Emotions are central to the human experience. They help shape perceptions, guide decisions, and influence what we remember. All essential for effective brand building. But why?

Emotions help us make quick, intuitive choices in the moment, by simplifying things (good/bad, approach/avoid, safe/risky). They interact with our core beliefs, opinions, memories and experiences to help us reach decisions rapidly. More often than not, we choose based on feeling rather than methodically analysing features. 

Much of this processing happens automatically and outside conscious awareness. Known as System 1 thinking, it is fast, instinctive and emotional. Deliberate reasoning (System 2) still matters, especially when stakes are high or situations are unfamiliar, but it builds on these earlier automatic evaluations. Many psychologists argue that System 1 has a greater influence on almost all of our decisions, even when we’re spending on big ticket items like travel or a house.

The brain is only 2% of our body weight but uses around 20% of the body’s energy. It has evolved to be super efficient at how and where it deploys energy across its structures. Feeling-based evaluations help us make sense of situations without slowing down to think everything through – which feels effortful, diverts attention and increases local energy consumption. Which is why if you want to change hearts and minds, emotion is key. For places in particular, emotional resonance can shape preference long before facts and features are weighed up.

Making memories

Emotions play a vital role in shaping memory. When we experience a strong emotional response, the amygdala is activated. The almond-shaped region is responsible for emotional processing (it’s not just about ‘fight or flight’). It flags the experience as important so the brain creates better memory structures that last for longer and can be more easily recalled.

So brands create an emotional response and link that to their distinctive codes (logo, colour, design language, jingles, scents). They use these codes later to trigger that emotional memory to influence behaviour and choice, otherwise known as ‘emotional priming’. While brands are considering AI as a new audience, your prospects still have human brains (for now).

Some of the best examples of emotional priming come from place marketing because places have their own distinctive assets in the form of architecture, landscapes, rituals, smells and symbols. What comes to mind when you think of Paris and how does it make you feel? What would you expect to see in an ad for Colorado and what might you enjoy doing on a summer holiday in Cornwall? Place branding is the art and science of priming and reinforcing those codes, consistently linking them and their associated feelings to memory structures in the brain.

This boosts brand salience, making your brand more likely to come to mind at the right moment. There’s also a compound effect – it works better when people already feel positively about your destination. So consistent marketing keeps those emotional associations alive, reinforcing them over time and making them available when it matters most. And that’s why emotional, narrative-driven brand marketing is so important and shouldn’t be given up for performance marketing. But that’s another blog.

Written in collaboration with Saskia Wheeler