Stimulating a strong emotional response on the part of the

viewer of an ad is critical if the ad is to be effective in

driving behavior. But that doesn’t necessarily tell us how to

create that emotional response from an ad. It just tells us we

want one.

Last week at our internal Lunch ‘n Learn, where we talked

about creative work, we looked at tv ads that had received

recognition in the business,and looked at how emotion worked

in those ads. Two of the most famous, and most-acclaimed,

were the original “Got Milk” ad, and the more-recent “Whopper

Freakout”. Both shared a common theme, taking away the brand

from the consumer rather than sharing it with him. I

suggested that the use of the counter-factual, absence rather

than presence of something, might have added emotional power.

It requires imagination, which can be a more powerful stimulus

than observation.

A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology now provides some solid data to support that

interpretation. For years happiness researchers have done

studies showing that acts of gratitude, such as writing notes

of appreciation, can have a significant positive effect on

individuals’ life satisfaction and happiness. Now the power

of the counter-factual has also been established. As described

in Mind Matters:

“The researchers show that people prompted to write about how

a positive event may not have happened experience a greater

uptick in mood than those prompted to describe the positive

event.”

In other words, feeling appreciation for a relationship you

have may not make you feel as good as imagining what your life

might have been like if you had never met the person.

If this trick of mental subtraction (What if I’d never met my

husband?) works for relationships, it seems logical that it

works for other things too (What if I couldn’t get a Whopper?)