that will be most impactful for the specific audience they are

attempting to target so that their campaigns are as effective as possible, and they make the most

positive impact on the world that they can. This research explores the effectiveness of

emotion-based marketing strategies versus the effectiveness of logic-based marketing strategies

when targeting a teenage audience with a social marketing campaign. The researcher embarked

upon this research with the hope of utilizing her findings in order to design and implement a

small scale social marketing campaign about mental health awareness and mental illness stigma

reduction at Glenelg High School in Glenelg, MD.

Introduction

In todays world, some people possess regressive attitudes and engage in many negative

behaviors that have extremely adverse effects on both their own well-beings and society as a

whole. In order to bring about positive social change and alter peoples behaviors and attitudes

for the better, social marketers design social marketing campaigns in which they attempt to

persuade people to improve their lives and the state of the world by altering their opinions and/or

the way in which they act. Past campaigns have implored audiences to quit smoking, avoid

driving drunk, take better care of the environment, and have addressed a myriad of other worthy
causes. It is essential that social marketers utilize social marketing strategies that will most

effectively make a profound impact on their audiences, and one of the most difficult

demographics to leave with a lasting impression is that of teenagers and adolescents. Young

people happen to be one of the most important audiences to persuade to improve their lives and

the state of the community not only because their young brains are extremely malleable and they

will most likely carry what they learn in their teenage years with them through the rest of their

lives, but they will also one day be chiefly responsible for the state of society. While a

combination of emotion-based marketing strategies and logic-based strategies is most effective

when targeting a teenage audience, social marketing campaigns are most effective when the

marketer relies more on emotional appeals.

Literature Review

Social marketing is defined by Nedra Klein Weinreich, the founder and president of the

prestigious Weinreich Communications marketing firm, as a form of advertising in which

marketers utilize advertising strategies in order to facilitate social change within their targeted

audience. While many social marketing practices are rooted in ideas and principles that are

associated with general, traditional marketing, social marketing is unique and does differ from

traditional advertising in several ways. According to the 2011 article, Social Marketing's

Unique Contribution to Mental Health Stigma Reduction and HIV Testing: Two Case Studies,

there are six distinct components to social marketing, which include: the "marketing mix"

(combining the factors of the price of the product for the consumer, the place the product is

offered, and the promotion of the product), consumer orientation (knowing and understanding
the audience), segmentation (targeting specific groups within the audience in specific ways),

exchange (the idea that people exchange some sort of cost for changing their behavior),

competition, and continuous monitoring (constantly keeping track of how the audience is

responding to the social marketing campaign).

Based on these six components, it is quite apparent that tailoring a social marketing

campaign to fit the characteristics of ones audience is an essential step in creating a successful

campaign. This is an example of a social marketing principle that stems from traditional

marketing practices, as it is crucial in any form of marketing campaign to understand and to

effectively reach out to ones audience. Therefore, it is important that marketers assess the

characteristics of their audience so that they may decide on which types of marketing strategies

will make the most of an impact on their audience. Marketers primarily rely on marketing

strategies that can be divided into two main categories: logic-based marketing strategies and

emotion-based marketing strategies.

Marketers utilize emotion-based marketing strategies so that they may tap into the

feelings of their audience members. Emotions are a key driving force behind any persons

decisions, including the decisions a person makes about the products, services, or messages in

which they are thinking about investing. In an article for Psychology Today, clinical psychologist

Dr. Mary C. Lamia discusses the role of emotions in an individuals decision-making process,

writing that Emotions, when they are not disordered, provide information about your

circumstances in a simple, quick way that does not involve a lot of cognition they attempt [to

assess if ones] situation is optimal or not aligned with [ones] goal, and how [one] might

approach [the situation]. Though emotions are an integral and often helpful component of the
decision-making process, Lamia does point out that they are sometimes unreliable because they

are disorderly. Those who are aware that emotions are sometimes unreliable during the

decision-making process may not be as responsive to emotional appeals in advertisements.

Despite the occasional unreliability of emotions, some marketers have expressed that they

find emotion-based strategies to be more influential than logic-based strategies, as consumers are

often first driven to make decisions based on how they feel rather than based on logical

considerations. Jeremy Ellens, for example, the co-founder of a digital marketing firm that

specializes in the health and wellness field, claims that peoples first instinct when making

decisions as consumers is to seek to avoid anything that will make them unhappy. He writes:

People avoid what makes them unhappy. This desire to avoid pain, also referred to as the

psychology of pain, can be implemented into your marketing strategy and used to

leverage your relationship with your audience. What do your prospects want to avoid

most? Whether it be embarrassment, anxiety, fear or any other negative emotion, you can

use the psychology of pain to your advantage. Industries like health and wellness or

financial services typically use the psychology of pain to demonstrate their value to

people by directly addressing obesity or debt in their copy.

People are also motivated by a myriad of other emotions other than happiness and pain.

There are many emotional motivators that drive consumers decision-making process, and a

great number of these motivators could be deciding factors when an audience member is

deciding whether or not to take heed of the message of a social marketing campaign, specifically.

Some of these emotional motivators include peoples desires to have confidence in the future,

enjoy a sense of well-being, feel a sense of freedom, feel a sense of belonging, be the person
[they] want to be, feel secure, succeed in life (Magids, Zorfas, & Leemon, 2015). Marketers

persuade audience members to invest in their product, service, or message by demonstrating to

the audience that they can achieve one of these emotional goals by investing in the product,

service, or message being offered. A 2015 article in the Harvard Business Review cited an

example of one such marketing campaign that very effectively targeted several of these

emotional motivators, writing that after a major bank introduced a credit card for Millennials

that was designed to inspire emotional connection, use among the segment increased by 70% and

new account growth rose by 40% (Magids, Zorfas, & Leemon, 2015).

In addition to utilizing strategies that appeal to an audiences emotions, marketers also

employ logic-based strategies in order to tap into the consumers senses of reason. These

logic-based strategies often include mentioning interesting statistics, citing the opinion of an

expert on the topic at hand, or simply explaining to the audience why investing in the message,

product, or service being advertised is the logical thing to do. Logic plays an important role in

the human decision-making process is that it not only allows people to assess the background

information behind the decision at hand, but it also allows individuals to evaluate and

comprehend their emotions from a logical standpoint so that they may utilize their emotions to

inform their decisions in a reasonable manner (Williams, 2011). Because logic plays such a key

role in how people make their choices, it is important that marketers effectively appeal to their

consumers sense of reason.

It is also essential that marketers anticipate the steps of the logical thought process that

consumers undergo when making decisions so that the marketer can design the most impactful

logical appeals. Wim De Neys, a psychological scientist at the University of Toulouse in France,
implies that it is important for marketers to identify and understand the component of the

consumers thought process that could be responsible for leading the consumers to making the

wrong decision (People Dont, 2008). Understanding the incorrect aspect of the consumers

thought process could allow marketers to develop more effective logical appeals that would

target the faulty step in the thought process.

Marketing experts do differ in their opinions of whether emotion-based or logic-based

marketing strategies are more impactful to audiences, and it is unclear which of the two types of

strategies is truly most effective in all cases. Many experts have stated, however, that the use of

both types of strategies tends to be most effective. Chelsea Soobitsky, a former outreach and

project manager at Sheppard Pratt Health System, for example, stated that she feels that it is most

effective to utilize a combination of logic-based and emotion-based strategies when targeting any

audience with a social marketing campaign. Clay Warren, the director of the communications

program at George Washington University, agrees with Soobitsky, stating that effective

advertisements for any type of marketing campaign utilize aspiration, persuasion, and emotion,

which Warren refers to as ethos, logos, and pathos, respectively (Thompson, 2011).

Many past social marketing campaigns have effectively utilized a combination of

emotional and logical appeals. An example of one such campaign is that of the 4 Day Throw

Away project, a social marketing campaign that was developed to increase the awareness of

food safety of leftovers, targeting an audience of the primary food preparers of families with

children under age ten (James et. al, 2013). The marketers utilized both traditional marketing

mediums as well as social media in order to communicate their message, and these different

mediums employed varying levels of emotional and logical appeals (James et. al, 2013). For
example, the posters that the marketers placed in grocery stores employed logic in that they

informed the audience that disposing of leftovers after four days is simply the correct thing to do

(James et. al, 2013). The posters demonstrated an emotional appeal in that they encouraged

audience members to dispose of leftovers properly for the sake of the safety of their children

(James et. al, 2013). This campaign proved to be effective, as it resulted in a greater percentage

of individuals (50%, P = 0.0093) [in the targeted communities] throwing leftovers away after 4

days compared to control communities (James et. al, 2013).

Another example of an effective social marketing campaign that utilized both logic-based

and emotion-based strategies is that of a campaign that was developed to encourage HIV patients

to adhere properly to their antiretroviral therapy (ART) by taking their pills regularly. The

marketers utilized both logical and emotional appeals because one reason for the limited

success of many programs is that a programs message, while factually correct, rational, and

based on sound theory, is not sufficiently appealing or convincing enough to change behavior

(Giordano, et. al, 2013). To incorporate an emotional component into the campaign to make it

more persuasive, the marketers selected a slogan (Live the Solution: Take Your Pills Every

Day) that would target the self-efficacy of the audience, and they also created a ten-minute

video that shared the personal, emotional stories of eight people who overcame struggles with

adherence to ART (Giordano, et. al, 2013). A post-campaign survey of the audience members

proved the campaign to be effective, as eighty-six percent of respondents agreed that the

campaign made it easy to take pills every day and on time and the same proportion agreed that

the campaign made them more likely to take their pills every day and on time (Giordano, et.

al, 2013).
 A final example of a social marketing campaign that utilized both emotional and logical

appeals is that of the Time to Change mental health stigma campaign in England. This

campaign, which began in 2003, is the largest anti-stigma program in England, and it was created

in order to reduce public stigma and discrimination in relation to mental illness (Evans-Lacko,

Corker, Williams, Henderson, & Thornicroft, 2014). The campaign was considered to be

effective, as researchers found that intended behaviour among the general public improved (i.e.,

there was an increased willingness to live with, work with, live nearby, or continue a relationship

with someone with a mental health problem) and experiences of discrimination among service

users were reduced as a result of the campaign. (Evans-Lacko, Corker, Williams, Henderson, &

Thornicroft, 2014). This campaign included a logical component in that it shared background

facts with the audience about mental illness ("Learn More," 2017). Having gained more

knowledge about mental illnesses and what they entail, audience members were probably less

likely to stigmatize or discriminate against those with mental illness after being exposed to the

campaign. The creators of the campaign appealed to their audiences emotions in the form of real

personal stories shared by English people about their experiences with mental illness (Personal

Stories, 2017). These stories about peoples personal struggles most likely inclined audience

members to sympathize with these people and treat those with mental illness with more respect

rather than judge and stigmatize them.

While some marketing experts have indicated that a combination of logic-based and

emotion-based marketing strategies is most effective for any marketing campaign, whether it be

a social marketing campaign or a general marketing campaign, and this approach has proved

effective in several cases, the marketing community as a whole has yet to come to a concrete
conclusion about whether emotional or logical appeals are more impactful, or if an equal

combination is what is best. The inconclusive nature of the research on this topic is described in

the following excerpt from an article in The Atlantic:

The literature on rational versus affective advertising is very long and mostly

inconclusive. Some studies suggest we care more about rational ads for things we need,

like medicine, and are more receptive to emotional ads for things we simply want, like

clothes. But another study by Aimee Drolet & Patti Williams & Loraine Lau-Gesk

showed that, whereas younger consumers prefer emotional ads for "hedonic" products

(beer and cologne) and fact-based ads for "utilitarian" products (pain relievers and

investment plans), older consumers prefer affective ads for just about everything

(Thompson, 2011).

This is a subject in which there are many gaps in the current knowledge and research. In

addition to it being unclear about which type of strategy is truly more effective, it is also

unknown whether the impactfulness of the two different types of strategies changes as a result of

the age of the audience, the gender of the audience, the nature of the product, service, or message

being advertised, and the marketing medium being used (i.e. print advertisements or video

advertisements). Experts have also not determined the ratio of emotional strategies to logical

strategies that should be used in a campaign if employing a combination of the two strategies is

truly the most effective approach. This research paper serves to explore some of these gaps in

knowledge as the researcher attempts to determine which type of strategy is truly most effective

when appealing to a teenage audience with a social marketing campaign about mental health

awareness and mental health stigma reduction.

Data Collection & Results

The researcher chose to collect the data for this particular topic using a survey in order to

gain simple, straightforward input from a large number of teenage respondents (~50). The

researchers ultimate goal for this research was to utilize her findings to design a small scale

social marketing campaign pertaining to mental health awareness for the Glenelg High School

student body, so it was important that the input received via the survey came from the Glenelg

High School student community. The fact that the data came from this particular teenage

audience allowed the researcher to base her designs for the campaign on Glenelg students

opinions regarding the strength of logic-based vs. emotion-based advertisements. Because of the

gender and age diversity of the group that participated in the survey, the results can be

generalized to represent a larger teenage demographic.

The eight question survey was distributed in March of 2017 via Survey Monkey. Glenelg

High School students from all grade levels were given the opportunity to participate in the

survey, and responses were capped at fifty so that the researcher could easily identify the data in

percentages. 35 females and 15 were males responded to the survey, and of this group, 1 is a

14-year-old, 26 are 15-year-olds, 17 are 16-year-olds, 4 are 17-year-olds, and 2 are 18-year-olds

(LeTellier, 2017).
The Survey
 In response to the first comparison of two advertisements, the comparison of a

logic-based print ad versus an emotion-based print ad, most of the respondents stated that they

found the logic-based advertisement to be more persuasive to them, with 84% of the respondents

choosing the logic-based ad (LeTellier, 2017). Later on in the survey in Question #6, respondents

were again asked to state whether an emotion-based print ad or a logic-based print ad was more

persuasive to them (LeTellier, 2017). In this particular question, the advertisements pertained to

mental health awareness. Responses to this question were much more evenly split, with 52% of

respondents selecting the emotion-based ad and 48% of respondents selecting the logic-based

advertisement (LeTellier, 2017).

Respondents were also asked in two questions to state whether they thought an

emotion-based or logic-based video advertisement was more persuasive to them. In Question #4,

two video advertisements (the first emotion-based, the second logic-based) pertaining to mental

health stigma were presented. 84% of respondents found the emotion-based video advertisement

to be more persuasive to them (LeTellier, 2017). In Question #5, respondents were again asked

to assess the persuasiveness of a pair of video-advertisement. These two-advertisements

pertained to teenage texting and driving. Again, a larger percentage of respondents decided that

the emotion-based video advertisement was more persuasive to them, with 78% of respondents

choosing this advertisement over the other one presented (LeTellier, 2017).

The final two questions of the advertisements were more general, and they asked

respondents to first decide if they typically find logic-based advertisements or emotion-based

advertisements to be more persuasive (Question #7) and then asked respondents if they found

emotion-based advertisements, logic-based advertisements, or advertisements that utilize a

combination of logic and emotion (Question #8). To Question #7, the majority of respondents

stated that they typically find emotion-based advertisements to be more persuasive to them with

92% of respondents selecting this option (LeTellier, 2017) (See Figure 1). However, when the

respondents were asked whether they thought emotion-based, logic-based, or combination-based

advertisements were typically most persuasive to them, only 14% of respondents stated that

emotion-based ads were most persuasive to them (LeTellier, 2017). Most respondents (80%)

decided that advertisements employing both logical and emotional appeals are more persuasive

(LeTellier, 2017) (See Figure 2). These two questions allowed the researcher to conclude that

even if teenagers claim that they find a combination of emotion-based and logic-based strategies

to be most effective, they are generally more heavily impacted by the emotional component of

the combination.

Conclusion & Discussion

The results, for the most part, lined up with what the researcher had predicted. One

surprise within the results, however, was the lack of a correlation between gender and type of

advertisement chosen. The researcher had predicted that males would be more likely to

logic-based advertisements and females were more likely to choose emotion-based

advertisements. While this was the case with a few respondents, it was not a widespread trend

within the results.

These survey results ascertain the researchers hypothesis that while most teenagers

would state that advertisements that use a combination of logical and emotional appeals are most

effective to them, teenagers would state that emotion-based advertisements tend to be more
persuasive than logic-based advertisements. The researcher can also conclude, based on the

results, that it might be more effective to utilize primarily logic-based print advertisements and

primarily emotion-based video advertisements when targeting a teenage audience. These results

could not only help the researcher to create an effective mental health awareness social

marketing campaign at Glenelg High School, but they could also be of help to professional social

marketers who strive to target teenage audiences.

For future research on this topic, the researcher could take several measures in order to

gain more specific information as to what types of social marketing strategies teenagers are most

responsive and to ensure that the data that is collected is as accurate as possible. For example, the

survey distributed in this study included social marketing advertisements that pertained to several

different causes, including texting and driving, smoking, and mental health. In a future study, the

researcher could explore further whether the topic the advertisements pertain to also plays a role

in whether logic-based or emotion-based strategies are more effective for a teenage audience.

Additionally, if the researcher wanted her future research to focus more specifically on the best

way to advertise mental health awareness and mental health stigma reduction, she could

distribute a new survey including only advertisements that pertain to these topics. Finally, the

researcher could gain more detailed information about this topic in general in future research by

adding an interview component to the data collection. Audience members could be interviewed

so that the researcher could gain more qualitative results pertaining to whether the audience is

more impacted by logic-based or emotion-based strategies, rather than only gathering

quantitative results.
 Figures 1 and 2

Figure 1
Figure 2

*Both figures courtesy of surveymonkey.com

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