The brain and branding: Build a better brand, boost your bottom line Brain work
“Every brain has a story,” writes Jill Bolte - Taylor, a prominent neuro-anatomist, whose left lobe was flooded during a stroke in her middle thirties. 1
In My Stroke of Insight, she tells the story
from the inside. As blood flowed from the burst arteries, she could name the left brain functions as they closed down. She came to an understanding of the gifts of both the left – that logical mathematician seeking structure and context - and the right brain -that metaphoric, euphoric , novel impresario.
The left-brain is about solid boundaries, the right-brain is about
universal flow - the genie out of the bottle. What we imagine, see, hear, smell, touch, taste during the watching of a movie, telling of a story, or relating to a Brand message also influences our perceptions, understanding, and responses.
(Of course we don’t know what we don’t know. As neuroscientist
V.S.Ramachandran points out, a piece of the brain “the size of a grain of sand would contain 100 000 neurons, two million axons and one billion synapses, all ‘talking’ to each other.” That’s powerful. Talking about the triune brain and the left and right hemispheres the way that we do might offend some neuroscientists and evolutionary psychologists! Our story ‘brain’ (cortex) has co-evolved with the limbic and reptilian. And the left and right hemispheres work together. This is merely a convenient way of explaining in simple terms that which is complex. There are extensive connections between the hemispheres, and both parts do their processing simultaneously in order to arrive at a team outcome. It is actually more about neural pathways and scattered networks than about locations).
No wonder then that our brains take up about a third of all our energy. In a classic UK customer service experiment, library personnel
Depth Marketing In the 1950s Vance Packard wrote about what he termed “depth marketing”, the efforts of businesses to reach their clients at an indirect, subconscious level, using subliminal cues and other techniques – neuro-marketing, hidden persuaders. 2
Do we choose our toothpaste rationally (because of cleaning, health reasons) or on a sensory, emotional basis? If the former why don’t the majority brush their teeth at night when anti-bacteria work is most needed, but in the morning - when a fresh taste to counter that overnight carry-over taste is the stronger driver?
To what extent are we influenced by the visual, auditory,
olfactory, and kinaesthetic – a perfume, the click of a new car door in the showroom, piped music in a restaurant or hotel foyer and elevator, the aroma of coffee in a bookstore, colour choices, images and symbols? We relate emotionally to metaphor words. 3
at Emory University found for example that “when subjects read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active.” 4
And to music: “catchy tunes that may in fact be nothing more than advertisements for toothpaste but are, neurologically, completely irresistible.” 5
Researchers And the Amazon arrow portrays that they have everything to
offer from a to z, and perhaps at an unconscious level it also depicts a welcoming and a satisfied customer smile?
The title of The Halo and the Noose may invoke thoughts of
positive transforming, of shifting from being trapped and strangled to goodness, freedom, health.
offered library users the lowest possible human interaction (no acknowledgement, no greeting, no eye-contact, and no smile). Upon leaving the library, users rated service as poor: citing bad lighting, inefficient cataloguing and numbering. When librarians interacted with users with warmth (the only factor that changed), upon exiting, users rated the customer service as very good – this time citing good lighting, convenient cataloguing and numbering.
Words and images also reach the subconscious and can stimulate
an altered reality. The Zaltmans’ lucidly describe the probing of the consumer’s subconscious through the use of deep metaphor elicitation in consumer research. Making concrete of sensations, feelings and perceptions - in order to unearth attitudes, values and decision-drivers. 6
And ‘messages’ are sent via brand logos:
Fedex have embedded a ‘subliminal’ symbol, an arrow, in their logo – to portray speed, directness, dynamism.
The ‘snake brain’, or primitive, reptilian brain, the seat of our flight and fight responses, sensory perceptions and survival mechanisms.
The ‘dolphin brain’, or paleo-mammalian, limbic – more sophisticated seat of emotions, memory, learning, affiliations, fun and fair play, care-giving.
The ‘story brain’, the neo-mammalian, cortex – the seat of insight, meaning, music, conscience, culture, imagination, deeper awareness, reflection, future planning, concepts, story.
4 Halo and Noose | May 2012
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