Book review: UNCONSCIOUS BRANDING
How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing
Genres:
- Marketing
- Consumer Behavior
- Neuroscience
Review posted on:
04.06.2016
The number of pages:
288 pages
Book rating:
5/5
Year the book was published:
First edition published 2012
Who should read this book:
- Marketers, and anyone interested in Consumer Behavior or Neuromarketing.
Why did I pick up this book and what did I expect to get out of it:
After reading some books about marketing and neuroscience I got hooked on reading more about neuromarketing. So when I came across Unconscious Branding by Douglas Van Praet it was a no-brainer for me to pick it up. Of course, I checked the covers, table of content, and reviews online to see if there were any “red flags” but I didn’t find any. I am looking forward to learning about the seven codified actionable steps to behavior change as also reading all the real-world examples that back up Douglas Van Praets’ claims. I hope he provides science-backed-up research or case studies, not just his hunches on why something worked.
My thoughts about the book:
In Unconscious Branding Douglas Van Praet points out that we are genetically programmed to connect with like-minded people, to build communities, and to better our social status. You will also get to read about how emotions are important in interactions with people and brands, and how most of our actions and decision-making are dependent on our emotions, feelings, and a little bit of logic. We pride ourselves on being logical, and reasonable and that our decisions are mostly made based on reason. But… well look at it like this, when you are sad or angry you make different decisions than when you are happy, even though you have the same facts based on which you make your “reasonable” decision. The point I am trying to make and what the book is about, is that we are emotional creatures and marketers should approach us like that. They need to build a connection, and the most effective way to do so is to show us that they (the brands) are the same as us, and most importantly, they need to “walk the walk, not just talk the talk”. They need to enable and engage people they want to influence with interactive actions, such as free trials, samples, concerts, marathons, games, events, and so on. It all depends on who and how the brand wants to connect to. To learn what works in which case you will need to pick up the book.
I enjoyed reading Unconscious Branding because the author did a good job of providing steps on how brands can better connect with their consumers. The author didn’t just provide psychological facts but took scientific findings and explained them with real-life events. A very important point the author made was that there will never be a brand that everyone will like, so brands should stop trying to do that. Instead, they should do everything possible to show the people who have the same beliefs that they are there for them and want to be a part of their lives, and together build a better community. If you are interested in neuromarketing I highly recommend Unconscious Branding as it covers scientific research and real-life case studies. And not to worry the book is written in such a way that you don’t have to be a scientist to understand it.
My notes from the book:
- Before marketers develop strategies, they need to first recognize that consumers have strategies too… human strategies, not consumer strategies.
- Think of the human mind as if it were an iceberg. Just the tip is visible “conscious”, while the vast majority lies concealed from perception or “unconscious”. Most of our thoughts, beliefs, and decisions occur without our awareness.
- When asked about preferences in market research surveys, the respondents most often post-rationalize and make up evidence, offering up some logical reasoning that seems plausible.
- Our conscious minds are designed to think up stories to try to explain and make meaning of our behavior.
- Influence is born by appealing to emotions while overcoming rational restraints.
- The processing power of our unconscious mind is immensely more powerful than that of our conscious mind.
- Our learned (in the past many times repeated) behavior overrides our conscious effort. More often than not we defer to our autopilot-learned responses, instead of adapting to a new process or pattern.
- Think of the unconscious mind as a vast repository of all our past experiences and lessons learned, as well as the natural instincts encoded in our DNA.
- Emotions not only make judgments, but they also generate automatic physical reactions.
- We are always making largely unconscious comparisons to our past in order to predict what will happen in the future.
- Decision-making is about making predictions, and our brain does this largely through the release of dopamine. The way we plan future behavior is based upon present feelings – the more rewarding it feels, the more likely we are to engage in that activity.
- People are hardwired to avoid pain more than to seek pleasure. We do not like to stray from the safety of our daily routine (so marketers need to find a way how to position their brand in their potential consumers' routines).
- As our lives become busier and more complex, we are more likely to blindly obey stereotypical rules of thumb that make our decisions for us.
- Throughout evolution, people bond with or reject people, not companies. Based on their past interactions with the representative of the goods and services they wish to obtain, they will reward the good and punish the bad.
- The human mind is a lot like a smartphone preloaded with many discrete apps with narrow specific functions that run simultaneously, often without our awareness and at times in conflict with each other. These mental apps are designed to drive us to do things like seek food, strive for status, stay fit, avoid predators, be honest, or trick people. To ignore these universal mental programs is to overlook some of the most fundamental ways to understand and change behavior.
- Mirror neurons give humans the capacity for shared experiences by enabling us to project ourselves into the minds, feelings, and actions of others.
- Our purchase affiliations with brands are not just a reflection of our interest in a product or service but are also an identification with a group of like-minded people bound by a common sense of purpose.
- When you cleverly execute great ads on evolutionary pillars, such as safety, security, children, and sex, you have the power to commandeer minds and persistently move people because they are steeped in primordial emotion.
- All humans have a dark side, an unconscious reservoir of negativity that deepens without an outlet. Like it or not, violence sells because it’s in our DNA and our biology.
- Our emotions influence our thinking, much more than our thinking influences our emotions.
- Emotional memories are stored more vividly than other kinds of memories, but they can be highly inaccurate. What we remember is not necessarily what we experienced originally. The accuracy of those memories changes over time, but their strength in terms of your subjective feelings that it was a really powerful experience is there.
- Good emotions help erase bad memories – free gifts as an apology.
- Awareness of our surroundings occurs only when the things we experience violate our expectations.
- Our brains look to organize information into familiar patterns that fit our preconceived or learned notions of the world seeking connections to things that we already know.
- Because brands are learned behaviors, the first step in the branding process is the same as the first step in the learning process. And that is focused attention. Nothing focuses our mind better than surprise and novelty.
- Our brains only pay attention to what is around us when our predictions fail, when we experience something that defies our expectations. By paying attention to these mistakes, the brain learns and refines its model of reality.
- When a shopper is in a state of heightened arousal and stress, he or she is more likely to focus on the rational, concrete components of the sales pitch – details like cost, product specifications, hard facts, and potential limitations. But when shoppers are more relaxed and any outstanding threats subside, they are more apt to open their minds to abstract thinking, enabling them to envision possible benefits.
- We are not only programmed to detect deception, we are also made to challenge it. We have evolved to possess both an acute sense of feeling wronged and also a drive to articulate that threat in the form of public outrage.
- It’s becoming increasingly less about what you say and more about what others say about you.
- People quickly pass judgment when given incomplete information, or when it appears that competence or reputation is lacking.
- We are programmed to pay attention to what is different but we move toward the familiar. Adding a twist to a familiar idea is a great way to gain attention and receptivity.
- The brain doesn’t always clearly differentiate between something real and something imagined. Our imagination and our perceptions of the real world are closely linked since both functions engage the same neural circuitry. Advertising that fires up people’s imagination allows them to go inside their own minds, and to use their imaginations to transform the message from a universal one to a uniquely personal concept.
- The goal of marketing communication should be to transport people to a destination of their own making, which in turn should lead them to the destination of the brand itself.
- Brands may play a similar role as religion, providing people with a measure of self-worth and everyday tangible ways to create meaning, identity, and a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.
- Rituals are some of the most powerful ways to brand because they often involve multiple sensory experiences and repetitive acts, driving information into the unconscious mind.
- We are always picking up unconsciously on the emotions of those around us, so we need to be careful about what suggestions we are sending to others.
- Often the choices we make in buying a certain brand are based primarily on its ability to help us show off to our social groups.
- Repetitive positive experiences over time can help us to overcome our instincts.
