Food. Sex. Survival: How Consumers Interpret Your Brand
The Modern-Day Consumers
Shopping. It’s so easy a caveman really can do it.
In fact, he does it every day. Because he is us. Freaky, huh?
As the fields of neuroscience and marketing collide, one thing has become abundantly clear: though we live in the modern world, our instincts are still buried in the past. By about a million years. And while you may think that you’re communicating, marketing and selling to your customers here in 2011, the simple truth is that our brains receive all incoming messages with a filter that’s a million years old.
And this profound affects for how you must build your brands, market your offerings and, ultimately, communicate with your customers.
Our brain’s filtering system has profound effects on how your customers perceive your branded messsages.
Sure, we all live here in the modern world, glued to our iPhones, cable tv and gourmet food. But a part of our brain is, quite literally, still living in the caves. The reason lies within how our brains have evolved. Or, in this case, how they haven’t.
Our brains are split into three parts:
- The lower brain, or as I call it, the Crocodile Brain. Responsible for our survival instincts. Eat. Fuck. Kill. Crude, yes. But my point is simple. The croc brain knows nothing of the modern world and its social etiquette. Its needs are base.
- The mid-brain. Home to our subconscious. Thoughts, feelings, associations. Freud, as you may know, had a field day with it.
- Our neo-cortex, where we process language, logic and solve-problems.
The trouble is that, while our neo-cortex and mid-brain have evolved and kept up with the times, our croc brain literally hasn’t. Genetically, this part of our brain has barely evolved since the dawn of humanity.
Every message we take in is filtered through a one-million year-old brain.
So while we’re physically living in the modern age, our croc brain is walking around, firing off survival signals every second of the day.
That new iPhone your friend just waited 2 hours for? It’s not just cool. It’s a status symbol that is absolutely crucial to his survival.
Or the mutual fund your husband just invested in? It’s not about saving for retirement; it’s about proving he can provide food and shelter for his tribe – i.e. your family. (As a trader myself, I will have much, much more to say about how our croc brain is the key decision maker in our investment decisions.)
Of course, we’re not doing any of this consciously. But we are doing it. Our croc brain is simply working on autopilot, taking in all incoming information and deciding, in an instant, if it’s a threat, a mate or a provision. Only then does it kick it up to our subconscious.
And that’s where the real magic starts.
But that’s for another post…
