Neuromarketing in Action: Manipulating Consumer Consciousness

In a new book, Neuromarketing in Action, psychologist David Lewis describes how advertisers drive sales and influence consumers’ emotions using smell, color, catchy slogans and stereotypes. Leading hypnologist and expert on the hypnotic power of words Dan Jones explains:

“Many brands manipulate the way you make decisions with emotional words and language tricks.” Emotional states are trance states, memories depend on them, so if advertisers manage to associate the emotion with a brand and some real verbal event, it will subconsciously remind you of the brand every time you experience the same emotion.
It's a form of autosuggestion. The effectiveness of autosuggestion, used repeatedly and often enough, has been known since the time when Emil Couet promoted it as a method of psychotherapy and personal growth with phrases like “every day I get better.”

In Britain, the motoring association used the slogan “For our members, we are the fourth ambulance”, which evokes emotions related to people’s need for safety and security. Cadbury’s Milk Tray slogan, “It’s all because ladies love Milk Tray,” plays on the emotional need to feel connected to another important person and will influence our decision when choosing a small romantic gift that a lady will like. A widely used technique that can be applied in both written and spoken language is turning products into benefits. For example, a salesperson trying to sell you a camera might say, “Here’s an f1.4 lens and a maximum shutter speed of 1/10,000th of a second.”

However, in this case, the buyer will be forced to use a lot of mental energy to understand the meaning of what is said, if such information means anything to him. If you turn these specifications into benefits, the message will go straight to another system.

For example, a salesperson would tell a new mom who wants to buy a camera, “Imagine that you’re filming a baby’s birthday and want to capture the atmosphere accurately.” This f1.4 lens allows you to take beautiful shots without flashing.”
You can say to your father, “Does your son play on the school football team?” If you want to shoot all the important moments of his match, then this camera with a maximum shutter speed of 1/10,000 seconds will capture even the most rapid shots and goals. And if you put this telescopic lens, you will feel almost a participant in the game!

One of the most well-known methods of marketing is, of course, price. However, as retail firms have long understood, most consumers are utterly helpless in judging whether prices are correct.

More than fifty years ago, a man came to a toothpaste manufacturer who said he could increase a company’s profits by 40%, and it would cost them almost nothing. He demanded $100,000 for his secret. Not wanting to pay a huge amount at that time, the leadership of the organization convened its staff of specialists for a “military council”.

They had to find the secret that the man discovered. However, when they failed, the manufacturer signed a check. In response, he received a piece of paper on which three words were written: "Make the hole bigger."
The company immediately increased the diameter of the hole in the tube from five to six millimeters, which meant that the amount of toothpaste squeezed onto the brush at a time increased by 40%. Sales of toothpaste increased as consumers ran out faster. But no one noticed it, and if they did, they found no reason to complain.

Today, companies are actively using the strategy of selling less product for the same money. Thanks to this, they manage, without increasing costs, to maintain or even increase their profits. Such price manipulations are successful because consumers, once familiar with their product, believe that its quantity remains unchanged.

MarketWatch.com author Chuck Jaff explains:

Ask people at the shelves of orange juice what they buy, and they’ll say “half a gallon of orange juice,” even if they have a smaller package.
For the same reason, people buy a "pint" of ice cream, even though it's actually only 14 ounces in a pack; it could be the same box with more air inside or just a new, trendy smaller package.
The fact is that this manufacturer has set the price per box, while its competitor, who sells a real pint, puts the price precisely per pint. That is why the average consumer does not manage to compare the prices of products on the shelves and choose the one that is really more profitable.

As Harvard Business School professor John Gourville says:

Consumers are more likely to notice a change in price than a change in quantity, and companies try to keep their actions secret: for example, leaving the same height and width of the package, but changing its depth, so that the silhouette of the package on the shelf seems as before.
Sometimes more air is left in a bag of chips or the bottom of a can of peanut butter is thickened so that it looks unchanged.

Among all the emotions that brand managers strive to build, pride takes the most honorable place. It's all because of our biology. Here’s how University of Mexico professor of evolutionary psychology Jeffrey Miller explains:

Humans evolved into small social groups where image and status were most important, not only for survival, but also for attracting a partner, impressing friends, and raising children.
Today, we surround ourselves with goods and services more to impress others than to enjoy owning something. This is a fact that makes "materialism" a completely misnomer for consumption.

How effectively a brand can excite a sense of pride and superiority in a person is shown by the processes in the brains of fashion-obsessed shoppers – such as those bargain-hunters on 6th Avenue in New York that I described in the chapter – when they encounter fake designer things or those that, being real, were mistakenly presented to them as counterfeit.

Despite the fact that the quality, appearance and style of the thing without the label of a fashion brand are identical to the present, if the buyer believes that it is a fake, the equipment for monitoring the reaction of the brain and body does not show even slight arousal. Electrical signals do not increase in the brain, the heart rate does not grow, the electrical conductivity of the skin associated with excitation does not rise.

If a customer is shown a beautifully made copy of a designer item, such as a Louis Vuitton handbag or a Patek Philippe watch, mental and physical arousal will increase as if he were given the real thing, but only until he realizes that it is just a counterfeit. Once the truth is revealed, the excitement will disappear.

Many buying decisions are based on how much the product itself or information about it is available to the customer. This is because consumers believe that what comes to mind most quickly is the most important thing.

The old saying of sellers that it is easiest to sell to a buyer who is in the here and now is an example of this rule in action. The easier it is to remember a brand, the more likely it is that the product of that brand will be chosen and valued higher than its less memorable competitors.

We are social animals trained to respond to stories, especially those that elicit strong emotions. Having created an emotional story about their product and then laid it out in an easy-to-remember phrase – “Mars charges you with energy for the whole day”, “Recharge with an egg”, “Guinness is the benefit itself”, “Esso – and you drive easily” – advertisers effortlessly put their products into your minds.

Source: raznogo.com/nejromarketing-v-dejstvii-manipulyatsiya-soznaniem-potrebitelej/