Authentic Emotion in Marketing: Going Beyond Valentine's Day Clichés
The Copywriter Column #241
Every February, inboxes fill with the same messages. “Love is in the air.” “Treat yourself.” “You deserve it.”
Brands race to be “emotional,” and almost all of them land in the same forgettable middle.
The intention is good because emotion sells and emotion connects. But there is a gap between knowing that and actually doing it well. Valentine’s Day just makes the problem more visible.
The real issue runs deeper than a single holiday.
Why Valentine’s Day Marketing So Often Misses
When brands reach for emotion, they tend to grab what’s easiest – love, romance, happiness.And these are safe choices, but they’re also completely interchangeable.
Most of the time, you could swap the brand name on most Valentine’s campaigns and nothing would change. And that’s a sign the emotion isn’t connected to anything real.
The problem isn’t that these feelings are wrong – it’s that they’re generic. They describe a category of emotion without earning any of it. Audiences can tell when copy is performing a feeling rather than reflecting one.
(In most cases, so can your romantic partner!)
There’s also a timing issue. Seasonal emotion often feels borrowed. You’re not tapping into what your audience actually feels. You’re tapping into what the calendar says they should feel.
And that’s a fundamentally different thing.
The Difference Between Emotional Language and Emotional Truth
Here’s where the craft comes in…
Emotional language is about how something sounds. Words like “heartfelt,” “unforgettable,” “cherish.” They signal emotion, but they don’t create it.
Emotional truth is what actually resonates. It’s specific. It’s grounded in something the reader recognizes from their own life.
Think about the difference between saying “We care about what matters most” versus describing the exact moment a customer realized a problem was finally solved. One, again, sounds emotional. The other lands.
The more generic the emotion, the less impact it has. Specificity is the engine to resonance. When you name something your audience has felt but never quite articulated, that’s when connection happens.
Feelings live in moments, tensions, and small details.
Where Real Emotion Actually Comes From
If you want to write copy that actually moves people, you’re going to need better source material.
Start with customer frustrations – and not the big dramatic ones either, but rather the small persistent ones. Look for moments of doubt or hesitation.
What makes someone pause before buying? What past disappointment are they protecting themselves from? That’s where trust gets built or lost.
Pay attention to small wins, too. The relief of something finally working. The confidence of feeling prepared. The quiet satisfaction of a good decision. These matter more than grand promises.
People want to feel like they’re in the right place, making a reasonable choice, surrounded by others who get it.
None of this requires dramatic language. It just requires intentional observation.
A Simple Way to Pressure-Test Emotional Angles
Before you publish anything that’s meant to be emotional, run it through a few questions.
Would this still resonate outside of the holiday or campaign moment? If the emotion only works because of the calendar, again, it’s borrowed, not earned.
Is this emotion connected to something the product or brand actually delivers? Emotion without substance is manipulation. The feeling has to be justified by reality.
Can you point to real customer language that supports this angle? If you can’t find it in reviews, emails, or conversations, you might be projecting rather than reflecting.
Are you describing a feeling, or reflecting an experience? One tells the reader what to feel. The other lets them recognize something true.
These questions won’t give you a formula. But they will help you catch yourself before you publish something hollow.
Using AI to Find Real Emotional Signals
This is where AI can sometimes be genuinely useful – not as a copywriter or storyteller, mind you, but as a pattern-finder.
You can use AI to scan past campaigns and flag what actually drove engagement versus what just sounded good. Sometimes the emotional angle you thought worked was carried by something else entirely.
You can surface recurring words, phrases, and themes from customer reviews, support tickets, or feedback. This is research that would take hours to do manually. AI can give you a first pass in minutes.
AI won’t tell you what to feel. It won’t write emotion for you. But it can show you where the real signals are hiding. Your job is to interpret them and translate them into something honest.
Translating Insight Into Better Copy
And as most experienced writers know, once you have real insight, the writing part is easier.
Start with the emotional truth, not the holiday.
Use fewer emotional words, not more. Concrete language does more work than adjectives. Describe the situation. Let the emotion emerge.
Trust your reader to feel it. You don’t need to announce the feeling. If the moment is true, they’ll recognize it.
And real restraint matters here. The temptation is always to add more. More sentiment. More emphasis. More signals that this is supposed to be emotional.
But the best emotional copy is often quieter than you’d expect. It’s like I say, less is more.
What Better Emotional Marketing Feels Like
When it’s working, you can feel the difference.
The copy doesn’t try to convince you it’s emotional. It doesn’t announce its depth or decorate itself with sentiment. It just speaks plainly about something real.
There’s a steadiness to it. A kind of quiet confidence. It knows what it’s saying is true, so it doesn’t need to overstate it.
It feels human, not because it’s casual or trendy, but because it reflects lived experience and names moments the reader recognizes. It’s specific instead of sentimental. The details carry the weight. The reader supplies the feeling.
And that’s why it sticks.
The goal is never to be “emotional.” The goal was to be accurate about how your customer actually feels. When you get that right, connection stops being something you manufacture and starts being something you reveal.
And that’s not holiday marketing. That’s just good marketing.
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