We Remember It All!
Commercials and “Bookmarks of the Brain”
Buying decisions are all about making choices. Choosing one brand over the others that are kept right in front of your eyes. These choices are governed by a variety of factors. Our brain might trick us into believing that our buying decisions are governed by our conscious thinking but in reality, these choices are majorly governed by numerous sub-conscious factors (as I have also mentioned in my previous articles). A shopping mall is the best scenario to consider in order to understand this further.
Consider yourself in a shopping mall surrounded by hundreds of brands selling similar products. You make a choice and buy a particular product over all the other products (of same price, quality etc.) nicely kept in the same shelf. At this point, if someone stops you and asks you what the specific reason behind your choice was, you might probably just refer to it as “instinct” or “No specific reason”. If your reply is going to be “Its because I liked it more than others”, I am going to rephrase my question and ask you “Why did you like it more than others when all the others have similar cost/quality etc.?”. I am sure you won’t have a convincing answer, but wait, trust me, no one does. As I said our choices are governed by several sub-conscious factors and that is something which is secret to us as well. Its like our brain keeps some secrets from us and these are those sub-conscious thoughts of ours. A bit unsettling, right? Now our own brain is also keeping secrets from us. But I guess that’s the beauty of a human brain, one can never understand it completely.
Before I get carried away on this, I am going to come back to the sub-conscious factors governing our buying decisions. What are these and why are these? Martin Lindstrom very aptly describes these as “lifetime associations of positive and negative experiences” in his book Buyology. Every time we are expected to make a choice, there are a series of sub-conscious conversations running in our brain until we make the “right choice”. These conversations are from our past experiences, some pleasant while some, not so much! If you think about it, this concept also goes inline with the fact that the best learnings in life come from individual experiences. Experiences can teach you things which no classrooms or institutes can. When made to make a choice, our brain summons and scans through incredible amounts of memories, emotions, experiences and crushes them into instant shortcuts, which help us to choose the “right product”. These instant shortcuts are referred to as “bookmarks of the brain” or somatic markers. These allow you to travel through some uncountable past experiences which then reflect on your buying decisions.
Let’s try to understand the concept of these bookmarks of the brain by a simple example. For this, go back to be the five-year old kid you were. Its Diwali time and your house is entirely lit with diyas. Given the forever curious nature of a five-year old brain, you suddenly feel the urge to look at the diyas closely. You go ahead with try to touch the diya with your fingers without really knowing the consequences. As your fingertips touch the surface of the diya, its all good, but as soon as your fingertips touch the flame, you suddenly withdraw your hand. This might look like a regular activity but due to this, your brain registers the consequences and when in the future you are to again touch the diya, you will only touch the surface and go no where close to the flame. Important point to note here is all this was self-learning. No one came to you and explained you to not touch the flame, but you still learned. A bookmark is created in your brain, which you will refer to when you are encountered with a similar experience in the future and then make the choice of whether to go near to the flame or not.
Brands continuously use the concept of somatic markers to place their products every now and then. Usually its about leveraging the already existing somatic markers and then linking their products/services to these markers, thereby leading to a successful product placement. When advertising is done based on these markers, it ensures that the target public will be able to relate to the message of the advertisement and at the end of the day, isn’t it what advertising is all about?
For instance, Google came up with an extremely beautiful and appealing advertisement, focused on Indian audience. In this, it successfully and very ably used the history of India to place itself.
Partition of India (1947) is something which every Indian is well aware of, no matter what age-group the person might belong to. In this ad, Google was successfully able to show itself as something that is binding people emotionally. The transition from story of partition to the “reunion”, how Google plays a crucial role in making the “reunion” possible and lastly, the emotional hug between Baldev and Yusuf, which makes you smile with moist eyes, shows how strongly the advertisement ends up connecting with you and your emotions. And as I have already mentioned in my previous article — Emotions in Marketing, brand that emotionally engages with the public is going to be a successful brand.
In another example, Johnsons quite aptly leverages a fear-driven somatic marker, to which nearly everyone will universally relate to. Johnson’s No More Tears Baby Shampoo instigates the same fear which it helps us avoid — tears. We all use shampoos every now and then. No matter how old you are, if the shampoo enters your eyes, you done for good. This experience is something you wouldn’t want your kid to go through and when you are out shopping and you see “No More Tears Baby shampoo” written on the label, you start thinking all the horribly painful experiences you had when you got shampoo in your eyes. What follows next, you ask? You end up buying it without even thinking about other factors, just like any parent would.
To be very honest, it might feel like the concepts like “Somatic Markers” are just some fancy terminologies to make one understand the importance of relatability when it comes to marketing. But these are also very important to make one understand the factors that actually might lead to some very successful campaigns.
At the end of the day, its simple; if you are relatable to the general public, you are a hit! And probably this is why memes play a crucial role in building upon a successful marketing campaign. This beautiful journey of a meme from being just a humorous post to becoming a strong means of communication with the general public, has a lot to it. I’ll try to talk about it in one of my next article on The Marketing Tongue. Stay Tuned!
