Podcast Review: Why People Buy?

Brand Seduction

Consciousness and how the brain works is really fascinating to understand. There are a lot
of sort of illusions going on and tricks that the mind plays, which are typically very adaptive.
They’re healthy and helps to get through life easily and efficiently. The author realized a gap when
he saw people misunderstanding and having a lot of misconceptions for how consumers’ minds
and brains are working and how we can better tap into it. To help bridge that gap a little, he listed
the researches in field of neuroscience and application of neuroscience for marketers in his book
called Brand Seduction.

Working of mind is difficult to understand not only for marketers but buyers are also
unware of how their mind works. The subconscious mind has strong influence on how we make
decisions and we as a buyer are unaware of how much we are being influenced by unconscious
processes we all are bombarded with magnificent amount of information and when it comes to
think and process those information our mind takes heuristics. When it comes to making our
decisions a lot of processing takes place on the basis of past experiences. Author says, if you are
slightly distracted then we are going to make different decisions and the cognitive energy of a
Person is tied with the energy levels. When you are high on energy the decisions made are rational.
The decisions we make before and after the lunch are different for the same reason.

The author shares about the chocolate cake study in which he took a group of people and
had them try to hold some numbers in their head. Some people had two numbers to hold in their
head and some had seven. Then as they’re walking down the hallway trying to keep these numbers
in their mind somebody comes along and offers them either some fruit or some chocolate cake.
The people who were trying to remember the longer sequence of numbers went for the cake more
often. This shows people often go for easier decision when they are under cognitive load.

Understanding how marketing is impacting people and how it's influencing their choices
and decisions is important for marketers. Dr. Robert Heath says that the fleeting surface level
attention might be actually better in some ways for marketers as people are not putting their
defenses up and they let information just slide in their mind ( probably unconscious). Let's say you
pass a billboard on the highway and you might totally forget that you have seen that billboard and
even if someone asks you later you may say, no I have never seen that ad but your mind may built
some associations from that ad even if it didn’t processed to conscious message.

So linking the unconscious mind with the formation of brand "Daryl Weber, the author define
brand as a collection of associations in the consumer's mind. These can be both conscious and
unconscious associations that are picked up over the course of potentially years or decades that
someone has had experience with the brand. So any kind of touchpoint from customer service to
where you see it shelved to who you see holding it or wearing it, or what types of channels or
magazines you see it in all these little mentions. None of them are consciously remembered or
processed, but together they add up to the sum total of what that brand feels like and that gives you
a sort of gut feeling towards what that brand is about. But he defines 'brand fantasy' as a strategy
for shaping and molding that feeling. It's a model for brands to take this very nebulous, not tangible
thing, this amorphous collection of associations, and put it in some useful terms. His idea for the
brand fantasy model was to make it actionable, make it useful for marketers, and give them a way
of working with this vast collection of associations."

The brand fantasy model gives marketers a sort of way of mapping out what those
associations and connections are so that they can first understand where their brand exists today
with its associations and then where it can go in the future. It helps them to figure out what do they
want their brands to be? It may be the mood, feel and personality, vibes associated with products.
To create such feelings marketers generally talk about connecting with the emotions of consumers
but Daryl says marketers are taking the concept of emotions in literal way but he suggests to create
a sense of gut feel and that’s almost the emotion of their brands. The feeling that can attract people
toward you is important rather than just eliciting emotion form ads. To create this feeling a deeper
digging of connections that customers are having with the brand is important and all these things
can be understood using the projective techniques like collage boards, mood boards, building out
stories. Marketers find it a bit scary and difficult but if they can embrace those things it will give
them a clear sense of what their brands stand for and where they want it to go. By doing this they
will know the unconscious side of their brand which is more powerful than conscious one. These
findings are helpful in shaping the strategy for the brands as well.
Daryl says, projective techniques are qualitative and there are many other ways which can be used
to know what the brand stands for. The concept of neuromarketing is pretty hot nowadays so there
are neuro marketing firms that do rigorous scientific studies that can be brain imagination's and
read the brain wave. The facial expressions, eye tracking are reflected in the brain and with neuro
science you can read the brain.

The author concludes with the opportunities and potential that understanding the brain, mind and
how it works has in developing the brand fantasy. Better understanding of these things helps to
chart the brand strategy and long term direction for companies.