Did you feel that? A qualitative thematic analysis on emotional advertising for male and female personal care products

Emotional advertising refers to the use of emotional appeals that evoke either negative or positive feelings within the consumer. Emotional advertising has become increasingly popular due to the consumer demand for brands to fulfill the need of self-actualization. Advertising in general has changed due to the rise of the digital age. This paper will look at “How brands emotional advertising to market personal care products to male and females online?” Past research has only focused on the emotional response of male and females to emotional advertising but has not explored what in ads creates the emotional response and how the ads differ between both genders. The research focus on how emotional advertising is conducted in a digital space as most research on emotional advertising has not focused on the emotional advertising in the digital era. The research question is answered using the qualitative method of thematic analysis of YouTube videos from brand official channels. The products selected for this research is personal care products. A sample of 60 western based ads were selected, 30 female ads and 30 male ads. From the analysis it was derived that happiness appeal, empowerment appeal, warmth appeal and humor appeal are present in personal care ads. The ads for both genders contained happiness appeal, empowerment appeal, warmth appeal. The ads for men in addition to these three contained humor appeals. The elements used to evoke these emotions differed between male and feamale. The elements that are found in both ads for male and female include aesthetic and career to evoke happiness within women and men, confidence, insecurity and inspirational messages to evoke empowerment and companionship and family to evoke warmth. The rest of the elements found differ between male and females. The elements present in ads for women but not in men included selfcare to show warmth, positive features and fun activities to show happiness and definin g beauty to show empowerment. The elements present in ads for men but not for women included heartwarming scenarios to show warmth, sports to show happiness, determination and ideal man to show empowerment and then exaggeration, ludicrous scenarios and verbal jokes to show humor. The research shows that there is a strong emphasis on using confidence and visuals in emotional advertisement to convey a message.