Chapter 3
Engage Emotion—People Respond to Feelings, Stories, and Metaphors

If you have zest and enthusiasm you attract zest and enthusiasm. Life does give back in kind.

—NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

THINK ABOUT SOMEONE who you recently met. Did you get a vibe about them and walk away thinking, “I liked her,” or, “I didn’t really like her”? Essentially we like people who make us feel good and don’t like people who don’t make us feel good.

Your most important goal is to create positive feelings in the other person. Being liked is one of the essential, if not the most essential, components of business success. Research has shown that likeability strongly influences personal and professional success. Likeability also influences the success of advertisements. In a study of advertisements on Dutch television over the course of a decade, researchers found that commercials that viewers rated as less likeable produced less effective results.

Clearly you want to be likeable, and you want your marketing to be likeable. So how do you do that? The most powerful way is to evoke positive emotions in others.