the grey matters of neuromarketing: what is it & why does it work? marketing with your prospects’ “animal brains” in mind separating the “pseudo” from the “science.” “Religion, enlightenment in the fourth grade classroom. Take a few seconds to transport yourself back to fourth grade science class. We realize superstition this may be a less-than-pleasant mental trip for some of you, so we’ll make it quick. and fear were The kid next to you takes on a sickly green color as your teacher passes out the dead frogs. The girls in the next replaced by row are giggling and exchanging notes filled with glitter reason and and gossip. But that’s not the important stuff. The target of our time travel is that poster hanging on the back of knowledge.” the classroom door. The poster, with its bold, glossy colors, shouts:
SCIENTIFIC METHOD PURPOSE J. D. Bernal, Marxist RESEARCH historian and scientist HYPOTH… You get the idea. The scientific method: the steps your science teacher had you take to make something scientific. “To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.” Yeah, she said something like that. Put into motion by ancient Egyptians, the deductive Plato and the empirical Aristotle, and then further refined by Arab scholar Alhazen, Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes and Mill, the scientific method and evidence-based thinking separated the “pseudo” from the “science.” It drew the line between alchemists and chemists, mystics and metrics. It put the sun at the center of the solar system and shined light on the atom.
2 escaping the “dark labyrinth.” Einstein famously stated that we cannot understand the universe without speaking its language: the “triangles, circles and other geometrical figures” that make life tick. If you don’t speak the language, you might as well be “wandering around in a dark labyrinth,” he claimed. Einstein used this “dark labyrinth” to symbolize the futility of physics without quantifiable data and mathematical models, but you don’t have to be a theoretical physicist or quantum mechanic to realize how relevant this analogy is to many aspects of life. You have to speak the language of your subject matter in order to understand it. Just as important, you have to speak the language of your audience in order to connect with and make an impact on them.
©Yousef Karsh 3 putting the science “The rational into marketing. mind is the market to your prospects’ intuitive brains, humble servant, not their rational minds. the intuitive When it comes to marketing your business, you have to speak the language of your brain the sacred prospects. But you must know that this dialect isn’t a purely conscious or tangible one. Not only is this language more emotional than logical, but your prospects are also gift. We have speaking it without even realizing it. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s how things are created a society supposed to work. that honors the It’s not your prospects’ job to know the science of this language. That, my friend, is your job. servant, and has forgotten “It is not the customers’ job to know what they want.” Steve Jobs, co-founder and former chairman/CEO of Apple Inc. the gift.”
You have to understand the language of the unconscious, intuitive brain, not the conscious, rational mind. Albert Einstein “The conscious mind is simply not running the show, but we’ve created an entire industry pretending that it does.” Douglas Van Praet, author of Unconscious Branding
This unconscious language of the “animal brain” is the language of neuromarketing, and to survive in today’s marketplace, you have to learn, live and love this language.
4 neuromarketing ≠ manipulating minds. This isn’t about using sneaky strategies to control your prospects and customers. Today’s buyer is far too savvy and empowered to fall for marketing manipulations and subliminal advertising that vilified the industry in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Neuromarketing is about understanding the real way your prospects think, decide and purchase – the “rumblings below the cortical surface” – so you can create more likable, more effective and less costly marketing.
5 * “The fact of neuromarketing = smarter marketing. Most business owners, and even marketers themselves, are selling their products and the matter is services without understanding how to connect them with people. anyone can do *Smarter marketing = understanding how your customers’ brains work to get better neuromarketing results with less guesswork and less cost. With the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and without ever electroencephalogram (EEG) technology, modern neuroscience is showing us what consumers are really connecting with when they’re making decisions. What’s more, it’s scanning a showing us that consumers’ brains tell quite a different story than the spiel that comes single brain.” out of their mouths. “Our conscious minds are designed to think up stories to try to explain and make meaning of the hidden forces and hardwired
Douglas Van Praet, author neural programs that guide our behavior” … of Unconscious Branding In other words, your prospects are making decisions based on underlying brain processes that they’re not even aware of. And then they’re offering up whatever evidence that comes to mind: any reasonable explanation that make their decisions seem logical. In the world of psychiatry, this post-rationalization – “I chose X because of Y.” – is called “confabulation.” … “to believe our lies and confabulations… to hide most of our intentions and promote self-confidence, an adaptive function that improves lives and prevents information overload.” Douglas Van Praet, author of Unconscious Branding
Note: You don’t need a big research budget and access to fMRI and EEG machines to take advantage of neuromarketing. All you need is awareness of the research that’s being done and the common sense to apply it to your own marketing.
6 aristotle: “know thyself.” neuromarketers: easier said than done. The visual cortex sees more than meets the eye. Blindsight: the ability to respond to visual stimuli without consciously perceiving them. Studies of individuals blinded by brain damage show that this isn’t just hokey subliminal manipulation. Even with lesions in their primary visual cortex, known as “V1,” they’re able to navigate around obstacles, correctly point to specific targets and reach out and grab strategically placed items – all without conscious knowledge of how they’re doing it. The top neurologists and neurosurgeons in the world admit there is still a lot we don’t fully understand about perception, with neural projections going backward from each level in the visual processing hierarchy outnumbering those going forward.
We may not completely understand how blindsight works. But this is not due to lack of neuroscientists’ effort. There are several viable theories based on some pretty compelling research, like the Nature study on macaque monkeys that suggests the boss of blindsight is the lateral geniculate nucleus, which lies in the sensory-relaying thalamus. www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature09179
7 But what visual experts do know is that what was once thought – that perceptions must enter consciousness to affect our behavior – is simply not true. There’s more to the picture than the primary V1 pathway. We have a secondary, more primitive system – V2, V3, V4 and V5 – that feeds directly into our subconscious. What’s the takeaway from this? You need to keep your message consistent and your marketing on point at all times, even when your prospects aren’t paying attention or, more accurately, when they aren’t consciously paying attention. Colors, shapes, messaging, names, logos, etc. – it’s all subject to subconscious storage in your prospects’ emotional brains. So keep it consistent, keep it genuine and keep it remarkable… even when no one’s “watching.”
The ventral putamen likes it sweet. You’re probably familiar with the classic Pepsi Challenge: the ongoing blind taste test, first conducted in 1975 by PepsiCo, that consistently puts Pepsi ahead of Coke. Neuroscientist Read Montague re-enacted the Pepsi challenge in 2003, but this time scanning the tasters’ brains with an MRI machine. Just as in the original Challenge, the two carbonated beverages were not labeled. On average, people reported liking the unlabeled Pepsi more. This was backed up by the MRI machine: Pepsi produced a stronger response in the ventral putamen, a brain region associated with reward processing. And even in the minority of subjects who reported preferring the unlabeled Coke, the putamen in their brains was five timesless active than it was in the majority who reported preferring the unlabeled Pepsi. The preference for Pepsi has been highly attributed to its sweeter taste.
8 The syrupy scandal. “You would Coke’s response in 1985 led to what Time magazine ranks as #23 on the have thought we list of 50 Worst Inventions Ever and what Advertising Age claimed to be the industry’s sixth worst moment: the product that introduced “the new taste cured cancer.” of Coca-Cola.” Coca-Cola executive, Officially labeled Coca-Cola II in 1992, the new, sweeter beverage gave rise talking about the public’s to a campaign group called “Old Cola Drinkers of America.” The group euphoric of Coke’s original, 99-year-old formula publicly poured the new Coke down drains and, naturally, the media drank it up. Just 77 days after the new formula was introduced, Coca-Cola executives announced the return of the original, 99-year-old formula. ABC News’ Peter Jennings even interrupted General Hospital to share “the second coming” of the old Coke: Coke Classic. Conspiracy theories still bubble up now and again: • Some people swear that the soft drink company purposely changed the formula to upset the public, incite demand for its old product and spike sales. • Some say Coke used the new formula to cover its switch from natural sugarcane to cheaper high fructose corn syrup. • The most scandalous theories claim that the new Coke was a cover for the final removal of all coca derivatives from Coca-Cola products – an effort to placate the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people.” Donald Keough, former president and COO of The Coca-Cola Company
9 The medial prefrontal cortex spins a different story. Montague repeated his soft drink taste tests, but with a creative twist: This time, he told the subjects what they were drinking. The results were drastically different, with most subjects preferring Coke with both their words and their brains. The MRI now showed increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a region associated with thinking, judging, preference and self-image, when subjects sipped on Coke. The tasters were literally allowing what they knew about Coke – all of their positive associations with the brand’s messaging – to shape their “taste” preferences.
The orbitofrontal cortex has expensive taste. When assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, the orbitofrontal cortex – a region in the frontal lobes of the brain that’s involved in decision making – gets more excited by the $90 Cabernet than the $35 Cabernet. But unbeknownst to both unconscious brain and conscious mind of the taster, the $90 Cab and $35 Cab are one and the same. This means that the tasters didn’t just report that they liked the more expensive wine better; their brains actually showed increased pleasure when sipping on the “pricey” wine.
10 “Consumers use all of their senses to experience a brand. The sense of smell emotionallye aff ts humans up to 75% more than any other sense.”
Martin Lindstrom, author of Brand Sense: Sensory Secrets Behind The Stuff We Buy
The limbic system digs smelly marketing. Volunteers were shown two pairs of Nike sneakers, each placed in a different room. One room was unscented and one was pumped with a light floral scent. By 84%, the subjects reported that they preferred shoes in the floral-scented room – saying not only that they were more likely to buy the shoes, but also that they’d pay more for them. However, these pairs of shoes were identical. The only distinguishing variable was the scent of the room. The olfactory bulb takes care of the brain’s smelling functionality. It’s located in the limbic system, which is the brain’s emotional center that’s responsible for our decisions to fight or flee, laugh or cry and boot or buy.
11 The superior temporal gyrus turns up the volume. “As much as For a number of days, a British wine shop pumped its store with alternating music: 95 percent of French music on one day, German music on the next, and so on. On days that the French music played, French wine outsold German wine by a ratio of four to one. On consumers’ German-music days, German vino outsold the French grape by a ratio of three to one. thinking In countless studies – and we’re sure you experience this quite often in daily life – people are more likely to tolerate long waiting times, both on the phone and in the real occurs below world, when enjoyable and/or relevant background music is playing. awareness in the Why does sound affect our decisions and states of mind? shadows of the The superior temporal gyrus (STG), home of the primary auditory cortex, connects to 1., the hippocampus and amygdala of the emotional limbic system, 2., the thalamus, unconscious which relays sensory signals to the cerebral cortex, and 3., decision-making areas in mind.” the prefrontal cortex. Sound, therefore, has an immediate, direct link to both the unconscious, emotional processes and conscious, rational parts of our brain.
The right frontal cortex owns
“the light bulb moment.” Gérald Zaltman, Our brains solve problems many seconds author of How Customers before our minds are consciously aware Think: Essential Insights Into of the solution. The Mind Of The Market This was shown in a study at the University of Houston, where subjects were given a problem to solve as experimenters monitored their brain activity using an EEG cap. Those who solved the puzzle showed brainwave activity in the right frontal cortex, the region associated with shifting mental states, eight seconds before the volunteer realized he or she had reached the solution.
12 Neuromarketing takes on the economic recession. What do you do when your industry becomes a societal villain? This is what happened in 2009, when our economy was clobbered by a recession and skyrocketing distrust of the financial sector. But with the help of calculated neuromarketing research, many banks and financial consultants managed to hold it together. NeuroFocus, Inc., a subsidiary of Nielson and the global leader in neuromarketing research, performed an extensive study for the financial sector services: “diving deep into test subjects’ subconscious minds to discover their hidden, unspoken beliefs and feelings about financial institution brands.” Using Subconscious Resonance tests – EEG sensors, pixel-level eye tracking, and galvanic skin response (GSR) – the neurological testing experts identified the most neurologically effective brand positioning and marketing approaches that should be used by financial institutions to reclaim consumer trust and affinity.
www.neurofocus.com/pdfs/MoneyMeltdownsMindsandMilliseconds.pdf
13 Eleven of the study’s 40 key findings: • Clutter-free, humanized web interaction with refreshing and differentiating design aspects scored the highest. - Overall aesthetics significantly impacted whether a website visitor would return. • Usability and functionality of websites scored higher than more complicated architecture with lots of offers, click options, widgets and gadgets. - Poor website navigability and poor overall design greatly affected the website visitor’s willingness to engage and do business with the company. • Images that evoke comfort and stability, like photos of families, solid structures, “clarity in chaos” and light in darkness, scored best in consumers’ subconscious. • Blog postings were deemed to be the most effective, accessible and trusted form of written advocacy among consumers. - Responsible employee blogging scored high despite any preconceived notions about it being planned and generated. • Multimedia video posts, such as YouTube videos, scored the highest in consumer advocacy. - YouTube videos featuring CEOs, employee comments, information and advice scored better than many other interactive mechanisms. • Content strategy that emphasized “experience,” “understanding,” “compassion” and “empathy with the consumer” scored well. - Messaging that focused on the institutions’ “sacrifices” and “hard work” did not score as well as those that emphasized understanding “consumer pain.” Remember, a large population of consumers can turn against any industry, or even a specific organization, at any time. So everyone has something to learn here: Marketing at the neural level gets you out of messy marketplace misfortunes.
14 so here’s what it all means for you. you’re not Coca-Cola, and you don’t have to be. Reading all the brain studies in the world, learning the intricacies of sub-cortical pathways and opening your mind to the powers of subconscious thought are all well and good, but at the end of the day, you want to do more than soak up neuro-knowledge. You want to take action. Douglas Van Praet describes the goal of neuromarketing like this: to transform neural pathways of positively predisposed associations with your company into profitable behavioral pathways… “turning thoughts about coffee into trips to Starbucks.” So you may not be the next Starbucks (or Apple, Nike, Coca- Cola, etc.), but you can apply all this high-level brain research to your own marketing. Your goal? To connect to your prospects on the emotional, subconscious level, so when it comes time to purchase, they have an already established pathway to your company – one that their brains feel quite comfortable taking.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Guiding your prospects to your company by nurturing them through the decision-making process – with no-risk offers, low-risk offers, educational content and lead nurturing campaigns – is a founding principle of inbound marketing. Neuromarketing simply strengthens inbound marketing’s nurturing process. It gives you the tools reach those deeper, subconsciously influential “animal brains” of your targets.
15 action steps: applying neuro-know-how to your marketing. Be bold and shake things up. “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” This quote is pretty famous amongst motivational speakers, leadership trainers and business consultants… and even more so amongst those who occupy all three of those categories. And it’s popular for a reason. Breaking industry standards and shaking up patterns, when you’re basing these changes on calculated strategy, is the only way to survive in this innovation-obsessed marketplace. Doing the same tactic over and over again, especially when it generates less-than-remarkable results, just isn’t smart.
Ditch the script. Zappos made the bold decision to chuck its call center manual – with its age-old algorithms, if-then guidelines and scripted responses – and provide its customer service representatives with new, refreshing direction: Solve the problem in the best way you see fit. Since the script ditching, Zappos consistently tops the ratings for customer service, on par with Ritz-Carlton and ahead of BMW and Apple.
16 Get them involved to get them invested. Consumers are emotional people who make emotional decisions, no matter how hell bent on logic they claim to be. They need to feel comfortable with a purchase decision before making that purchase decision. A rash decision sparks discomfort because it creates cognitive dissonance in the brain. In psychology, this is defined as the discomfort you feel when an action you take is incompatible with your attitude, behavior, beliefs or knowledge – in other words, the story you tell yourself about yourself. In marketing, it’s called buyer’s remorse: feeling guilty when you doubt or regret a purchase decision. As a marketer who wants to avoid cognitive dissonance in your customers at all costs, you have to make them feel comfortable with your company. This means “Tell me getting them involved. • Initiate the conversation with no-risk, educational information that doesn’t and I’ll push a sale. forget; • Give them visibility into what makes your business tick and, more importantly, show me what makes it tick for them. • Let them have a say. Uproot, a recent addition to the growing population of and I may renegade wine makers, does this beautifully on their Facebook page almost remember; every day. They ask their fans opinions on the type of wine they prefer at Super Bowl parties, on the designs of their “sneak peek” packaging and on involve me which email header they’d like to see in their inboxes. and I’ll Note: Your fans’ rational, conscious minds may not be aware of why they understand.” prefer the minimalist package design over the one with the crowded detail, but that’s not the point. Understanding their emotional, subconscious Chinese Proverb preferences is your job, not theirs.
Investment stems from involvement, always. Show your consumers and clients that you trust them and that you respect their opinions. In return, that oxytocin hormone of theirs will fire, promoting and facilitating transactional bonding with your company.
17 Build the bridge of bonding. Connecting your company’s story with that of your consumers is eerily similar to nurturing a budding romantic relationship. Both depend on oxytocin, the neurotransmitter that facilitates not only familial bonding between mothers and infants and pair bonding between mates, but also transactional bonding between consumers and companies. Dr. Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University, a founder of the emerging field of neuroeconomics, calls oxytocin both the “social glue” that binds people in society and the “economic lubricant” that enables transactions in the marketplace. Unfortunately, many marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize how crucial this bridge of bonding is to the success of their companies. In a video called “Stone Age Minds,” Evolutionary Psychologist John Tooby says that market societies, in contrast to hunter-gatherer groups, are marked by a significant lack of closeness and trust. Not only is there a decreased time to bond, but people are also less willing to bond. “It creates a deep insecurity,” says Tooby. “Do these people really care about me or not?”
Show you care: Be real and be responsive. Take it from Domino’s CEO Patrick Doyle, who promptly apologized for an employee’s distasteful video with an immediate video of his own. His frustration with and disappointment in the insensitive employee, the accountability he knew he owned as CEO and the responsibility he put on his company to make things right were heartwarmingly obvious to all viewers of the video. Doyle conveyed sincerity with urgency, winning the forgiveness of millions of Dominos fans… as well as the business of previous non-fans who fell in love with his authentic personality.
18 Find your foil covering. Dr. A.K. Pradeep, CEO of leading neuromarketing company NeuroFocus and author of The Buying Brain, conducted a study on the experience of eating yogurt. He asked volunteers to imagine the process of eating yogurt – starting with seeing the container, picking it up, opening it, inserting the spoon and stirring up the fruit, smelling it, eating the first spoonful, then another, etc. – and asked which step they thought would be most engaging to their brains. Most people chose the “insert spoon and stirring” part, with “tasting the first creamy spoonful” being a close runner up. But the EEGs that the volunteers were hooked up to when eating the yogurt told a different tale: The most stimulating part of the process, as far as the volunteers’ emotional brains were concerned, was grasping and removing the foil covering over the top of the container. Don’t assume that the obvious product characteristics or service offerings are the only important ones. Put some thought into the aspects of your products, services and company’s culture and methodologies that have the potential to peel back that “foil covering” and spark your prospects’ emotions.
19 Gain permission to enter the animal brain. This eBook has been selling you (hopefully somewhat successfully) on the power of the unconscious, emotional “animal brain.” But there is a caveat – isn’t there always? – that you must keep in mind to achieve success in your neuromarketing: It’s not all about the emotional appeals and gut feelings. Obviously they matter quite a bit, but you must “Lift a calf gain permission to enter your prospects’ unconscious animal brain before you can everyday and cozy up to it. At some point in your messaging, you must engage the frontal cortex. This is the part when you grow of your prospects’ brains that plans behavior and decides whether or not to unzip the up, you can wallet, sign on the line or click “add item to cart.” lift a cow.” Befriend the bouncer. As Van Praet puts it, “You need to penetrate the critical filter that asks the questions, ‘Does this jibe with my past experience? Does the story hang together? Does it make sense?’” This critical filter is like the bouncer to a prospect’s hotbed of unconscious emotions. If you don’t pass the bouncer, you’re thrown out of the club. And no one Venkatesh Rao, author likes to be thrown out of the club. of Tempo: Timing, Tactics And Strategy Guide them to the cow by giving them the calf first. In Narrative-Driven Venkatesh Rao is a writer, independent researcher and consultant, best known for Decision Making his blog ribbonfarm.com, his book Tempo on decision making and his contributions to Information Week and Forbes on marketing, technology strategy and organizational problems. He uses Milo of Croton, a famous wrestler from ancient Greece, to explain how to introduce a new message to your prospects. The story goes that Milo gained his immense strength by lifting a newborn calf when he was a boy, and then lifting it each day as both he and the calf grew. In a few years, he was able to lift the grown cow. The calf grew into a cow at about the rate that Milo grew into a man.
20 How Milo applies to marketing: When putting out a new message to your prospects, you want to make it familiar enough so that it fits an already-established mental model, but not so familiar that it’s boring and unremarkable. The rational mind must be able to process it, but the message must also surprise the emotional brain a bit. Ask yourself, “What is the nearest and most appropriate mental model that my prospect will conjure up when I feed him this new information?” And then ask, “What kind of angle can I work in that shakes up this model just enough to stimulate the emotions?” This not only applies to your marketing messages, but also to your sales efforts. You can’t hard sell a cow to your prospects right away. Your sales guides must lead them to the cow by giving them the calf, and perhaps the milk to feed it, first. Be valid. Be visionary. Get creative with your offers and messages. Don’t just fall back on clichéd, bombastic assertions like “cheaper,” “faster” and “stronger.” If the skeptical frontal cortex doesn’t dismiss this is as an invalid claim, the emotional limbic system will dismiss it as boring.
21 marketing that connects, respects and affects.
The era of big media budgets, brand awareness and market share, shouting on billboards and pushing hard sells, is no more. The marketing that works today is social, unobtrusive, educational and genuine. It doesn’t play bait-and-switch or sell-and-ditch. It creates an experience that informs, comforts, guides and gets to know the consumer or client on a deep-rooted, emotional level. “Before marketers develop strategies, they start with a description of the target as a single person, typically called ‘a persona,’ which is based upon traditional self-reported research… It doesn’t jot down demographics, skim over psychographics and claim to know what it’s talking about. “… This individual, often described along current cultural, product, category and media usage dimensions, represents a discrete demographic and psychographic segment of a population.
22 It doesn’t fence in with facts and figures, tranquilize with templated designs, brand with bogus bargains and slaughter with stock messaging. “… But by focusing on how this persona is different from the rest, we ignore the universal similarities: the human insights that we share, regardless of gender, age, income, geography or culture. [We neglec] that person’s deeper, more meaningful, universal human desires and aspirations.” Douglas Van Praet, author of Unconscious Branding
Marketing that works is marketing that connects with the unconscious, respects the individual and affects the emotions. It connects with, respects and affects the animal brain, but it doesn’t corral its customers like animals.
23 Want to learn more about transforming your inbound marketing program with neuromarketing strategies? Head to www.square2marketing.com or call 215.491.0100 to brainstorm gray matters with one of our Cerebral Strategists™.