Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing

This is a really terrific book for marketing professionals who want to understand the difference between what consumers say versus what they do.One of the few benefits of very long plane rides to Europe is a chance to read without interruptions. This week, I read a wonderful marketing book that I'd like to share with you. I'm really interested in understanding what consumers do versus what they say and this book has an unconventional approach to the topic.I saw an article online by the author and it his ideas fit well with a marketing conference I was organizing with colleagues so I knew I had to learn more.The book is called Unconscious Branding by Douglas Van Praet. He is the EVP at an award winning advertising agency Deutsch LA and he focuses on account planning and strategic insights. Douglas worked on the highly acclaimed and successful mini-Darth Vadar commercial for Volkswagon's Jetta where a little boy uses his super powers to start a car with the wave of a hand as an eager father with a remote helps him behind the scenes.From my days at The Annenberg School of Communications at The University of Pennsylvania, I have always been interested in behavioral sciences, anthropology and non-verbal communications. Since the topic for this conference I mentioned above is focused on the huge discrepancy between what a consumer says in research versus their actual behavior, I hoped the book would provide some ideas and an approach to the issues.I was not disappointed.When I answer a question on a survey, how well can I actually answer a question like why I bought a product?* How come I bought Seventh Generation not Tide for cleaning my clothes.* How come I went to Starbucks not Dunkin Donuts for coffee?* Why do I buy gas for my car at Exxon- even when it is cheaper at other stations?* Why do I watch one commercial over and over but scan others?* Why do I shop at Whole Foods instead of Harris Teeter?* Why do I pick one wine over another?I can tell you why I did these things but is it true? Can I accurately explain my motivation. A great example of this is buying gasoline. I stumbled upon the reason why I prefer Exxon even when it is a few cents more per gallon. I found a gas credit card from Esso (Exxon's earlier name) that my Dad gave to me when I started to drive in 1971. My connection goes way beyond the fuel and over the last 40 years, I have been driven on an unconscious level to go to an Exxon/Esso for gas. Of course, I never made that connection consciously until recently.This is an exceptional well-written book that poses a fairly simple premise. How can neuroscience empower and inspire marketing. Another way of saying this is that instead of relying on what consumers say, understanding their behavior at an unconscious level can be powerful. How people act and the motivation for those actions can give clarity to a marketing professional to understand how to affect purchase behavior.The book helps explains some of the core motivation behind our behaviors and our decision making process. He approaches marketing by trying to explain and understand how we act. Through fascinating examples of classic ad campaigns, he outlines the unconscious connection that helps make the effort so successful at touching consumers and motivating them to purchase.The author has a seven step process that outlines:1. The role of interrupting perceptual and behavioral patterns2. How to create customers comforts with a brand3. Lead the imagination to a desired conclusion or outcome4. Shift consumer feeling in favor of a product5. Satisfy the critical filter of resistance in the mind6. Change the association by which memory and the mind work7. Generate actions ingraining positive brand impressions that become second nature.Best of all, this book treats consumers, target markets, demographics as human beings.It is an important distinction since the author explains how human motivation at an unconscious level helps us understand how we can change attitudes and behaviors when we are marketing products. I like the human approach to marketing and the author articulates these idea like a mensch. (Yiddish for a really fine human being)I learned from this book that the word emotion and motivation both come from the latin root to move. (movere). This helps us understand that key to both connecting emotional and motivating a behavior that taking action is required. When you touch a hot stove, you learn to stay away from the painful experience.When a brand disappoints you by promising something and not delivering, you move away from that brand. Harnessing this insight can help you motivate a human (consumer) to take an action and move toward your brand and its solutions. The book is filled with examples from traditional and non-traditional advertising and marketing campaigns.One case study in Unconscious Branding is the success of Red Bull.The founder of Red Bull created a strange brew. His oddly flavored caffeine spiked beverage received the lowest scores in research for taste and purchase intention. Yet, the Australian born Dietrich Mateschitz understood the importance of emotional branding and motivational communications.He created unique emotional experiences through experiential marketing that linked the product to the emotional rollercoaster of stimulating experiences. His recent Red Bull Stratos is one of the cleverest marketing events to associate emotion with a brand I have ever witnesses. This type of marketing connections puts Red Bull's Mateschitz in a class with Jobs and Apple whereby they make consumers connect not only to the physical product but at an unconscious level, plug into the brand's attitude. This is branding by masters.So pick up a copy of Unconscious Branding. It is available at Amazon or your favorite independent bookstores but I bet you unconsciously knew that.

Unconscious Branding laid out a unique approach to Marketing that I had never encountered before. I connected with Van Praet’s approach on a fundamental level because I am a member of the paleo movement, which retraces our eating habits to our ancestors in order to eat what is right for our bodies, but I never thought to connect ancestral health with today’s marketing. He provides very compelling arguments on why we should be more primal conscious and capitalize on every human’s primal need for society and relationships.Theses relationships are the foundations that connect us to our family and friends so why not recognize that those associations are similar to how we connect with brands as well? The first 40% of the book is devoted to explaining the physiology of the unconscious, the psychology of needs, and how those all play into how we perceive the world around us.While Van Praet is quite redundant in his underlying message and concept (this book could have easily been 150 pages shorter) he provide more detail and illustration of the concepts to really make his ideas hit home. If not for the story tale examples he provided the book would have been far too dry to consume his more complex concepts and I would have put it down before finishing it.The last half of the book was his seven steps to branding, which I would actually characterize as the 7 different parts of associations. They were not so much steps, rather seven ways to create positive associations that when leveraged together create a powerhouse marketing plant that would be indefatiguable.

This is a very interesting read. I recommend it for persons who are in sales and marketing, as well as people who teach psychology.

This book provides a solid framework for understanding the role of the subconscious mind in the choices we make. I recommend this as a thought provoking read for anyone interested in understanding the underlying motivations driving our purchasing decisions and loyalties.

I'm really loving this book, a friend recommended Decoding the New Consumer Mind and I splurged and bought this book, that book and Hooked. Loved Hooked as well read that first and fast. This book is taking me longer to read because there is much to very deeply think about and absorb. On a journey to discover why I buy what I buy and to research why people buy products or stop buying, my doctoral degree in psychology becomes obsolete if I don't keep up with the times and revisit concepts about the mind. Choosing the corporate path over academia I feel this book is reawakening my professor mindset and I can hopefully apply what I've learned to make the world a better place. Corporations can do harm to humanity for profits, my goal is to use these insights to benefit humanity and move towards positive social change. The funny parts are reading examples of the vast differences between what people say and what the data shows they actually do..."oh yes the posted calories on food 80% of the time influences what I buy, I buy lower calorie" --Fact, there is no change in what you buy based on the orders you've place :P

good book! learned alot

This is a great book, authoritative, well written, full of great case studies and aimed at practical Marketers. It's a complex discipline but one that Douglas unravels and gives his personal experiences of. Well done. A great introduction to consumer neuroscience and one that I would recommend to othersGarry

Very interesting read and well-researched and written.

OK not great

A must read for anyone who w ants to learn about branding and mar keting you won't be disappoint ed