« Right Brain Workouts

Heart Beats Head and Heart

By Peter Lloyd

Back when my colleagues and I were writing direct mail, we enjoyed referring to it as drek mail. Maybe that’s why I never excelled at the art. Today my recycling bin is just an arm’s length from my mailbox. If I don’t know the sender, guess where the letter goes?

No one has ever written or will ever write an envelope promise that will persuade me to open a piece of drek mail. Same goes for spam, electronic drek mail.

So it was with some interest that I read “Heart and Head or Heart vs. Head?” by Willis Turner sent to me from my friend and colleague Tom Keller, president of Blue Crane Creative. I’d link to the article, but I’ll spare you the ten-second popup drek that blocks it and give you the gist.

Researchers compared the donation-drawing power of a letter that appealed to the head or logic against one that appealed to the heart with a very personal and heart-wrenching story. No surprise to any writer familiar with the art of persuasion which appeal drew substantially more money.

It may surprise some, however, that a third letter containing a combination of head- plus heart-appeal did not do as well as the all-heart appeal! But there’s more. If you act now, you’ll also receive... (Sorry, got carried away).

A fourth group was given the all-emotion appeal, but before reading it, half were given math problems to solve while the other half were asked to create a list of words associated with feelings. As you might expect, those primed with logical, mathematical thinking gave much less than those primed with emotional words.

Willis Turner concludes,

In other words, analytical thinking can reinforce people’s beliefs, but it actually discourages them from taking action. If you really want to motivate people to give, you have to go beyond what they believe and touch the feelings they have about those beliefs.

You knew that, of course, but isn’t it good to see painstaking research back creative common sense once again?

Peter Lloyd worked for more than two decades in the advertising business as a writer and creative director for small and large agencies and eventually on his own as a freelance writer.

Right Brain Workouts Explained