In an era of information overload and algorithms, we still make purchasing decisions with our hearts, not calculators. Emotional marketing – grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and authentic storytelling – remains one of the most effective advertising strategies in the world. How does this mechanism work, what has the pandemic and artificial intelligence changed, and why is ING Bank Śląski's campaign with the slogan 'Remember this?'
" now triumphant at the Effie Awards 2025 gala?
A Decision in a Fraction of a Second – How Emotions Rule the Wallet
Research by neurologists and behavioral psychologists leaves no illusions: between 80 and 95 percent of purchasing decisions are made under the influence of emotions, not cold calculation.
Rational arguments – price comparisons, specification analysis, benefit calculations – only come into play after the fact, as justification for a choice the heart has already made. This fundamental discovery changed the way the best agencies and brands construct their messages.
Emotional marketing works by deliberately triggering feelings: joy, nostalgia, fear, empathy, surprise, or a sense of belonging. When an ad evokes genuine emotion or a smile, the brain releases dopamine and serotonin, strengthening the association between the brand and that positive state. The message is remembered many times more effectively than a dry listing of facts and dates.
Gerald Zaltman of Harvard Business School, one of the pioneers of neuromarketing, demonstrated in his groundbreaking work that most communication with customers takes place at the subconscious level, completely beyond the reach of logical evaluation.
"Consumers don't buy products. They buy feelings, values, and stories that those products offer them. " – Gerald Zaltman, professor at Harvard Business School, author of the ZMET theory.
How the Mechanism Works – From Stimulus to Purchase
The process of creating an effective emotional campaign can be divided into several key stages. The first is identifying the target emotion – determining what feeling the brand wants to evoke and why that particular emotion resonates with its target group.
Then comes storytelling: a story that places the viewer at the center of the narrative, allows them to identify with the protagonist, and feel that the brand understands their world. The final element is multisensory stimuli – music, color palette, editing pace, packaging texture – each of which strengthens or weakens the emotional charge of the message.
Science goes even further. Neuromarketing – a field combining psychology, neurology, and marketing – now allows measuring brain reactions using electroencephalography (EEG), eye-tracking, facial microexpression analysis, or skin conductance monitoring. Companies such as Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience and Ipsos offer studies that precisely map emotional reactions to individual frames of an ad. The result?
Higher conversion, better memorability, and stronger brand loyalty – far more so than in the case of communication based solely on facts and figures.
From a Touching Spot to Hyper-Personalization – Evolution Through the Decades
The beginnings of emotional marketing were simple, sentimental ads based on unchanging human values: family, security, love.
The turn of the 2000s and 2010s brought sophistication of techniques – brands began reaching for psychographics, lifestyle segmentation, and precisely targeted narratives. Campaigns stopped speaking to everyone; they began whispering to a specific person at a specific moment in life.
The pandemic of 2020–2021 proved to be a turning point. Consumers, tired of uncertainty and isolation, began reacting with rejection to any falsehood and exaggeration. Brands that survived this time with a positive image were those that bet on authenticity, emotional support, and real human stories.
Since then, three key trends have dominated communication: positive emotions instead of manipulative fear, wellbeing as a supreme value, and honest, imperfect narratives featuring micro-influencers and ordinary people.
"After the pandemic, consumers became detectives of authenticity.They sense falsehood faster than ever before and ruthlessly turn away from brands that try to emotionally manipulate them. "
– Mark Ritson, marketing lecturer and Marketing Week columnist.
Artificial Intelligence as a Tool of Emotion – Enhancement, Not Replacement
The year 2023 brought another breakthrough: 60 percent of companies increased budgets for data-driven hyper-personalization – according to a McKinsey & Company report (The State of AI, 2023). Artificial intelligence has not replaced emotional marketing but dramatically strengthened it.
Algorithms analyze behavioral data in real time: browsing history, purchasing patterns, and even microexpressions recognized by mobile device cameras. On this basis, AI systems adjust the content, tone, and timing of the message to the recipient's current mood.
Practical applications include dynamic A/B campaigns testing dozens of versions of emotional messages simultaneously, personalized product recommendations based on the customer's emotional profile, and sentiment analysis tools in social media. Co-creation campaigns are also becoming increasingly popular – brands invite audiences to co-create narratives, which generates authentic engagement impossible to simulate by an algorithm. On the horizon lurks VR marketing: an immersive, three-minute emotional experience in virtual reality, activating far more brain centers than traditional advertising.
The challenge, however, remains the boundary between personalization and manipulation. Industry experts are increasingly speaking out about the risk of digital manipulation – a situation in which algorithms exploit users' emotional weaknesses in an unethical way. Brands that want to build long-term value must respect this boundary.
Allegro, Coca-Cola, ING – Masters of Emotion in Practice
The Polish advertising scene provides excellent case studies. Allegro's 2016 campaign – an elderly man learning English to visit his granddaughters in England – is still cited in marketing textbooks as proof that an e-commerce platform can move people to tears. The spot garnered over 15 million views within a week and generated a wave of positive brand associations that no price promotion could have replaced.
Emotional Marketing – From a Touching Spot to Hyper-Personalization
In the 2025 holiday edition, Allegro continued this tradition, building a sequence of emotions: nostalgia for childhood, family emotion, culminating in the joy of gift-giving. The mechanism is as precise as a Swiss watch – it activates the limbic system, responsible for emotions and memory formation, which translates into higher memorability and organic shares.
Coca-Cola, in turn, refreshed its iconic Happiness Factory concept in 2025, emphasizing the joy of being together and releasing dopamine through densely accumulated positive visual and auditory stimuli. The effect: high virality on social media and strengthened consumer loyalty.
"The best emotional campaigns are not those that bring tears.They are the ones that make the consumer feel: 'this brand understands my life.' "
– Wojciech Walczak, marketing expert and creative strategist.
The ING Case – Effie Gold and Changing the Financial Habits of an Entire Nation
ING Bank Śląski's campaign titled "Remember this? That means retirement is closer than you think" is arguably the best-documented success of emotional marketing in Poland in 2025.
Created in collaboration with agencies GONG and MullenLowe Media, the campaign was based on an insight as simple as it was brilliant: people don't think about retirement because it seems too distant. The antidote? Nostalgia. A series of spots evoked cultural symbols from the 80s and 90s – cassette tapes, CRT televisions, iconic TV series – sending viewers aged 30–50 the signal: "Remember this? That means time passed faster than you think. And that time is happening now. "
The results exceeded expectations. In the first half of 2025, every fifth new retirement product in Poland was opened at ING. The percentage of Poles saving for retirement rose from 34 percent in 2022 to 47 percent – a change of over one-third in three years, with a significant contribution from this very campaign. The Effie Awards 2025 jury awarded the campaign two statuettes: in the "Particular Audience and Targeting" category (the only award in that category) and "Influencers and Social Platforms". The KTR Competition honored it with gold in the "Creative Strategy – Consumer Insight" category and bronze in "Online – Web Campaigns".
The mechanism was precise: nostalgia activated emotional engagement, financial education provided rational justification, and the IKE/IKZE offer with a bonus of up to 500 PLN (£100) gave an immediate impulse to act.
The campaign, conducted across multiple channels – television, social media, digital – achieved high conversion and became a benchmark for how emotional marketing can genuinely change the financial behavior of a society.
Trends for 2025 and Beyond – What's Worth Knowing
Deloitte's Global Marketing Trends 2025 report points to several key directions that will shape emotional marketing in the coming years.
First: authenticity over perfection. Consumers are increasingly turning away from polished, studio-produced narratives in favor of raw, imperfect stories of ordinary people – hence the boom in user-generated content and micro-influencers. Second: real-time emotional marketing – responding to society's collective emotions in real time, as Nike did during major sporting events.
Third: the growing importance of wellbeing marketing – campaigns that not only sell a product but genuinely support the recipient's mental and physical health.
In Poland, health campaigns with emotional patient stories encouraging prevention and check-ups are developing particularly dynamically, as well as multi-brand initiatives combining empathy with creativity.
According to IAB Polska data (Digital Ad Spend Report, 2024), spending on digital storytelling in Poland grew by 28 percent year over year, and long-form video formats – the classic tool of emotional marketing – are experiencing a renaissance after years of short-form dominance.
- Nostalgia – one of the most powerful emotional tools; activates memories and creates a deep bond with the brand, particularly effective in communicating with Gen X and older millennials.
- Empathy and support – after the pandemic, campaigns showing that the brand "is on your side" build loyalty more strongly than any price promotion.
- Joy and celebration – positive emotions generate virality and organic shares on social media, which lowers the cost of reach.
- Fear of missing out (FOMO) – cautiously applied fear of missing an opportunity; overused, it leads to audience resistance and a reverse effect.
- Sense of belonging – brands building strong communities around shared values gain loyalty impossible to buy with price alone.
The key indicator for monitoring the effectiveness of emotional campaigns today is not only CTR or conversion, but above all the Emotional Intensity Score – an index of emotional engagement measured with neuromarketing tools – and the Brand Love Index, regularly studied by Kantar BrandZ.
Brands with a high brand love index grow in their price category 2–3 times faster than competitors operating solely on rational arguments.
ING Bank Śląski
ING Bank Śląski is one of the largest commercial banks in Poland, operating since 1988 as part of the global ING Group – a Dutch financial conglomerate present in over 40 countries and serving nearly 40 million customers worldwide. In Poland, the bank employs over 8,000 people and serves several million retail and corporate customers.
ING Bank Śląski is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and regularly ranks at the top in innovation and service quality rankings. Fun fact: the bank was one of the first in Poland to fully digitalize the account opening process – without visiting a branch – which became an industry standard only a few years later.
