Emotional Influence Best Practices

Chapter 07, Design Optimization Series

The key question: Does your design evoke a meaningful emotional response that supports your campaign goal?

Emotional resonance often receives less attention during production than offer mechanics, legal requirements, and visual polish. It is, however, one of the areas where relatively modest design decisions can have a meaningful effect on how an execution is experienced and remembered.

The role of humans in design

The majority of the design executions we reviewed across digital and print for this series contained no people. A product-only composition requires the viewer to mentally place themselves into a scenario involving that product. When a design includes a person, or someone using, enjoying, or interacting with the product in a recognizable context, it does that work for the viewer. Human imagery is often effective because it helps viewers more quickly imagine themselves in a relevant situation or moment.

It’s worth noting, however, that human faces attract attention powerfully and somewhat automatically. This is a tool as well as a potential liability. When a person in an ad is holding a product, the viewer's attention tends to move toward the face first, which can draw the eye away from the product itself. Thoughtful composition, like positioning the product in a way that keeps it within the viewer's attention, or alongside the person rather than behind them, makes the most of this dynamic rather than working against it.

Sensory cues as emotional triggers

Sensory details do more than capture attention. They activate emotional associations. Imagery that evokes warmth, refreshment, comfort, or appetite connects the viewer to the experience of the product rather than only focusing on its appearance. This principle applies to copy as well as imagery. The best practice is to ask whether the design conveys the feeling of the product, not just its features.

The "Peak-End Principle" applied to sequential creative design

Daniel Kahneman’s Peak-End Principle offers a useful lens for thinking about sequential design. People often remember an experience based on its most emotionally intense moment and its ending, rather than on the sum of that experience. Applied to animation sequences, multi-frame carousels, and multi-panel direct mail, this suggests that the strongest moment and the closing frame may carry disproportionate weight in what viewers remember.

A strong animation that ends on a weak final frame, or a direct mail piece that builds well but closes without an emotionally resonant moment, may leave a less favorable impression than the overall execution warrants. Providing careful attention to the peak moment and the closing state of any sequential design is a meaningful investment.

Curating imagery carefully

Not all imagery that seems relevant to a product or category produces a positive emotional response. Design teams should carefully consider whether the imagery they select is likely to evoke the response they intend. In healthcare and personal care advertising, for example, imagery that depicts physical discomfort or distress in an effort to establish problem-solution relevance can trigger an emotional response that works against the ad's goal.

A viewer's first reaction to an image of pain or difficulty may be aversion rather than recognition, particularly in advertising contexts where the viewing relationship is already low-commitment. Communicating the problem through implication or language — and focusing the visual energy on the solution or the benefit — tends to produce a more favorable emotional outcome.

The takeaway

Emotional resonance doesn’t require a dramatic design concept or a large production budget. More often, it comes down to a few considered choices: whether there is a person in the scene; whether the imagery conveys the experience of the product rather than just its appearance; and whether the final frame leaves the viewer with something that feels worth remembering. These are decisions that can be made at any stage of the design process, and they tend to have a considerable effect on how the work is experienced.

Evan Cunningham is a Senior Researcher at Iridio℠ by RRD. Representing a strategic expansion of a design, data + analytics, technology, and media activation within RRD, Iridio is an integral part of RRD’s legacy and commitment to delivering performance-driven solutions that meet the evolving needs of our clients.