The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (37 page)

P1: OTA/XYZ

P2: ABC

c15

JWBT296-Pradeep

June 7, 2010

7:45

Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA

182

The Buying Brain

Ultimately, of course, the brain reasserts itself and makes sense out of what it sees—if it didn’t, we might all be stuck in the health and beauty aids section forever, staring at the sea of Crest and Colgate before us. As it does in so many other instances large and small, critical and minimal in scale and importance, the frontal cortex takes command, and we reach out, pluck the toothpaste of choice off the shelf, and plunk it into our cart.

The solution is to stagger carefully your displays, both in depth and height.

We were blind, but now we see.

How does that three-pound mass of neurons, water, chemicals, and electrical signals perched atop you manage the in-store product selection process? By calling upon a mix of memories stored in your subconscious.

What did you choose last time? Do you favor mint over regular flavor? Does your subconscious recall preferring the tactile sensation of gel versus paste? Did the combination of colors on the package trigger an appealing response? Was your brain primed by something to default to your brand of choice?

But memory isn’t all that’s at work in the aisle.

Marketing Magnets

Has a clever personal products company realized that your brain is drawn, magnet-like, to human faces? If so, is there packaging or a piece of merchandising material nearby that depicts a friendly visage?

Bingo! Advantage, neuromarketer.

Neurologically, we are designed to focus on faces.
They are our windows into what may lie in store for us, danger or affection, trust or treachery. A face nearly always ranks highest on the brain’s list of things to monitor.

So what? So, feature faces every way you can, because by doing so you are playing directly into something very central to the brain, and it will reward you with its concentration and the precious gift of assigned cognitive resources.

But that face-featuring shelf talker is just today’s neuromerchandising method. Effective, but there are other “tricks of the trade” that can be applied P1: OTA/XYZ

P2: ABC

c15

JWBT296-Pradeep

June 7, 2010

7:45

Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA

The Buying Brain in the Aisle

183

to win your attention, break through the blindness, and attract you to choose a certain product.

Coming Soon to a Supermarket Near

You: Neurological Iconic Signatures

Remember the Neurological Iconic Signatures that were discussed earlier?

The brain’s high points achieved while actually experiencing a product? Here’s where the brain would love to be reminded of them: in the store.

To see how that might work, let’s place ourselves behind a shopping cart, wheeling our way toward the wine aisle (hey, watch out for that end cap! This store obviously hasn’t done all of its neuromarketing homework).

What’s happening to you as you go? As we described earlier, tens of billions upon billions of neurons are firing away, actively processing the sheer floods of data coursing in from all five of your senses. Your conscious mind is unaware of all this activity, but your subconscious is not only smoothly accommodating all this information, it is also simultaneously coordinating it all together and matching it up against earlier data stored in your memory.

Meanwhile, it’s also telling your legs and feet to move in rhythm to enable you to walk forward and keep your balance. It’s also telling your auditory system to pay attention to the announcement of special savings in the produce section. It’s triggering your visual system to track what’s ahead and alongside you simultaneously. Lastly, it’s registering all the cans, bottles, logos, colors, signs, shelving, lighting, the cool round metal of the cart handle in your fingers, and the textures of the tile on the floor below your shoes, and so much more that this book couldn’t possibly relate it all.

And it’s scanning for the familiar, the target, the light green bottle, and the parchment-tinted label.

Now, imagine that as you approach that section of the store and turn down the aisle your subconscious is met with something wholly unexpected and seemingly out of place: a
Neurological Iconic Signature
.

Let’s say as the leading edge of your cart crosses an invisible infrared line, triggering a tiny unseen sensor on the nearby shelf, you suddenly hear the unmistakable “POP!” followed immediately by the equally familiar “glug-glug-glug” of a wine or champagne bottle opening and being poured.

What does your brain do? It
reacts
big time. Almost exactly as it would if you were holding a bottle, opening it, pouring it yourself, and hearing those identical sounds. Suddenly, your brain is experiencing essentially the same neurological responses as it would if you were about to actually consume a glass of wine for real. (Read more about Mirror Neuron activation in Chapter 9.) P1: OTA/XYZ

P2: ABC

c15

JWBT296-Pradeep

June 7, 2010

7:45

Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA

184

The Buying Brain

Do you think that, upon encountering this powerfully resonant audio stimulus, the consumer’s subconscious would respond with a stronger indication of Purchase Intent? Next time you’re in a supermarket, just for fun (and profit) think about how many different opportunities exist for NIS marketing, and how many different brands and products it could benefit. Think about what individual NIS’ might be for those brands and products, and how different senses could be reached and appealed to with NIS stimuli.

Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell:
Imagine a shopping environment that elevated the experience into something surprising yet familiar, stimulating, and pleasurable. Imagine having many billions of neurons firing with recognition and gratification subconsciously as you shop, subtly enriching the experience.

If you don’t drink wine, it’s highly unlikely that encountering an NIS related to the core experience of consuming it would cause you to buy it, and the same with any other product. We’re not mindless sheep, strongly susceptible to seduction against our basic wishes and will, our ingrained preferences and prejudices. The brain is far too sophisticated and powerful to be so easily moved.

NIS’ are themselves powerful, to be sure—but they’re not
that
powerful.

On the other hand, if you enjoy wine, and your subconscious is presented with a familiar, engaging stimulus that reminds you how pleasant, enjoyable, relaxing, and rewarding a nice glass of Cabernet can be, or a celebratory flute of champagne—in the middle of that supermarket aisle!—well, that’s neuromarketing.

The Subconscious Significance

of Signage

One of the more important changes that has occurred in the retail industry in recent years is the proliferation of in-store signage, specifically in-store video displays.

As in-store signage has multiplied, it has brought with it a set of questions and challenges that confront consumer goods marketers and retailers. Foremost among them is how much is too much. A corollary is what works best and what works least effectively.

Once again, here is where neurological testing can provide answers that no other research methodology can offer.

Let me start with the answer to the question, how much is too much? The fact is there isn’t one correct, one-size-fits-all solution. The reason for that lies in the human brain. We are capable of taking in and processing vast amounts of data. Since our survival depended on being able to monitor our environment P1: OTA/XYZ

P2: ABC

c15

JWBT296-Pradeep

June 7, 2010

7:45

Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA

The Buying Brain in the Aisle

185

constantly, using multiple senses simultaneously, we are very well equipped for the modern supermarket jungle.

But, there is a limit.
The frontal cortex is continuously monitoring what we are taking in in the way of stimuli, and it discards data just as continuously, making split-second decisions on what is important and what isn’t, what is interesting/potentially useful and what is not, and what to transfer to memory.

That subconscious mechanism operates automatically.

But overload the visual cortex with too much similar or identical data, and as I described before, repetition blindness sets in. For our other senses as well, the subconscious selects what it will allocate our Attention, Emotional connection, and Memory Retention to—and what it will overlook or ignore.

A Sea of Orange Amid the Shelves

Case in point: A major European retail chain wanted to know how the visual environment in its stores might be affecting shopper attitudes and behavior.

So one evening after closing time, we went in with a full production crew and shot eight hours of high-definition video, documenting every bit of signage in one of their stores. Then we went back to the lab and analyzed every bit and byte of it.

The evidence was right there on the screen: their stores had experienced a literal
explosion
of signage.
In addition to the normal store branding, directional, and departmental signage, there were signs atop individual racks of goods. There were overhead signs featuring seasonal sales messaging. There were, of course, hang tags everywhere. End caps boasted multiple signs, almost from floor to eye level. And on and on.

But amid this ocean of promotion, one feature especially caught our eyes.

Along the aisles, the shelves were peppered with orange “money off” talkers.

Depending on the particular department, there could be dozens of these little items, boasting multiple price points. They stretched from low shelves to high ones, one end of the aisle to the other. Frequently they were lined up in an almost-seamless stream, taking up a good portion of the edge of each shelf.

We knew the effect on consumers without having to run an actual neurological test—because we had already done so much work in the retail category that we understood the neurological impact of such price-promotion proliferation.

Confronted with this colorful assault at a point the brain becomes unwilling to devote the additional cognitive resources to attempt to decipher the commercial cacophony. Such a surplus of salesmanship results in a subconscious “tuning out” on the part of the consumer.

P1: OTA/XYZ

P2: ABC

c15

JWBT296-Pradeep

June 7, 2010

7:45

Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA

186

The Buying Brain

In addition, it creates confusion in the subconscious as the brain attempts to reconcile the concept of “sales/money off” with existing notions of brand image and value. The brain is geared to operate as efficiently as possible, conserving its energies for its constantly evolving hierarchy of needs, assigning cognitive resources to the functions that will result in the best return on that investment.

Sorting through a sea of shelf stickers, attempting to make sense out of them, quickly drops in the brain’s ever-changing list of priorities—and the result is, at a certain stage we may walk right past them without even really seeing them.

Hide and Seek

We discovered other neurological obstacles as well. For example, we saw numerous examples of
occlusion
occurring.

The occlusion phenomenon is one of the neurological “best practices” that we advise companies about. In comic book parlance, it can be used for good or evil.

In simple terms, occlusion is when something is partially obscured by something else (see Figure 15.1).

In this particular circumstance, occlusion was happening to the signage on some end caps. Products on the shelves were stacked in such a way as to hide a portion of the signage behind them. This was especially important because in many cases the signage was offering valuable information to the shopper—sales prices, “two for one” offers, rebate information, and so forth.