Have you ever wondered why your marketing campaign is not effective and the audience is not connecting to your brand? Or why brands like Coca-Cola or Apple are still the top choices for many consumers and why the situation hasn’t changed for years?
The answer can be found in neuromarketing. All the big players have something in common; they invest a lot of money in marketing research before they decide to enter a highly competitive market with their product.
Neuromarketing has been used in strategy planning processes for the last 10 years, proving that brands can subliminally instil a product’s value by improving their sensual features, as well as influencing consumer’s choices by inducing certain emotions related to the product.
The neuroscientists involved in neuromarketing believe that all we experience is just an illusion, which we naively believe is a true world, so, as a result, our perceptions can be easily manipulated.
For example, if a company wants their electronic device like a TV to be perceived as a quality product, they add weight to the remote control because it signifies quality. The same principal applies for example to the tools like drills or hammers. While adding aluminium to the cover of a phone or laptop automatically enhances its features and it is perceived as a better product than a competitive brand who uses different material.
The same principle applies to the brands which rely heavily on the smell of their products. For example leather shoe brands or bakeries. As processed leather does not smell, quality leather shoe manufactures and stores’ POS use leather smell sprays to enhance the brand experience and influence customer brain by appealing to the smelling sense. Bakeries very often use the fresh bread smell to influence consumer’s actions, while casinos or other gaming places relying on fast reactions are likely to use lemon odour, which naturally stimulates fast action.
According to the scientists, the more an odour is being been used, the better the response from the audience should be. Scent also has a particular impact of peoples viewing time, as it is related to our brain construction. Sensing smell is like a warning system for us. But strangely enough, it does not really matter what it is, as long the odour is pleasant. Even the most distant memories can be brought back with a smell. It is like a key to open a consumer’s memory system. For example, if you think of a soldier who was involved in a war. If you expose them to the smell of fire, it might be particularly upsetting to them, causing the whole body reacting with high level of stress and bring back traumatic memories. If you are made to believe in something, it will influence how the customer perceives the reality.
Then there’s sound. Take your mobile device, or computer mouse, even drawers. Everything has its specific sound when used and every sound causes a particular reaction in our brain and action to occur. The more predictable the sound, the better the reaction expected. For many years scientists were measuring brain activity, heart rate and sight response to the certain stimuli. The fact we interact with the brands with our senses, means it is the whole body reacting to it.
It is vital to know how your brand is perceived by others and here at All 4 Comms we are inspired by neuromarketing and it helps drive us forward.
Thanks to the research and practice we have gained tremendous knowledge about our possibilities or limitations. We have also discovered that relying on our experience and not just the facts might result in better sales and brand loyalty.
Top brands rely on science, not just statistics, myths, and universal knowledge. They are very specific, consumer orientated and check every aspect of their new product development carefully before they introduce anything to the market. Without knowing how the consumer is going to choose the brand among the others, we are very limited when it comes to preparing effective marketing strategy.
Małgorzata Szwed