Choose One: Emotion or Logic
Posted on Oct 28, 2010 by Michael Gugel in Copywriting
Spock = Logic and Kirk = Emotion
During my freshman year of college, I had 8 people in my suite. One of my suite-mates, Ming, was a deeply religious guy from Korea. We’d debate each other all the time about the existence of God. I’d try to convince him through logic. He’d try to convince me through emotion. Every single time, we’d eventually retreat into ours room, frustrated with our inability to get our point across to the other person.
Now, being older and wiser, I have a better understanding on why we didn’t see eye to eye. You can’t convince someone that thinking emotionally with logical argument. Likewise, you can’t convince someone that’s thinking logically with an emotional argument. It NEVER works.
Conventional marketing wisdom tells you to try to get the best of both worlds – write an emotional headline and support with with rational argument. The problem is, it’s really hard to convince people that are thinking emotionally AND people that are thinking logically. Oftentimes, you end up doing a mediocre job at both.
The trick is to identify what type of thinking compromises the majority of your audience, take into account their likelihood of making a purchase, and target just that one group. Make a killer emotional argument and forget about the logical group or make a killer logical argument and forget about the emotional group. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Something’s gotta give.
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