The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (45 page)

r Young adults age 18–24 consume
nine
forms of screen-based media for 10 minutes or more per day

r In contrast, older adults 65-plus consume only
five
forms of screen-based media for that same duration daily

When you couple that information with:

r The fact that a study by the Federal Centers for Disease Control shows that 40% of 18–29 year olds now rely exclusively on their mobile phones rather than land lines

r That comScore recently reported that within the space of one year, the number of people in the United States who accessed news and information on the mobile Web rose by 200 percent; and that 35 percent of those individuals did so daily, the scale of this phenomenon comes into sharp focus

We are becoming a society increasingly centered around mobile devices.

The ultimate point is that we will be living amidst an even larger sea of different
screens at various sites, and the smartest marketers will learn to create messaging
content that mirrors what consumers respond to best on each of them.

That’s what our brains want, need, and will come to expect.

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Action, Banners, and Women

I’ll share one more detail drawn from our in-depth studies into the three-screen world. Keep in mind that the traditional three-screen categories are TV, Internet (meaning desktop/laptop viewing), and mobile (cell phones and other small portable screen-based devices).

Overall Effectiveness:
Ads with high dynamism, fast-paced action, banner-like messaging treatments, and a focus on women perform better in the
Internet
setting.

Attention:
Attention was highest for most of the ads in the
mobile
platform. Voluntary attention is increased on the mobile platform because the smaller screen size requires heightened focus to extract the message.

Emotional Engagement:
The larger screen size of the
TV platform
helps the human elements and the fine details shown in commercials to have the highest emotional engagement. But,
fast-paced images
flashing through are more engaging in the
Internet
platform. The
mobile
platform
has lower emotion due to its smaller screen size, which does not help in clearly depicting human faces and other key emotional elements in commercials.

Memory Retention:
The
mobile
and
Internet
environments give a significant boost in memory retention for most of the ads tested. This is a benefit derived from the intense need to focus voluntarily on the smaller screen.

Purchase Intent:
Both the
Television
and
mobile
platform screens—where the focus is on the video without any distracting elements—manage to motivate viewers very well.

Novelty:
Novelty performance is highest in the
mobile
platform, making it very suitable for new product introduction ads.

Social Media

Social Operating System

Are four hundred million Facebook members creating new metrics for marketing to mass audiences? A study that NeuroFocus did on a major Winter Olympics sponsorship strongly indicates they and other social media sub-scribers are. The results prove that what we’ve defined as the global “Social P1: OTA/XYZ

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Operating System” is remaking marketing, and through brainwave measurements and analysis we are quantifying the effects on consumers’ subconscious responses across multiple platforms.

The focus to date has been on hardware (three screens) and media distribution channels, but that perspective misses the larger phenomenon that is altering marketing on a worldwide front. Companies would be wise to stop dwelling on these silos and shift their attention to this new ‘Social Operating System.’
The medium is no longer the message; instead, it’s context
that influences how consumers conceive of your brand.

In the first study of its kind, NeuroFocus applied its full-brain measurement technology to discover how consumers responded to “Trip For Life,” a TV commercial featured in “Go World,” VISA’s multimedia campaign centered around the 2010 Winter Olympics. We measured viewers’ subconscious responses to that advertisement by placing it on the special website and Facebook pages created to be VISA’s Internet marketing platforms for the Van-couver event, as well as testing the commercial as shown on television during the Games. (The study was conducted solely for NeuroFocus’ own research; neither VISA nor any of its vendors or other entities commissioned the report.) The brainwave-based research revealed the power of social media as a marketing communications platform. Topline findings are: r Highest overall Effectiveness for the ad, especially with women: Facebook r Purchase Intent generated by the ad: highest on both Facebook and TV

r Messaging carried by the ad strongest on: Internet platform, with Face-

r Highest attention-getter: Internet

r VISA brand perception lifted most strongly: TV

This study marks the first time that a major global consumer marketing campaign was neurologically measured for its effectiveness across the most important communications platforms of our age. The findings reflect how pervasive and powerful social media are today. But they can’t be defined by delivery systems any longer—Facebook is now available on your high-definition big-screen TV as well as your iPhone, your laptop, your desktop, and your iPad. There are powerful strategic implications of this global ‘Social Operating System’ for companies looking to optimize their marketing communications investments. Up until now, they haven’t known with scientific certainty the role that social media especially plays in that marketing mix. We used full-brain, EEG-based testing to get at the answer to that critical question, because it is P1: OTA/XYZ

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the most accurate and reliable means of measurement—which is why clients rely on it for decision-making.

As more people and more companies enlist on social media networks and incorporate them into their daily lives and marketing programs, neuromarketing principles will undoubtedly play a more prominent role in this fast-growing phenomenon. In fact, the social networking category is ideally suited for the application of what we already know about how the brain works, from a neuromarketing perspective.

Faces Come First

Without our conscious minds being aware of it, one of the key reasons we are so drawn to the Facebooks, MySpaces, and Twitters of our world is the fact that they feature faces. Neurologically, we are irresistibly drawn to the human visage. For marketers, the message is clear: employ faces as a core element of your presence on these websites.

Fit through the Filters

One of the core neurological principles that we see at work at the forefront of social media networking, and mobile communications at large, is
“filtering.”

This is the process that the prefrontal cortex initiates and coordinates on a real-time basis, continuously on the behalf of the other regions of the brain.

When you try to enumerate all the stimuli coming our way, every second of every day, from every direction, through every sense, in every setting, you get a small idea of what a large undertaking our subconscious manages in this regard.

It is a selection process.
A juggling act.
A traffic-control tour de force that makes O’Hare or Heathrow airport at peak travel time look like a simple game of tic-tac-toe.

The brain filters incoming stimuli and decides what is essential and what is not; what must be accorded priority status and what can be safely ignored or discarded. When the stakes are upped, as they increasingly are now in our multichannel, multidevice, multitasking daily life, the brain kicks into higher gear. If the brain allowed an uncontrolled flood of data to overwhelm us, we would be neurologically gridlocked. Life and death situations would share the same space as what to have for lunch. In essence, we would be paralyzed.

In your living room, as the flat screen flickers and you Twitter on the sofa, switching to the nearby laptop or desktop to summon something else of interest, your subconscious is simultaneously monitoring everything that you’re doing and everything that is bombarding your senses. It is screening P1: OTA/XYZ

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megabytes of data in milliseconds, making split-second decisions about what rates your attention and what does not.

The steep challenge for marketers in this multiscreen, multimessage world is how to fit through the filters that the subconscious applies. Following are some neurological best practices to apply when marketing through social media networks.

Attract Attention ASAP

The brain will only afford your message
a very brief “window”
of time to gain its notice. Exceed the limit, and your material is either overlooked or erased. Therefore, it’s imperative that messaging be extremely well crafted to grab the attention of the subconscious. The devices you can use to do that include:

r Employing “action” words. The brain will afford these greater significance than milder/passive language.

r Please with puzzles. Quick, simple-to-solve puzzles attract the brain.

Visually-based puzzles are preferable to semantic-based.

r Pose questions. This self-involving, community-themed approach can work well for primarily female audiences.

r Call for quick replies with male audiences. Direct “appeals to action”

trigger the subconscious to respond.

Simplify

The easier you make it for the brain to
receive and absorb your message,
the better. When it comes to marketing messages, more is not necessarily better in the social media world.

Sustain

Different websites have different formats, which some marketers mistakenly believe call for fundamentally different messaging. While it’s not desirable to try to cram your Facebook material into a Tweet, the goal should be to maintain as much core similarity/uniformity across the various social media platforms where your company/brand has a presence. Focus on key language (see above for “Action” words), key visuals (faces), and other central elements.

The brain seeks familiarity. It searches for connections that it can recognize in the ocean of information that washes over it on a constant basis. By giving it P1: OTA/XYZ

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such identifiable landmarks, you enable the brain to register this connectivity, and you enhance the chances that the subconscious will award your message the ultimate prize: attention and transfer to memory.

Tempt with Triggers

Colors, sounds, unusual/stand-out words, symbols, and other unique characteristics that you can insert into your messaging can work to draw the brain’s attention. To the point above, when you use these devices as consistently as circumstances allow across different social media platforms, you “please” the brain by proactively meeting its desire/need to search for and find familiar touchpoints.

Leverage Three-Screen Learnings

The brain requires context for emotionally-based messaging to work at maximum effectiveness. This is a prime reason why the relatively large and longer-form of the traditional TV format works well for such messaging. By definition, social media platforms tend to be viewed on smaller screens, and aren’t consistent with longer-form messaging. The trick is to find ways that evoke certain primal emotional responses quickly, with the minimal amounts of stimulus that social media platforms tend to allow compared to conventional mediums.

Fine-tune the use of action words even further, focusing on those that may evoke more basic reactions than others. “Win,” “earn,” “learn,” and “gain”

are examples that can stimulate the subconscious to pay attention.

Takeaways:

r Use traditional TV for more emotion-based messaging.

r Mobile and Internet platforms are well-suited for fact-based messaging.

r Faces are fundamental—but they’re not nearly as effective on small screens.

r Mobile platforms are particularly suitable for new product launches.

r Please with puzzles and pose questions in social media outlets.

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T here is no more fascinating subject

than the human brain. And what fascinates the human brain is what this book is all about.

Through these pages, I hope you’ve gained a new appreciation of your own and your clients’ and consumers’ brains—what attracts, engages, and delights them, and what compels them to try and buy.

Consumers in this global economy are confronted with millions of marketing messages and countless purchase opportunities every day. They will collectively spend trillions of dollars this year to vote on the success or failure of your brand, product, package, message, or retail environment. Trust me: They
want
to listen to you,
if
they are addressed with purpose, relevance, and clarity.