The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (26 page)

Since the individual formal elements of the brand that are connected in the subconscious mind of the consumer form the brand image, those elements are often the core protected intellectual property (IP) of the company. To that end, at the outset of neuromarketing research it is critical
to tease out the elements of Form
that are connected in the subconscious, and match those elements with the company’s protected IP, trademarks, and copyrights to determine how best to protect them (and, ultimately, leverage them).

Here is something interesting we learned from our ongoing brand studies across numerous categories that has specific importance to the IP

surrounding Apple. Brand Apple is represented not only by the Apple P1: OTA/XYZ

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logo with a piece missing, but also by the distinctive candy-colored icon interface for the iPhone. We were surprised to find the strength of the subconscious connection of this user interface to the Apple brand. We are not surprised that Apple has filed appropriate intellectual property protections of this connection, which are now the subject of a legal issue between Apple and Nokia.

Function:
The next dimension of the Brand Essence Framework is the function or functions provided by the brand in our daily life—not just any function, but those functions that are indispensable and unique to your brand.

We emphasize
indispensable
as the critical distinguishing attribute for an important reason. In our testing on a variety of brands, the elements of Function that scored highest were the ones that consumers had at a deep subconscious level evaluated and rated as indispensable. These functional attributes provided a vital contribution to the identity of a brand.

Uniqueness is important because it differentiates the functions of the
brand
from the more generic functions of the
category.
The competitive differentiation of a brand, deep in the consumer’s subconscious, provides the truest and most enduring barrier to consumer exit and competitive substitution.

In our testing of functionality, we have found it is important to distinguish between two categories, explicit and implicit:
Explicit Functionality:
These are the Functions of the product that can be easily, and well, articulated by the consumer and implemented by the product designer. For an automobile, for example, explicit Functions include transportation and storage. But, in each case, NeuroMetrics can reveal a hierarchy in the consumer’s mind—some explicit Functions clearly have greater personal resonance than others do. You need to be sure which Functions these are.

Implicit Functionality:
These are the functions that the consumer finds valuable and indispensable, but
may not be able to articulate verbally,
or may be reluctant to articulate. For instance, for a family with children, the most important function of a DVD player in a car may be to provide babysitting on long distance trips, but parents may not be comfortable acknowledging this, as they may feel it reflects negatively on their parenting skills. But, it might still be an indispensable Function, one that might make the difference between purchasing one car over another.

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As with Form, it is important to look at Function from three perspectives: your brand, your competitors’ brands, and your category.

Feelings:
These are the automatic emotional associations that arise at the mere thought or mention of the brand. They constitute the emotional archetype of the brand. Our testing across categories reveals that every well-known brand has a unique emotional identity in the deep subconscious.

The activation of these feelings through appropriate in-store environments, aisle designs, and features and displays constitute implicit priming for the brand. Our tests have shown a measurable increase in Purchase Intent when the emotional archetype of a brand is displayed either through explicit or implicit priming.

Feelings can be thought of as a kind of
shorthand for a large network
of attributes and connections associated with a brand, including elements as diverse as facts, times, places, and people. Rather than requiring recall and a recitation of all the factors associated with a brand, the brain can just call up the summary Feeling that has been encoded from the larger underlying network.

So, for example, the brain does not have to remember all the nutritional information associated with a product, it can simply access the good feeling it experienced when the nutritional information was examined. That Feeling then becomes an accessible shorthand summary of the nutritional information.

It is important to understand the core feelings that have been tagged about the brand.

In exploring the landscapes of emotions associated with brands/products, I have found it useful to classify them under six broad categories:
1.
Feelings associated with the
place, social setting,
and
occasion
of enjoying the brand/product

2.
Feelings associated with the
act of preparing
to enjoy the brand/product

3.
Feelings associated with
enjoying
the brand/product
4.
Feelings associated
post enjoyment
of the brand/product (the “after-glow”)

5.
Feelings associated with the
larger cultural context
in which the brand/product plays a role

6.
Feelings associated with the
live events
or
cycle of life
in which the brand/product plays a role

In each case, we gather the core emotions that could potentially be activated by the brand. This allows us to create a
comprehensive landscape
of feelings
that are associated with the brand. Using the Deep Subconscious P1: OTA/XYZ

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Response technique, we can highlight a smaller subset of Feelings that represent the emotional core of the brand.

In considering Feelings, be sure to explore them from the three key perspectives: your brand, your competitors’ brands, and your category.

Values:
By Values, I mean the broader social and moral Values that a brand may be connected with, either explicitly or implicitly. Our studies of brands across categories has revealed that when brands resonate with a consumer’s deep social, moral, or spiritual Values, the propensity for brand advocacy increases across both immediate and virtual social networks. Values strengthen the connection of feelings to brands. They reinforce and connect the brand to goals and objectives outside the self.

In exploring the particular values associated with a brand, it is important to note some Values endure over time, and others that become more or less prominent at different times. In our testing, we have found several categories of Values to be relevant to the essential character of specific brands: personal, spiritual, moral, communal, social, political economic, philosophical, historical, traditional, cultural, national, environmental, legal, or lifecycle-related.

Benefits:
These are the personally meaningful rewards we expect to acquire by using brands. They are more general and run deeper than Functions.

Benefits are usually articulated as statements and affirmations about what the brand can do for us, but they may be expressed implicitly as well. Our measurements across multiple brands reveal that stronger subconscious associations with particular Benefits tend to be correlated with the personal identity and Values of the consumer.

In fact, the Benefits of a Brand also serve as attributes consumers want others to know about them. For example, many of the benefits of Apple’s iPad also serve as an aspirational description of the person who uses them. So the stylished and advanced technology of the iPad communicates to others that the user of the device is also “stylish” and “advanced.” The iPad user has thus telegraphed important cues about how he’d like the world to see him, without ever having spoken a word.

In our studies, we have found the following categories of Benefits to stand out both implicitly and explicitly in associating a brand with a consumer’s personal identity:

r Promoting physical beauty

r Representing intellectual accomplishment

r Improving sexual attractiveness

r Being fashionable and trendy

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r Achieving career and financial success

r Having pride in family and its accomplishments r Being exclusive and elite

r Providing access to power and resources

r Reflecting genetic and racial pride

r Supporting uniqueness of personality

Metaphors:
A metaphor is a larger-than-life concept that can be applied to an object—like a brand or product—with a paradoxical effect: even though it is not literally true, it somehow captures an essential quality of the object.

For example, calling a truck “Ram-tough” is not a literal statement—how tough is a ram, anyway? But it represents an aspiration or ambition: it says this truck is dependable, strong, and stubbornly single-minded. Metaphors
often
reveal larger than life expectations
that come to be consciously or subconsciously associated with a brand and its meaning to a consumer. The best brand Metaphors become synonymous with a promise or commitment made by the brand to the consumer. Our measurements reveal that the best communication strategies contain at their core a single Metaphor that is consistently presented and represented. The Metaphor stands for the brand ambition, which is to say, for a human ambition the brand embodies. These human ambitions provide the aspirational and inspirational architecture on which the brand builds its strategy. The Metaphor is
useless unless it is tangibly and consistently
reinforced
through elements of the product, packaging, and communication design.

Not all Metaphors are positive, nor are they always generated internally by the branding team itself. We have found some Metaphors that were strongly associated with a brand
despite
the wishes of the branding team. We have found other Metaphors that the branding team did not even know were associated with their brands.

NeuroMetric measures like our Deep Subconscious Response technique are uniquely suited to identifying both implicit and explicit metaphorical associations with all kinds of brands. By focusing on how strongly a metaphor is implicitly activated after exposure to a brand, you can precisely measure the degree of association between the two. Given a choice of Metaphors to embed in an ad campaign, for example, implicit neurological measures can help you to determine whether a Metaphor connects naturally with a brand, or whether you are trying to “force-fit” an association that is unlikely to fit.

Extensions:
The final dimension of the Brand Essence Framework is brand Extension. The consumer’s brain may invite the brand to come and do more things, or it may not. How can you identify natural Extensions of the brand, P1: OTA/XYZ

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those that will not produce an “expectancy violation” when compared to the core brand? Natural Extensions inherently make sense in the consumer’s subconscious mind. Such natural Extensions are derived from implicit connections consumers make among any of the other dimensions of the Brand Essence. They may encompass Forms, Functions, Benefits, or other attributes of competitive brands as well as your own. Extending a brand is much more likely to result in success when the Extension is easily processed by your consumers, rather than requiring them to readjust their implicit associations to make a space for the new Extension.

Extensions can be achieved in many ways and forms. As we have measured brand Extensions across many categories, we found the most successful Extensions to utilize one of the following strategies:
1. Functionality addition:
Extending a brand by adding functionality to it from observing how customers really use the brand, and the additional functions they perform with the brand

2. Functionality merge:
Merging functionality from other brands, and, therefore, extending the brand by usurping functional territories previously owned by other brands

3. Occasion merge:
Extending the brand by enlarging the number of occasions in which the brand is nominally used
4. Interaction and interface merge:
Extending the brand by allowing it to combine and interact with other brands

5. Technology merge:
Extending the brand by merging and integrating with related technologies

6. Device merge:
Extending the brand by reducing the number of devices the consumer must carry, learn, and customize The seven dimensions of the Brand Essence Framework encompass the entire spectrum of consumer experience of your brand. They truly represent the essence of your brand—the framework for your brand’s identity and presence in the competitive marketplace.

Which of these dimensions are most important? Making a graphic of central dimensions as the brain interacts with your brand has, not surprisingly,
Feelings
are at the center (see Figure 12.1).

While the brain initially processes the simple, physical attributes of your brand, it quickly categorizes it based on extracted meaning primarily from the Emotions, Values, and Benefits of your brand.