How neuroscience can empower and inspire your marketing
Unconscious Branding
Douglas van Praet
Create a brand, not just a product!
The marketplace is packed with products, and newer and greater ideas are introduced every single day. If you don’t get seriously creative, your product will lose its way and fail to grab the attention of the audience you want.
Based on a deep understanding of how the brain works, this seven-step process will supercharge your marketing skills and help you to build a successful brand in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
Remember that your prospect is a human, too. How can group mentality help you as a marketer?
What happens when you have a lot of choices on a supermarket shelf? How did you come to a decision?
We use “heuristics”, simplified methodologies for finding a sufficient solution, when finding the perfect solution is either impossible or impractical.
One of these methodologies is social proof. This means when you’re in doubt of what to do, you check what other people are doing and then do the same.
Buying the brand of a market leader is one way to use heuristics as well.
Another example is the idea that “expensive equals good,” which reflects our readiness to believe that the more expensive a product is, the better the quality.
There are also certain evolutionary tics that a marketer can tap into to influence a potential customer. One is our innate need for the safety that a group provides.
Think about the lives of our Stone Age ancestors. If an individual was banished from a group, it was essentially a death sentence.
Nowadays, people still exhibit a group mentality, seeking like-minded individuals attracted by a certain brand.
Imagine a group of Harley Davidson motorcycle owners, out for a Sunday ride en masse, all wearing the same leather outfits – a perfect example of group mentality.
To create a good campaign, however, you need to see prospects not just as consumers but as humans.
Harnessing the brain’s physical, emotional and rational parts is key to an effective campaign.
The brain’s physical part deals with our powerful, yet unconscious, human needs. Often called the “reptilian brain,” this part deals with breathing, eating and mating.
Marketers can harness this part of the brain by channelling any of the six “S” words in a marketing campaign: survival, safety, security, sustenance, sex and status.
The brain’s emotional part controls memories and feelings, allowing a person to make a connection with a certain brand. A marketer can tap into this emotional well to encourage people to buy a product.
Finally, the brain’s rational part is responsible for higher cognitive functions, such as problem-solving. We use this part when deciding to buy a certain product, perhaps by comparing prices.
To stimulate this rational region, marketers can use figures, facts or other comparative information in brand campaigns.
Break a pattern and grab attention.
So you’re walking down a street you walk down every day, and suddenly, you see a car crash into a storefront just a few hundred yards ahead of you. Do you keep walking, or do you stop and stare?
Of course, you stop. But how is such a reaction relevant to a marketer?
A car crash is an unusual, out-of-the-ordinary event. In the same way, providing information that doesn’t fit expectations allows a marketer to get the attention of a target consumer.
The human brain follows patterns. Known patterns help us recognize objects and actions in our daily experience. Interrupt these patterns, however, and you grab attention; your brand stands out.
But while jolting a customer out of her comfort zone is one way to get attention, it’s important as well to make a customer feel comfortable. So how do you balance the two?
Make your customers comfortable. Comfort builds trust, which in turn builds brand loyalty.
Customers will trust you when you give them the comfort they seek. Once you do so, people will not only choose your product but also won’t mind paying a bit more for it.
A Columbia University study revealed that people who are relaxed are willing to pay about 15 per cent more for a product than people who aren’t relaxed.
If you can imbue your brand with a sense of safety, you’ll encourage customers to relax and trust your product. And once they trust the product, they’ll be willing to pay more, just for the confidence they feel when they choose your brand.
Capture a customer’s imagination to encourage a brand connection.
When a customer has to use his imagination, he’ll interpret a general marketing message into one that speaks directly to him.
One of the most successful “open” campaigns is Nike’s “Just do it.” This simple yet powerful phrase helped Nike increase its market share over ten years from 18 to 43 per cent.
Instead of using a slogan such as, “Just get off your ass and go jogging,” which, while being more direct, is considerably less inspirational, the company left “it” open to the audience’s imagination.
Nike even received letters from people who said the campaign had encouraged them to leave an abusive husband or rescue a person from a burning building.
The brain can’t always distinguish between reality and imagination, as these two areas use the same neural circuitry. By encouraging a person to imagine using a product, a marketer helps him connect directly with the brand.
The jump from imaginary to real is short – if someone imagines trying on a new pair of running shoes, he’s already thinking of what those shoes would feel like for real, and thus will likely buy based on that connection.
Importantly, when you channel a customer’s imagination, you trigger emotion. And this is exactly what you want a customer to be: emotional about your brand.
A great marketer doesn’t sell a product or a service, but an emotion.
Our behavior is nearly always driven by our emotions. Thus it is incredibly important that you consider your customer’s emotions when developing brands and campaigns.
If you purchase a product that doesn’t make you feel good, then that bad feeling will linger, telling you to alter your behavior and choose something next time that will reverse that bad feeling – in short, something that will make you feel good.
Nike, for example, is more than the product it sells. When you buy a pair of Nike shoes, just the act of purchasing makes you feel more fit, given the strong connection between your sporting dreams and the company’s brand message of successful, self-confident and athletic individuals.
Apple has a very powerful brand. When you buy a Mac, for example, you’re not just buying a computer but joining a club of like-minded people and a larger mission. Purchasing and owning a Mac affects you as a person and influences how others see you, too.
This connection isn’t simply about the product, but about what you, and the people around you, feel.
Critical minds take a lot of convincing. Use statistics and trusted voices to make your message stick.
The human mind is by nature critical, and there are evolutionary reasons for this.
A wary consumer doesn’t want to suffer a loss, whether in cash or efficiency, when buying a new or untested product.
Choosing the right brand or product is in essence a new form of evolutionary “survival” in modern society. As a marketer, you need to know how to convince critical minds to buy a certain product.
So how do you do this? It’s best to gather statistics and credentials from trusted voices or authorities, placing your product or service in front to speak directly to the critical mind in a positive way.
In the 1990s, chewing gum was frowned upon as an ugly habit, believed to contribute to unhealthy teeth and gums. Yet Trident Gum brought in statistics to turn consumers’ attitudes around. In its ads, the company claimed that “four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum.”
Not only was the company’s message easy to understand, but also the message was backed by a trusted authority – dentists.
Positive associations strengthen a brand. Infuse your brand with traits your customers desire.
A great brand makes us feel good, and feeling good is a positive emotion.
Brands and their associations, however, depend on the subjective viewpoint of the observer.
The power of brand association is especially important to consider if you’re attempting to attract a new demographic. More often than not, you’ll need to change your brand image accordingly.
For example, when tobacco company Philip Morris introduced the Marlboro cigarette in 1924, it was marketed mainly to women.
In the 1950s, however, the company wanted to expand Marlboro’s reach to men. Marketing creatives brainstormed masculine symbols, and decided on the cowboy – and so in 1954, the “Marlboro Man” was born.
This image change is considered one of the more brilliant marketing coups in history. A consumer didn’t buy Marlboro because he wanted to be a cowboy, but because he desired a cowboy’s traits: independence, defiance, adventure and romance.
By 1972, Marlboro became the leading brand of cigarettes in the United States.
Lead your customers to an action, and they’ll convince themselves they’re in control. But you are!
Companies can use marketing to help consumers take an active role in their relationship with a brand.
Let’s say you’re at your usual coffee shop, yet instead of ordering a latte, you’re offered a free green tea instead. By agreeing to the tea, you interrupt your usual pattern.
While you’re enjoying the tea, you might think about ordering a tea in the future, as drinking green tea fits your health goals. You might even convince yourself that you chose the green tea because you’ve been thinking lately about being healthier.
What really happened, however, is that the presentation of the free tea was appealing, and you couldn’t say no. The marketing pitch made you believe that you had made the choice yourself, but actually, the environment and the marketer chose for you!
Yet they let you take action, changing your behavior to their advantage – the ultimate example of unconscious marketing!
Centering a marketing strategy around human behavior is the most effective way to create a relevant brand. By understanding the different ways people think and branding your product in a way that responds to those patterns, you’ll be on your way to creating an intuitive, sophisticated marketing campaign.
Solve problems with creativity.
As a marketer, you should do the same as many in business are doing these days – get creative. Differentiate yourself from competitors and coworkers alike by doing something new. With creative solutions you can address the conscious as well as the unconscious part of a consumer’s brain, increasing the positive outcome of your work.
With a creative explainer video you can address the conscious as well as the unconscious part of a consumer’s brain, increasing the positive outcome of your marketing strategy!