Daryl Weber - Brand Seduction: How Neuroscience Can Help Marketers Build Memorable Brands

Praise for Brand Seduction

Daryl Webers Brand Seduction is jam-packed with fascinating research and actionable insights. Weber shares the science of decision-making simply and clearly, which makes his book perfect for marketing practitioners, academics, and consumers alike. If youre fascinated by what makes consumers tick, this books for you.

Adam Alter, associate professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, New York Times best-selling author of Drunk Tank Pink

The word brand in marketing has become like the blank tile in Scrabble: people use it to mean anything they like. In this excellent book, Daryl does invaluable service in rooting the concept of a brand in proper scientific foundations.

Rory Sutherland, vice chairman, Ogilvy & Mather UK

Clever, creative, and jam packed with useful insights, Brand Seduction shows how our brain secretly shapes our choices in ways we may never have realized. A great tool for any marketing toolkit.

Jonah Berger, Wharton professor and best-selling author of Contagious and Invisible Influence

Brands exist in our brains. Daryl Weber delves into the non-conscious side of branding and provides a wealth of practical advice for brand-building at any scale.

Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence BRAND

Seduction

HOW NEUROSCIENCE CAN HELP MARKETERS BUILD MEMORABLE BRANDS

DARYL WEBER

Copyright 2016 by Daryl Weber

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage

and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

BRAND S EDUCTION

EDITED BY R OGER S HEETY

TYPESET BY P ERFEC T YPE , N ASHVILLE , T ENN .

Cover design by Faceout Studio

Cover photo by PLAINVIEW/istock

Printed in the U.S.A.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP Data Available Upon Request.

CONTENTS

Introduction: The Mental Underworld of Brands Part I: The Brain-Brand Connection

Introduction to Part I: The Brain-Brand Connection Chapter 1: Beauty is in the Brain of the Beholder: How Brands Enter the Mind

Chapter 2: Do I Have Your Attention? Why it May Not Matter As Much As You Think

Chapter 3: Remember That? How Brands Live in Our Memory Chapter 4: Getting Emotional: The Real Role of Emotions in Branding

Chapter 5: Decisions, Decisions: The Truth Behind How Consumers Decide

Part II: A New Model for Brands

Introduction to Part II: A New Model for Brands Chapter 6: Capturing Cool: Why We Need a New Way of Thinking About Brands

Chapter 7: The Brand Fantasy Model: Making the Intangible (Somewhat) Tangible

Chapter 8: The Brand Fantasy in Action: A Few Case Studies Part III: Building Brands That Seduce Introduction to Part III: Building Brands That Seduce Chapter 9: Filling Your Brand Bucket: Aligning Every Piece of Your Brand to the Same Fantasy

Chapter 10: Advertising to the Unconscious: Building Your Brands Fantasy Through Communications

Chapter 11: Researching the Unconscious: Market Research that Actually Works

Chapter 12: Innovating for the Unconscious: Developing New Products that Last

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For too many marketers, science is a four letter word. It squashes creativity, they say. Or that its something for the market researchers to worry about. Worse, they claim it forces rules onto something that cannot be codified. Brand building is an art, they say, and science is its nemesis.

Because of this, a vast chasm exists between the science of how brands work and the marketers that could benefit from it. Most marketers I know would rather follow their gut and rely upon the small sample size of their past work experience.

This book is my attempt to dig deeper into the nature of brands, how they live in our minds, and to reveal how creative marketers can use this understanding to grow their brands.

Through the past decade Ive worked at a global advertising agency, a boutique brand strategy and innovation consultancy, and in-house at one of the strongest brands in the world. Ive been surrounded by experts in marketing and branding, but amazingly, everyone seems to have a different idea of what a brand is and how to build one .

At the same time, researchers have made great strides in our understanding of brands, brains, and the intersection of the two.

There is still a long way to go, but weve learned a lot about decision-making, the role of the unconscious and emotions, how the brain perceives the outside world, how memory works, and much more that can be applied to understanding brands and consumer behavior.

I want to make this clear upfront: a lot of what I will describe may be hard to accept. We tend to resist ideas that contradict our common sense and everyday experiences. But I will show you how our common sense can sometimes be very wrong, and how our everyday experiences can mislead us. From there, we will see that much of how we assume consumers interact with brands is deeply flawed.

I urge you to be open minded. Based on the latest science, I will suggest new ways of thinking about some basic facets of our human experience: how we perceive the world, how our memories and emotions work, how we decide, and even question our notion of free will.

But wait, I thought this was a marketing book? It is, and I will use our understanding of the brain to build a new way of thinking about brandswhat Im calling the Brand Fantasy. As you will see, the Brand Fantasy is the unconscious web of associations that together form a mental representation of a brand. This Fantasy is messy, irrational, abstract, and exists mostly below conscious awareness. It is what consumers are really buying when they choose a product.

This is where the science meets art. By diving into the unconscious feel of your brand, you can let go of strict, conscious guardrails and are free to explore the deep, hiddenand perhaps most powerfulaspects that may be lying dormant. Much like an artist, your job as a marketer becomes to share those latent feelings with the world. Rather than being a test at the end of the process, or a formulaic approach that must be strictly followed, I believe this kind of thinking can actually inspire greater creativity.

This book is organized into three sections. In Part I , well dive deep into the science with an eye-opening and fascinating

look into how certain aspects of the brain work, with a focus on the unconscious. In Part II , we will use this understanding to build the idea of Brand Fantasies: what they are, how they exist in the mind, and how we can cultivate and mold them. In Part III