Emotion sells, but at what cost?

A dad bares his soul on the occasion of his daughter’s graduation. Not to her, to his social network.

A woman posts a teary-eyed selfie from her hospital bed, with a perfectly curated account of her detailed recovery from ailment.

On a popular social platform for women in Mumbai, a woman trashes her cheating hubby seeking suggestions on what should she do.

Beyonce’s or Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy details, Kanye West or Kim Kardashian’s personal feuds unabashedly stream on social.

De Beers’ Diamond Deception 2.0 surfaces to counter the debilitating impact of the more conscious lab diamonds on its business. A rather desperate pandering to father-daughter emotions through "for a love so pure, only natural will do."

Influencers operate at the forefront of this emotional marketplace. Their ability to monetise ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ underscores the transactional nature of online relationships and friendships in general. Their filtered world and the erosion of authenticity may well be the underlying reason for the age of discontent.

The politically brilliant and unifying choice of the code name Sindoor (vermillion) for India’s recent avenging of assault on innocent tourists was hotly pursued for registration by that master of business opportunities Reliance, albeit it was quickly withdrawn.

The business of emotions

And then there’s the next level of social emotions. The professional kind. This is where people often showboat not only their curated accomplishments but also deeply personal stories, interestingly under a popular phrase: ‘Humbled to share’.

Even brands now mirror this behaviour. From healthcare to tech, businesses increasingly trade in sentiment. But in the fight for attention, emotion is not just communication. It is memory creation.

Intuitively, Lumen and Dynata's research showing that longer attention correlates strongly with brand lift. Ads that sustained attention beyond 5 or 10 seconds delivered significantly higher results across favourability, consideration, and purchase intent. Attention is not just a proxy, it is a precursor to memory and commercial effect.

As Dr Karen Nelson-Field has shown through Amplified Intelligence, emotionally intense experiences have a far greater chance of being remembered and recalled. In fact, her research shows 85% of digital ads fail to reach the 2.5 second attention threshold needed to even begin influencing brand memory.

In a saturated media environment, memory is the only true moat. Emotions create memories. Memories create brands. And brands create business.

System1 research further supports this. Of all the campaigns studied, the top 20% of emotionally rich campaigns delivered over 3.5 times more fame effects than the bottom 20%.

Right-brain features of a communication i.e., brand characters, implicit communication, a sense of place, or music with discernible melody, tend to evoke stronger emotion and attention. Campaigns that lean into these features are significantly more likely to generate brand fame and long-term recall.

Which is why Les Binet and Peter Field argue that emotional advertising drives long-term profitability more than rational messaging. Their 60:40 rule where 60% of brand investment on long-term emotional building, 40% on short-term activation still remains one of the most widely respected guides to sustainable brand growth.

Emotion becomes currency, but limits?

We live in an attention economy. Everything seems to have become transactional. The surge in nationalistic or ideological posturing online highlights this transactional one-upmanship.

The premeditated curation and merchandising of emotions, the trauma, hardship, and vulnerability, once considered deeply private, have become content. The more dramatic and emotionally charged the narrative, the greater its potential for virality and engagement.

But the most enduring brands are not the ones that opportunistically leverage emotion. They are the ones that evoke it. To perform is to momentarily impress. To evoke is to linger.

And if you do not evoke emotion across all touchpoints, it will inevitably become performative. A health insurance brand talking about how they care for you, without fixing their broken claim experience, will only create dissonance. What the brand says will no longer match how the brand behaves. And consumers always remember the gap.

So does the lens of exchange, the expectations of gains through the measure of likes, shares and social capital, hollow out the human soul? And at a deeper level, is this exploitation of personal pain for social currency a new human ingenuity or a new low of humanity?

Authenticity returns amid digital fatigue

Ultimately, these trends highlight a deep tension within our society. While technology and social media offer unprecedented opportunities for connection, they also foster an environment where emotions, relationships, and even identities can become transactional.

The pervasive pressure to perform, to monetise, and to curate, risks eroding the very authenticity that defines us. Precocious brands like Raw, Minimalist and Naked by Taco Bell have begun to leverage the opportunity already.

The success of projected idea behind these brands, in its purest form, may represent a yearning for a less transactional way of being, a desire to reconnect with intrinsic values and genuine human connection. Surely something we all could hope for.

For marketers, the messaging is clear. Move from performance to presence. Stop curating sentiment. Start designing for emotional impact. Map the real consumer pain point, not the trending cause. Consistency across touchpoints matters more than clever storytelling. Evoke. Do not emote. Trust is a cumulative experience, not a brand line.

Design for emotion, to capture attention. Invest 60% of your efforts on long-term brand building, the kind that moves slowly but sticks. Let the 40% chase performance. Not the other way around.

As seen in brand transition by Etsy, the shift from performance-only to a pragmatic bothism approach unlocks new levels of growth. In the end, memory is the only medium that cannot be skipped. And emotion is the only currency that buys it.

 - Ashish Mishra, CEO, Interbrand India and South Asia.