The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (6 page)

The preceding explains why the most accurate and reliable measurements are made at the subconscious level of the brain, relying on full-brain EEG-based testing, and using biometrics for what they are: secondary confirmations of what the brain has already responded to several seconds earlier.

These fundamental facts are vital to understand accurately the field of neuromarketing, and to separate marketing claims from neurological/scientific truths.

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Your Customer’s Brain Is

100,000 Years Old

At the end of this chapter, you’ll know and be able to use the
following:

r Key ways to engage the primal part of the human brain r Core mechanisms the brain uses to determine whether to pay attention to your message

r The three ways in which the brain can be frustrated, and how to avoid them in your marketing

r The four triggers the brain loves and how to use them in marketing Caveman in a Wired World

The neuroscience of the human brain builds from the understanding that it is a freshly evolved miracle. Travel back with me 100,000 years or so, when newer, larger prefrontal cortexes in early man first previewed the modern brain we all share today.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Competition for food is fierce. Predators are fast and omnipresent. To survive, the relatively slow and weak humans develop a secret weapon: fine hand movements allow them to refine tools and weapons to become extremely efficient at both hunting and defending against others who hunt. At around the same time, the human trachea descends into the throat to make vocalizations more distinct and communications suddenly very effective. Communication is honed and increases in importance with the evolving social system and the need for cooperation. The ability to determine friend from foe is crucial in this nascent society, as is the ability to predict what someone will do (lie or tell truth, cooperate or attack).

This is all good news for the hominids, bad news for their prey. Our rise up in the food chain begins as our brains become larger to accommodate these 17

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The Buying Brain

critical new skills of working in cooperative groups, planning, hunting, and remembering.

But, in a classic catch-22, there is a price to pay. As brain size increases, so must the skull that carries it. And here’s the rub: If the skull continues to grow in pace with the rapidly evolving brain, the pelvis of the females will need to be so wide that they will no longer be able to run. Plus, that gorgeous new brain requires significantly more oxygen, glucose, and blood than previous versions, making it more expensive to operate over time.

In fact, our brain is the most metabolically expensive organ to operate—representing only 3 percent of the body’s weight, yet requiring up to 20 percent of its energy.

Advertisers take note: The “ease of processing” of your message is therefore very important to the brain. A complicated ad that requires cognitive resources
will likely be ignored
by the brain. So as you balance the complexity of an ad with ease of processing, lean toward ease. Package designers note that simplified “Zen” like packaging (Apple being a prime example) appeals to the brain—as it consumes fewer cognitive resources. In-store designers and Web and storefront designers, keep in mind that simplified organization and ease of cognitive processing trumps clutter and complex hierarchies. While it is true that “simple puzzles” intrigue and attract the brain, if the puzzle requires more than a few seconds to resolve, the brain
gives up
, and often rejects the message, with prejudice against your brand (aka negative priming).

So evolution offers a twofold compromise: First, the large brain begins folding in on itself, creating grooves and valleys to fit within the skull (see Figure 3.1).

Second, infants are born while their heads are still small enough to pass through the mother’s pelvis, but long before they are ready to face the world.

Helpless and dependent,
human babies require their mothers to stay put,
at least for some time. They require fathers to provide for the mothers. They require group cooperation and an increasingly complicated social structure to support them. Because of the need to operate in a complex social group, the brain continues to evolve and grow in size, developing empathy, deception, altruism, and the building of coalitions.

This big, complex brain separates us from every other animal on Earth and gives us extraordinary capacities like linear thinking, complex language

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Figure 3.1

To compensate for limited space inside the skull,
the brain develops folds and ridges.

Source:
Photo used with permission from istockphoto.com development, the ability to understand symbols and metaphors, to develop and comprehend the complex strategies of mathematics, and to communicate with purpose and grace.

Large, complex brains exist in other species such as some whales, dolphins, great apes, chimpanzees, and orangutans. These mammals are typically highly social also, have long lives with long gestational and developmental periods, living in complex groups that hunt together and form life-long bonds. They also require planning and memory to hunt, adapt, and mate successfully.

As humans work and live in small groups, natural selection favors greater intelligence. We grow smarter still until the brain,
around 100,000 years ago,
reaches its current size and configuration. It becomes exquisitely attuned to its social and environmental needs. Always alert for predators, forever searching for food, warmth, shelter, and suitable mates to pass on genes, the human brain—the same model we share today—developed hard-wired abilities and responses honed to the survival of the species. Encounters were filtered and filed primarily via six human emotions: sadness, fear, anger, disgust, happiness, P1: OTA/XYZ

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The Buying Brain

and surprise, and possibly a seventh, contempt. The prefrontal cortex (the most advanced part of the brain), began conducting its symphony (including long range planning, storing and planting food, and hunting and finding animals in season), learning socially-appropriate behavior and task switching. Soon it launches humans into a new world beyond daily survival into a dance of possibilities—featuring representations of objects further removed in time and space and manipulated with logic and emotion. This big new brain absorbs and exudes culture, bringing itself to full modernity. Figurative art, music, self-ornamentation, trade, burial, and consciousness of an afterlife become imbedded in—the society, which begins to thrive rather than just survive.

The human brain is emotional at its very core. While women process messaging with more emotion than men, both genders
must be engaged
emotionally
for a message to be remembered and acted upon. Advertisers must uncover the key emotional triggers their product inspires and pinpoint them in their messaging. Package designers must carefully imbue their designs with palatable, even visceral, emotive imagery and shapes.

Merchandisers must make the experience of shopping an emotionally engaging, self-satisfying one
if they seek repeat visits.

Traditions develop and concepts, ideas, patterns, folklore, and customs are passed down through generations. Eventually, small, tightly bound groups begin to migrate, to explore, to adapt. One hundred thousand years later, they—we—have conquered the Earth, and are beginning to explore the planets and galaxies that surround it.

Day One

And it all started with the debut of our large, multilayered brains, first in evidence 100 millennia ago. On a typical day on that dry savannah, you awake with the sun, hungry and perhaps cold. Your goal-oriented brain pro-pels you to seek food. Grabbing your spear, you go out, and away from your shelter. Your anxiety level is high; your senses are on alert, ears monitoring every crunch of dry grass; eyes scanning the horizon; nose filtering the scents of animals, water, and plants; your mouth is dry, and every muscle is tense and at the ready. Your breathing is fast and your heart rate is elevated.

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Goal-driven behavior is the frontal lobe’s command to the body to seek and find what it needs most. This type of pressing, urgent search mode prompts the brain to scan for novel or precisely-attuned messages or images that satisfy its consuming goal. When dealing with products or messages that have
an indispensable
place in consumer’s lives, provide clutter-free, clear, accurate directions for finding and obtaining the goal. In advertising, packaging, and in-store merchandising, use active verbs and dominant imagery to tell the brain “What you need is here.”

Some two hours into your journey, your eyes, ears, and nose alert you: Something is moving in the tall grass. Is it friend or foe? You freeze, hold your breath, and wait. Soon, a tail switches and a leopard rises to meet your gaze.

In blazing speed, your brain calculates your next move. The leopard is faster than you are. Should you flee? Your spear is deadly and you have not eaten in days. Do you fight?
In milliseconds, the answer is determined.

The leopard, too, is hungry, starving from the drought. In her eyes, you see stark determination as the big cat growls softly, showing you her teeth. Her whiskers tremble as she moves into high alert mode. She made her life-and-death decision the moment she rose to meet you from her hidden spot in the tall grass. You are two predators, each deadly, each hungry. Only one of you will survive this confrontation.

Your heart pounds as you advance, your body sweats, your muscles tremble as you confront today’s life and death scenario. The fighting is brief but ruthless.

Wounded and bleeding, you manage to drive the spear home. As the leopard collapses, your body is flooded with endorphins, a feel-good hormone that produces feelings of euphoria. Your mouth waters at the prospect of food. You drag the heavy cat back over the miles you’ve come, fighting back scavengers all along the way. When you limp back to your shelter, the members of your tribe greet you with joy, prepare your prize for eating, and mend your wounds.

The reward circuits in your brain light up
as the feeling of pride and accomplishment settles deep into your psyche, driving you to go out and hunt another day.

When the brain comes across a “rewarding behavior” (one that it wants to be repeated or continued), it releases a potent dose of dopamine as a powerful reward to motivate trial and repetition, Over time, repeated behaviors that spark the reward circuits lay down neurological pathways to prompt the performance of those behaviors with greater ease and frequency. The P1: OTA/XYZ

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The Buying Brain

pleasure/reward circuit—at its extreme—is responsible for everything from addicts to Olympians. So what? Motivate consumers to try or to continue using your brand or product by activating their pleasure/reward circuits by focusing on powerful images of the emotional “payoff ” elements of your product: the luscious depiction of the chocolate, or the smooth leather seats of the high-performance automobile.