4 Emotions That Make Us Spend Money (And How They Do It)

My face every end of the month

Emotions and money are like lovers. They are as attached and connected as gum to a shoe on a bad day. Every purchase, donation, tip, sponsorship and even every time you have to pass the hat at the office to pay for someone’s b-day cake emotions play a part of the decision. Emotions, as we all know, can be positive or negative but they drive us to spend– whether it is when we pull out our credit cards for a shopping attack or when we spare some change to someone on the street.

 Advertising and PR executives know this. Hell they do! In fact, companies, organizations, small businesses and individuals spend thousands and thousands of dollars every year to generate or change emotions in their targeted audiences to get them to alter their behaviour and finally, spend money. Emotional copy is way more effective than plain straight-to-sell copy. Telling stories, using characters, creating a specific and pleasant environment are all ways that businesses use to pull emotional heartstrings.

 So what emotions are the most effective to target to get people to spend their hard earned money?
 You may recognize one or two of the emotions that work to open a wallet and you may even remember how you felt when you decided to buy that expensive camera or those jeans but usually we don’t even realize how our emotions have been used to motivate us to shop. Of course nobody likes to admit someone played with his/her emotions and and might have controlled him/her like a puppet. Let’s have a look to four of them and see how they work:

Wanna keep up with the Johnsons?

•  -Envy: Admit it. We all are greedy (please admit it, I don’t want to be the only one). It may be hard to accept but it is real. This deadly sin (not according to me since I am still alive) moves the masses to spend their bucks. Impulse purchases happen a lot because of this emotion.  As mortals, we like to have more stuff than others; better stuff, the latest version, the most expensive, the more complete, the biggest one, the shiniest one. The ‘it’s new so you gotta have it’ sense provokes in the consumer the need to own it even when that need is just being created in that moment and probably lying to us. Luxury goods, fancy real estate, and new shiny technology are all products that greed has made us buy. At the end, you don’t have to be rich, you just have to be richer than your neighbour.

Eat less, move more. That simple

• Fear: Fear? Fear of what? Read on: It is Tuesday evening and you are watching TV while having a big dinner. It’s just you in the dark room and the only light is coming from your TV screen as you watch CSI, it’s pouring outside, wind is ripping off branches of trees and you can hear thunder. Now the commercials are coming... then the phone rings and a creepy voice tells you that you will die in seven days and that they are calling from inside the house. Well... not really. I just made that up. Let’s go back to you watching all those diet commercials; pill diets, recipe diets, non-carb diets, non-carb but sugar is ok on Monday diets, non-sugar and carbs are evil except Italian carbs cause you have to have pasta diets, etc. You’re convinced you need to lose weight to look good in the summer, to find a spouse, to be successful but you are worried the diet won’t work.  You don’t want to be scammed again and throw your money down the drain with another crappy and unsuccessful diet like the last eight diets you have tried which sort of worked but those damn jeans still don’t fit and you won’t get married, you won’t get that promotion and you won’t look better than everyone at the high school reunion that your ex is also coming to too. So, you believe testimonials, you believe the warranties, you trust the new product again but you were still scared at the core that you are not the person you want to be. By the way, you may also need to hit the gym once in a while if you want to get slimmer (just sayin’). Fear and instability make people save sometimes, but they mostly make they buy.

No, I'm not talking about this Pride, the other pride

•  Pride: Who doesn’t like to be in the VIP section? To have access, to be rich, to be the center of the attention because nobody could attend to that private concert but you – our sense of vanity makes us spend a lot of money. I am talking about being number one. If there’s something that motivates people like crazy it’s the chance to belong to an exclusive group. We can point out fingers at about teenagers as they are motivated to be cool by advertising, to follow trends and fads but that would be too easy. What about us adults? (I am sort of an adult on a good day) Why buy a Mac before a Dell? Because if you do, you are going to be seen to be smart, cool, laid back and clever; the person in the sexy t-shirt not the person in the bad suit. Brands have their own personality; they target a certain group of people suggesting they are unique or superior. The perception of quality and functionality are a second level motivation. Emotional copy that portrays an exclusive atmosphere can be highly successful. By doing effective emotional copy and being careful that you are not suggesting excessive allure, this copy, that plays to pride, can permeate deeply into the psyche of the consumer without him or her noticing it. Leo Burnett, advertising guru, said: “Good advertising (...) penetrates the public mind with desires and belief’’.  He knew what he was speaking about.

• Compassion: An emotional capacity of empathy and sympathy for the suffering of others, according to Wikipedia. Our sense of compassion is why we give money to children, to wounded puppies and to disaster relief efforts.  No, we are not all bad – we do spend money to help others. Making donations and supporting causes are actions that by nature create or support our own identity as good people and balance the other less nice demands of our personal and professional lives. The only thing I can add is that it works and it is very good for the world.