Lindstrom at GDI
BUY-OLOGY: The Truths and Lies about Why We Buy
The Brand and Marketing-guru, Martin Lindstrom, presented Wednesday, March 18th at GDI Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute the outcome of the largest NeuroMarketing study made to date. In doing so, he explained what really influences the consumers’ buying decisions and based on these facts introduced us to a set of recommendations how best to correspond to the new insights to achieve and maintain a successful brand.
Irrational Behavior is the New Battleground
While we are awake, Mr. Lindstrom argues, we are affected every second by subliminal signals. Actually, around 85% of what we do takes place in our subconscious mind. This implies that we cannot fully explain the reasoning for our preferences nor the rational ground for our buying decisions with accuracy. Realizing the force of the irrational behavior brings new challenges to the traditional way of creating brands. First of all, the qualitative and quantitative research methods, which we have long relied upon, become questionable as these are often based on market surveys and consumer questionnaires. Secondly, the traditional ways of reaching consumers might not be as effective as firstly anticipated as we now know that the buying decision is based more on subliminal rather than rational reasons.
New ground rules
As to Mr. Lindstrom, the final five seconds of deliberation are the most crucial ones when making a brand choice. This implies that to become the brand which is chosen, the brand should represent something distinctive, memorable which result in lasting impressions in the consumers’ mind. As the individual is exposed to more than two million commercials during his or her lifetime, Mr. Lindstrom claims, the traditional marketing methods such as awareness campaigns do not create any sustaining craving effects for purchase. Instead, the brands and advertisements should include signals which appeal to emotions. In addition, Mr. Lindstrom emphasizes, logos will not remain an important way of branding your product or service, as logos in reality have a negative effect on consumers. Instead, you should focus on creating symbols and signs which create strong associations for the consumers. Overall, to reach the subliminal thoughts of consumers you should:
- Create a Smashable brand: Create and own indirect signals. Smashable can be anything from a color, smell, sound of a design, or signal that tell us a subtle relevant story.
- Create a Somatic Marker Brand: The experiences built into your brand should be memorable and distinctive. – like pavlovian conditioning.
- Omit discount: Instead of giving discounts you should give a gift with purchase or gadgets of relevance, as these are not perceived as discount. The study indicated that despite the fact that discounts do work, it is not a long term solution as it takes more than seven years to recover. Moreover, the higher the emotional engagement, the less influential consumers will be to discounts.
- Give few choices: Few choices make consumers buy more.
- Action Plan how to create a strong and successful brand
- In order to create a smashable and somatic marker brand, where few choices increase the attractiveness and with no discounts, Mr. Lindstrom recommends achieving the points below.
A CLEAR VISION:
As to Mr. Lindstrom many companies lack a strong and distinctive vision. A clear vision is vital for success and is achieved when you can delete the name and still recognize to which company it belongs. Apple and Benetton are examples of such.
RITUALS:
When creating a brand we should build rituals into it in the same way that we hard-wire to belief. In Switzerland people exercise 250 rituals every day. Thus, rituals are an important part of creating a strong brand. You should strive to own up to 2-3 rituals per brand and may follow the three steps approach to ritual architecture: 1) Combine two well known subjects in an unusual way, 2) use multiple senses when executing the ritual and 3) link the behavior to an authentic story.
SENSE OF BELONGING:
Like in religion, strong brands can create a sense of belonging. A sense of belonging is important to the individual and will appeal to the emotions, thereby the sub-consciousness.
STORYTELLING:
The story around the brand means everything. Most brands are struggling to make a point of difference but remember it is not just the product; it is an experience or a story which justifies the price. Thus, find the unique story and wrap it around your brand to increase its value.
POWER OF THE ENEMY:
Create an enemy. There are three types of enemies: The competitor, the social trend (e.g. zero emissions), the character (e.g. Coke versus Coke Zero). Use the type you find best for your brand.
SENSORY APPEAL:
75% of emotion that we have every day is due to our smell, thus smell is very powerful. Sound is also very effective, however, to achieve the best outcome you should combine sound and vision. The combination makes the human feel rewarded. Moreover, sound plus vision increase the memory and when combined with emotional engagement they trigger consumer preferences.
GRANDEUR:
Create a statement, get on the world map. Richard Branson’s vision of Virgin is an example of such, to take us to the moon, or the Hotel Burj Al Arab – the Eiffel Tower of Dubai.
EVANGELISM:
Do not offer everything to everyone. Start in the small and create word of mouth. Google, for example, made Gmail exclusive by making it available by invitation only. The result was 9.3 million subscribers in 3 month, and today more than 100 million.
SYMBOLS:
Replace your logo with symbols which create strong associations in the mind of consumers, thereby stimulating the subliminal. A strong brand owns icons. You should create yours.
MYSTERY:
We love mysteries, so if you have one, include it. Formula X9 emphasizes this fact.
Moreover, Mr. Lindstrom reminds us about the three biggest mistakes, which is first of all to go clip art, secondly to discount signals and finally to just follow the norm.
How Best to React to the Economical Crisis
In order to best react to the economical crisis, you should start building bridges instantaneously. As we all know, Mr. Lindstrom argues, consumers are in general not going to buy huge commodities nowadays. Hence, launch a smaller product to make consumers connect to the values of your brand today, thereby increasing the likelihood of a purchase of a larger product or service in the future. Apple recently did this when it came out with the shuffle ipod at an attractive price, knowing that few will buy a large computer these days.
Secondly, you should play even stronger on the rituals as we tend to develop more rituals when under pressure. Thirdly, bundle up with others whose values correspond to yours. This will give you more exposure for less money. Forth, focus on the younger generations as these are the most open and susceptible. Finally, make sure that you focus.
In addition, Mr. Lindstrom explains that you can also use the sense of protection, as in times of insecurity, people want to protect themselves. And, especially for the banking industry, trust becomes of huge importance during crisis. Mr. Lindstrom recommends to increase the trustworthiness indirectly by applying trustful symbols from the past. Finally, you should direct your attention to the children as these are the last ones to feel crisis. People do not want kids to suffer.
The Objectives
FROM TO
Operational Brand Storytelling Brand
Rational Brand Holistic Brand
One-dimensional Brand Sensory Brand
Stereotype Brand Somatic Maker Brand
Defragmented Brand Smashable Brand
Back Ground Information about NeuroMarketing
Buyology represents the world’s largest NeuroMarketing experiment scanning 2,000 consumers across 5 countries. A $7 million study, where high-tech brand scanning techniques, such as fMRI and EEG, were used to analyze brand activity while the respondents were exposed to different pictures and brands.
