In the 1950s, standardisation eroded differences between brands producing the same products. Emotive marketing allowed advertisers to convince customers to buy their products without any logical reason.

 

Vance Packard explains this phenomenon through the eight emotional needs that advertisers target – emotional security, reassurance of worth, ego-gratification, love, power, roots, immortality and creative outlets. These concepts are so universal that even ISIS is relying on them for its online recruitment.

 

ISIS propaganda prominently drives at the need of ‘emotional security’, by using utopian depictions of an ideal and secure state. Academic Pieter Van Ostaeyen says that the main focus of IS online posts is on the “suffering of local people, brutality of the regime and the oppression of Muslims”.

 

Jihadis are promised a place in paradise according to ISIS Twitter accounts, that want to entice people by giving them a sense of worth. Ego-gratification is another large aspect of ISIS propaganda, claiming Jihadis are pure and good unlike evil non-believers.

 

Power is instilled by promising martyrdom will make heroes out of Jihadis. This is connected to the desire for immortality, as everyone is promised eternal bliss in paradise if they fight for ISIS. People who yearn for belonging are recruited because they are promised marriage.

 

These propaganda tactics are most likely to work on "vulnerable" people, which ISIS "actively target" explains Magnus Ranstorp of the EU Radicalisation Awareness Network.

 

ISIS propaganda consists of vile online content, but the truth is that the radicalisation is conducted through aiming at universal desires we all experience - and these are very powerful motivators.

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