How Can I Optimize
Attraction to my Brand?
Modern Neuroscience reveals how you can interpret the “voice of the customer” so you can increase engagement with your brand.
It starts with how you interpret the voice of your customer. The best way to do this is to first understand how decisions are made so we need to look to modern neuroscience for some guidance. If you are able to gather insights based on how modern neuroscience tell us “brains make up their minds” then you are off to a good start.
Modern neuroscience has taught us that decisions occur in the prefrontal cortex where emotions prioritizing reasons (reviewing choice options). So as people who provide insight we need to find methods that capture input while the prefrontal cortex is active. This isn’t easy. You have to make sure the respondent feels anonymous and that they don’t feel any inhibitions. When the prefrontal cortex is active you then need to be sure to measure both emotion and the reasons they influence. This insight will provide you the interpretation of their voice you need to affect behaviors (increase engagement/attraction to your brand).
Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional. But as scientists break open the mind's black box with the latest tools of neuroscience; they have discovered that this is not how the mind works. Our decisions are a finely tuned blend of both emotions and reasons. Since 1949 there has been clues that emotions and reasons were not separate when decision making occurs but our ability today through technology to actually go “into” the mind to see what is processing allows us the final proof that emotions and reasons are not separate but very much interdependent during choice selection and decision making. As a result the insight community must leave behind some of their old learning’s and biases and begin to embrace and accept these findings and consider ways of incorporating them into their research studies.
There is plenty of reference material on this subject and here are some of our favorite authors that we think you would enjoy;
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Jonah Lehrer, “How we Decide” (Dr. Lehrer is a neuroscientist who worked for Noble Prize winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel and said “A brain that can’t feel can’t make up its mind”. This is an enjoyable read.)
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Joseph LeDoux “The Emotional Brain” (Dr. LeDoux is an NYU professor whose work is funded by the Neuroscience Research Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. LeDoux spends most of the book on how our minds deal with fear.)
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Antonio Damasio “Descartes Error” (Dr. Damasio is a neuroscientist and currently a professor at USC was an early pioneer in understanding how decisions are made. He began to reveal the role of emotions in this book which was published in 1994 and was one of the core pieces of research that led us to create the Brain Surgery survey.)
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Walter Freeman, “How Brains Make up Their Minds” (Dr. Freeman has spent over 5 decades studying how brains make up their minds and reveals his findings in this book. He currently is a professor at the University of California/Berkley and says “decisions are under limbic control”. This is a little heady but incredible.)
We are asked daily to help our clients uncover the optimal positioning and message platforms for their brands and we have found that embracing modern neuroscience (which we do in our methodology which captures data while the prefrontal cortex is active) has allowed us to uncover/interpret their voice in a way that reveals what really motivates their behaviors. Our emotion mindset model shows who’s attracted and why or why not. This model allows us to uncover the emotion drivers® that must be fulfilled in order to optimize attraction to a brand and increase engagement.
Our firm and our methodology fully embrace modern neuroscience and we have applied it to marketing. As a result our clients get data that will truly affect behaviors.
S E M I N A R O F F E R E D The Psychology of DecisionsWe have created a seminar that presents the Psychology of Decisions. This half day session is for brand leadership and market insight teams and presents how we make decisions in easy to understand language. Email Steve Blaising if you would like to see a syllabus. |
For more information, US 1+317 656 8702 |