Newsbrands tap into emotional need states and drive connections
As a result of the quality and depth of engagement, driven by high levels of trust and compatibility, consumers have a deep emotional relationship with their newsbrand of choice. It’s because of this relationship that readers feel a strong sense that something is missing in their lives when asked to give up their favourite newsbrand for a week. This is exactly what we challenged participants to do as part of the ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ research; the point being that you can often only appreciate the value of something when it’s gone.
An additional factor contributing to the strong emotional relationship that readers have with their favourite newsbrands is that they fulfil various different need states for people, ranging from passing the time (“I’m always flicking through the apps when it’s quiet”), to being in the know (“You need the news so you’re on the ball and can be quizzed in your field”), and fuelling conversation (“I use it for banter at work – we all read the same football columns”). Newsbrands also fulfil ritual and routine need states (“It’s always been part of my daily routine, I just like to keep up to date”) and score particularly highly in addressing needs in more emotional areas such as relaxing, me-time (“It helps me unwind at the end of a long day”) and feeling uplifted (“I like feel-good stories, people overcoming their backgrounds and succeeding – it’s inspiring”).
Many news providers address a number of these important need states, however, it is newsbrands that are selected by their readers as the best commercial source for providing the news across each of them.
Summary & conclusion
Generating an emotional connection with consumers is pivotal to driving trust, loyalty and long-term brand success. In striving for this, marketers should take into consideration the impact of both creative messaging and media channel selection on their ability to drive emotional connections.
News is important; possibly one of the most important media experiences in consumers’ lives, but the role of newsbrands is more central, more emotionally rooted and more valued than any other news platform.
Consumers have a deep emotional relationship with their newsbrands of choice due to the quality and depth of engagement, high levels of trust and compatibility and because newsbrands fulfil various different important emotional need states.
This relationship is creating a more powerful and influential advertising environment; one which has a quantifiable impact on the power of the advertising within their pages to do its job.
Which brings us back to the question posed at the beginning of this section. How effective are newsbrands in helping to drive emotional connections between brands and consumers? Given all of the evidence above, we would suggest that newsbrands can be very effective at forging emotional connections, if activated via a ‘consumer first’ approach to planning, with the ability to generate disproportionate value for the brands in question.
Source:
Newsworks, ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ study
