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What Do Consumers Do Emotionally

with Advertising?

WENDY GORDON

Acacia Avenue

wendy@acacia-avenue.

co m

Between 15 and 25 years ago (1980-1990), radical new thinking emerged about how

advertising "works" that is still applicable today. At the time this thinking about

emotions and subconscious processing was provocative and challenging, yet it failed

to take root. Why?

The first objective of this article is to revisit the key hypotheses presented in three

very different articles written during this decade.

The second objective is to demonstrate through current hard science that the

thinking in each case was sound and can now be scientifically proven and,

furthermore, that this knowledge is neither heretical nor to be feared. Instead it can

lead to innovative and successful marketing solutions that align the interests of

organizations (company, brand, product, service) with those of human beings

(consumers, customers).

HYPOTHESES REVISITED

"Hum anistic Advertising A Holistic Cultural Per-spective" w as p resentedby Judie Lannon and Pe-ter Cooper at the U.K. Market Research Society(MRS) C onference in 1983. The article sets out tochallenge existing models of how advertising w orksby changing the fundamental question from "Whatdoes advertising do to people?" (e.g., manipulate,persuade , sell, communicate a un ique selling prop -osition, createa brand personality) to "What do peo-ple do with adv ertising?"

This article drew on the discipline of social an-

thropology (through the work of Mary Douglas)toexplain the social and cultural role of advertisingin peop le's lives. Advertising creates social identi-fication and cohesion, and offers a shared symboliclanguage for communication in different social con-texts. The authors also referenced the theories ofGestalt psychologyto explain that a brandis morethan, and different from, the sum of its parts.

Linear sequential models of hov^? advertisingworks first appeared in the 1950s and were de-rived from classic behaviorist learning theory

namely that effective advertising communicaguides the consumer through a series of stagesfor example, AIDA (attention, interest, desireation) or DAGMAR, which proposesa sequenceawareness, comprehension, conviction,and action. Their continual appeal (even today) lithe control they offer, their behaviorist origin,atheir susceptibility to measurement.

The authors accused themof being "seriouflawed," both theoretically and practically, awent on to state that these systemsof advertisdevelopment "have nothingto do with real h

man beings and nothing to do with creatadvertising."

For the purposes of this article, two of theconclusions reached (among many other validainteresting ideas) wereof particular Interest:

1 . People are not tabula rasa (i.e., blank sheepaper on which communication messagesaindelibly printed).

2 . People do something with communicationthey interact whether consciouslyor not.

2 J 0U R I1 H L o r R O U E R TIS in G R ES ER R CH M a r c h 2 0 0 6 DOI: 10 .2501/S002184990606

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WHAT DO CONSUMERS DO?

As Lannon and Cooper (1983) state:

Gestalt psychology em phasises percep-tion of totalities rather than a catalogu-ing of individual elements and theregistration of the minimum detail nec-essary for classification; cognitive theo-rists stress resistance to change andfragmentation to avoid dissonance;mass communication theorists contrib-ute uses and gratification theories. Theeveryday experience of interviewerstalking to people about advertising reg-ularly demonstrates how people select,distort, and create messages according

to their personal perceptions."A Great AdPity They Can't Rememberthe BrandTrue or False? The Branding Is-sue in Contem poraryT V Advertising" w aspresented to the MRS Conference in 1986by Wendy Gordon and Roy Langmaid. Thearticle was highly controversial and be-came notorious because the authors de-vised an experiment using hypnosis thatcontravened the MRS Code of Conduct.

The central tenet of the article was thatit is simplistic and erroneous to concludethat a campaign is "well branded" basedon direct questions about the advertisingcontent and/or recall of the brand name.

Using a professional hypnotherapist, asmall number of male and female volun-teers, and an experimental design, theauthors attempted "to demonstrate be-yond reasonable doubt the existence of'brandingadvertising' associations that

are outside the realm of conscious recall"(Gordon and Langmaid, 1986).

All of us are familiar with and observeothers daily in a "trance-like" statewhen we are on "auto-pilot" in the super-market, slumped in an "altered state ofconsciousness" in front of the TV, in an-other world while running in the parklistening to music through earphones, or"vacant and staring at everything andnothing" while traveling on the tube.

These states of mind were well docu-mented in psychological literature at thetime the article was written and referredto as "state dependent memory." Accord-

ing to Gordon an d Lan gmaid (1986): "Dur-ing many ordinary and extraordinarysituations our constantly shifting psycho-physiological states can encapsulate mem -ory so that it is not available to our usualconscious frames of reference."

The authors set up an experiment usinglight hypnosis to mirror this kind of low-attention state of mind. Ten people wereasked standard questions about advertis-ing recall before being hypnotized. In allcases they remembered a great deal moreabout the ad vertising (especially the emo-tional meanings) when they were hypno-tized than they did when conscious.

Two fascinating insights were reportedas a result of the experiment:

1 . There is irrefutable proof of the pres-ence in the consumer's mind of adver-tising messages linked to a brand thatare inaccessible to conscious recall. Fur-thermore, the advertising associationsremembered had an emotional mean-ing to the individual.

2 . It is important to create an appropriatecontext to facilitate recall of advertis ing,be it a mood of relaxation, an environ-ment such as point of purchase or poin tof consum ption, ora visual stimulus suchas the package, a tune, or a sound. In-formation is state-bound, and contex-tual triggers must be found to make itavailable to the conscious mind.

The authors offered ane w definition of th e

process of branding as opposed to the cur-rent definition of creating a brand:

Branding may be thought of as theprocess of creating the totality of mean-ing which consumers attribute to abrandthe unique and relevant bun-dle of values that are internalized and

combined with past experience an dcurrent perceptions of the brand it(Gordon and Langmaid, 1986).

And, furthermore, "Branding is the rvant unit of meaning that is inextricalinked to a brand, awareness of whmay be conscious or intuitive."

Branding is therefore a continuous pcess of creating relevant associations meanings.

"Love the Ad. Buy the Product" wwritten by Alex Biel in 1990. The aimthe article was to add further evidencthe highly controversial conclusions of

ARF Copy Validation Study (Haley 199This long-awaited macro study of preting measures concluded, unexpectedly, scaled response about the likeability ocommercial was the best predictor of seffectiveness (more so than measures sas day-after recall, content recall, perssion, communication, overall commerreactions, and other diagnostics comonly found in many pretesting system

Biel's article, based on his own forenand large-scale quantitative work wprime-time commercials and target mket consumers, showed that "likeabilis a complex concept made up of fmain factors:

1 . ingenuityclever, imaginative, orn a l , silly, not dull;

2 . meaningfulworth remembering, fective, not pointless, not easy to get, true to life, convincing, informatand believable;

3 . energylively, fast m oving, a ppealiand well done;

4 . warmthgentle, warm, and sensitan d

5 . does not rub the wrong waynot wout, not phony, not irritating.

The article concluded by exploring potheses as to why likeability shouldso closely related to sales using expla

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WHAT DO CONSUMERS DO?

tions of mental processing drawn fromcognitive psychology.

Comm ercials that are liked are less likely

to be avoided (zapped) in reality ormentally

Likeability is the "gatekeeper" to fur-ther processing. "Consumers first forman overall impression of an advertise-ment on a visceral or 'gut' level. To theextent that this impression is positivethey are likely to continue to processthe advertising more fully."

Commercials as brand personality at-tributesin product categories wherebrands are very similar, the advertisingitself may be considered a brand at-tribute (e.g., Marlboro man).

Positive effect is transferred from theadvertisement to the brand (simple haloeffect experiments).

Commercials that are liked involve somekind of coauthorship in meaning cre-ation. Biel (1990) referred to Jeremy Bull-more, who had previously argued that

good advertising entices the consumerinto mental collaboration: "He sug-gested that if an advertisement goesbeyond mere message registration toelicit a contribution from the consumerit is likely to be more effective. Theconsumer has moved from being anobserver or maybe even an adversaryto become an accomplice or, as Bull-more put it, a 'part author.'"

N E W T H IN K IN G

There are several themes that cut acrossthese three articles.

All implicitly or explicitly challengethe most frequently used advertisingmeasurement and evaluative systems,especially pretesting and trackingmethodologies.

All emphasize in different ways thateffective advertising is that which is

personally meaningful, culturally rele-vant, and creates a subjective feeling ofwarmth and positive affect.

All acknowledge that what people tell

you is not everything in their heads,and what is in their heads is neitheravailable to them selves nor to research-e r s , no matter what tool is used.

All grapple with the complexity of hu-man beings concluding that successfuladvertising is neither easy to create noreasy to measure.

All struggle with the problem of howadvertising (today we would talk morebroadly about all of a brand's commu-nication and experiences) enables peo-ple to create meaning (the inner world)rather than being simply external stim-uli (from the outer world).

Why is it that the ideas, hypotheses, and"proof" from a valid (albeit pilot experi-ment), specific research projects (ARFStudy and Biel's own work at WPP's Cen-tre for Research and Development), or

evidence from other respected disciplines(social anthropology and cognitive/Gestaltpsychology) failed to convince the adver-tising, marketing, and research worlds tochange their beliefs and practice awayfrom the AIDA model?

RESISTANCE TO NEW MODELS

O F T H IN K IN G

There are two main reasons to explainwhy there was resistance to this newthinking:

1. the overriding need for measurementand evidence and

2 . loss aversiona psychological construct.

The measurement imperative

The decades of the '80s and '90s werecharacterized by an obsession w ith adver-tising, especially television.

A great amount of intellectual and prmatic effort went into the process advertisinghow to create it, how to msure its effectiveness, how best to buy

m.edia for it, how it helps to devefinancially (in terms of the balance shvaluable brands, and, to a lesser extehow to target it at the right group receptive consumers.

The debate about measurement of bshort- and long-term effects of advering was heated, as was the continuargument and competition among supers for the best pretesting and tracksystems. Brand equity and the financevaluation of brands on the balance shgenerated a huge amount of intellecteffort that was supported by the top magers in organizations.

Little wonder that mental models targued that the advertising process is coplex, nonrational (sociocultural, emtional, unconscious, interactive), and easy to measure, and that consumers ctrol the process of creating meanin g (rat

than brand owners and their agenciwere basically ignored.

Loss aversion

There is a theory in social psycholothat Kahneman and Tversky (in Schwa2004) call "loss aversion." This holds losses have twice the psychological pact as equivalent gains. People hate losand this applies not only to financial vestment (e.g., giving up all the mo

spent over the years on pretesting or traing systems as "sunk costs") but alsothe emotional investment in the "rigness of beliefs and mental models" thave for many years determined procols for decision making.

N E W E V ID E N C E IV IO R E S C IE N T IF IC TO

S U P P O RT T H E N E W T H IN K i N G

People who work in organizations habsolute respect for numbers. "Show

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WHAT DO CONSUMERS D

"Show me the numbers" is the evidence that is most

reiied upon to support a decision or maintain current

behavior in business today.

the numbers" is the evidence that is mostrelied up on to supp ort a decision or main-tain current hehavior in business today.But there is a different kind of hardsciencea new and nascent science en-abled by technology and by multidisci-plinary collaboration. Over the past decade

there have been dramatic developmentsin the field of neuroscience (the study ofthe brain), which is itself a combination ofother sciences.

There are many new books aimed atthe layperson (Carter, 1998; Pert, 1999;Draaisma, 2004; Ramachandran, 2004) thatcross-reference the following sciences.

The specialized study of the brain:through functional brain imaging it isnow possible to obtain a graphic repre-sentation of the brain of a healthy liv-ing person and to observe where neuralactivity is greatest during certain men-tal states. Detailed study is now possi-ble of the brain's functional anatomyand metabolism, and also of experimen-tal neuroscientific approaches to themechanisms of emotion, attention, cog-nition, memory, and consciousness.

Clinical neurology: the ongoing analy-sis of case studies of people (includingre-examination of reports of cases from

as far back as the 18th century) withdysfunctional brains or bodies due tobirth, accident, or illness. The study ofthe abnormal has always been impor-tant in the understanding of the normal.

Cognitive psychology: controlled exper-iments, building on each other over the

decades, to understand the various as-pects of human behavior, such as howhuman beings make decisions, how wecreate meaning, and how we functionmentally under different conditions.

Molecular biology: research to under-stand the interaction between multiplesystems that govern our existence asfunctioning hu ma n beingsneurological(brain and nerves), hormonal, vascular,chemical, and immune systems areexamples.

Psychoanalysis: the study of the innerworld of human beings, our dreams,conscious and unconscious motiva-tions, ambivalent behaviors and incon-sistencies, and so on.

Already there are an increasing numberof practitioners (mainly researchers) whohave become interested in neuroscience,

particularly with reference to the way thatadvertising really works. There are 70 ref-erences on the WARC.com database refer-

Over the past decade there have been dramatic develop-

men ts in the fieid of neuroscience . . . which is itseif a

combination of other sciences.

encing brain science written by wknown practitioners and academics sas Robert Heath, Erik du Plessis, AlisGoode, Herbert Krugman, Dr. Max Su

erland, and Gerald Zaitman, all of whhave been published in respected innational trade journals and magazines

Many of these articles focus on hstimuli from the external world are pcessed by the brainsuch as informatpathways, memory (storage, retrieval,dividual, collective, short term, long teworking memory, implicit mem ory), riand left-brain processing, and cognifunctioning.

The articles, whether inNew ScientistAdmap, are mainly concerned withfuntionality rather than the mysteries of hall of this makes u s, as huma n beings , and think as we do.

In very recent years, eminent neuscientistsDamasio (1999) and Cr(2000), in particularhave published boon a major conundrum in this field, namthat if the brain is simply an organ lany other, what is the mind? How dthe mind emerge from the brain? Hdoes consciousness (the feeling that exist inside my own body) emerge frobodily organ that is in cellular terms lthe stomach or the lungs?

Unconscious processing of external

stimuli takes place and influences our

actions without our conscious awareness

Freud was a neuroscientist who turned

back on the study of the brain as an orbecause he could not account for how explains the workings of the inner life.was the first pe rson, over a century ag oclaim that "most of our mental life opates unconsciously and that consciousnis merely a property ofo n e part of th e min(Solms and Turnbull, 2002).

It is now widely accepted by scientinvolved in studying the brain that mmental functioning operates unconsciou

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It is now widely a ccepted by scientists involved in study-

ing the brain that most mental functioning operates un-

consciously and that consciousness is of very little

importance in our me ntal life .

and that consciousness is of very little im-portance in our mental life.

The evidence for this change of heart canbe found in split-brain studies and also inthe understanding of the tiny capacity ofworking memory (we can hold only sevenunits of information in o ur mind s ata time).This means that the vast bulk of the in-formation we need to function must beprocessed in the unconscious part of themind. Bargh and Chartrand (1999) con-cluded that9 5 percent of our actions are un-consciously determined.

Human beings may not know or be able

to explain why they do what they do (orare thinking what they think); what they

"remember" is not the whole story

The term "memory" covers many differ-ent functions. Textbooks today describedozens of different aspects of memorybut, for our purpo ses, thinking about mem-ory in three ways is most helpful.

1. Semantic memoryis the network of as-sociations and concepts that support

our knowledge of the worldfacts,word meanings, grammatical rules oflanguage, propositions, and so on. It israther like an encyclopaedia of third-person facts. These are relatively easyto retrieve consciously, althou gh every-one knows what it feels like to forget aname or fact.

2 . Procedural memory is the "bod ily" mem-ory responsible for habitual motor skillsor for how to do things. Procedural

memory functions implicitlyand thusexplains habitual behavior. It is ex-ecuted automatically and unconsciously.Driving a car, making dinner, andchanging a baby are all examples of

"how to do something" without pay-ing conscious attention to each secondof activity.

3 . Episodic, or autobiographical, memory is

the re-experiencing of past events"the bringing back to awareness of pre-vious experiential episodes" as in "Iremember...." According to Schacter(1996) the episodic m emory system "a l-lows u s to explicitly recall the person alincidents that define our lives." Thesemem ories are intrinsically subjective a ndintrinsically conscious.

Solms and TurnbuU (2002) have this tosay about memory:

A central point to grasp is that themultiplicity of long term memory stor-age systems makes it a commonplacefor experiences to influence o ur beh av-

ior and beliefs without usconsciouslyremembering the experiences in ques-tion. The fact that you cannot explic-itly bring something to mind does notmean that you do not know (uncon-sciously, implicitly) what happened, northat you will not act on the basis ofthis knowledge. What you rememberconsciously or unconsciously dependssolely on which memory systems areengaged wh en the memories are being

encoded and retrieved. Only whenepisodic memory system is involin the encoding (and early consotion) of the experience can we exp

itly remember that experience. If system is not engaged, then the ewiU disappear from consciousness, though its implicit effects on behaand beliefs may well endure.

The first two points listed above supthe findings of Gordon and Langm(1986) about the existence of " advertisbranding" associations that are not aable to conscious recall. They also further weight to their idea that memretrieval is facilitated b y enab ling the son to re-experience (autobiographicthe moment of interaction with the b(e.g., buying it, using it, or the maccompanying it).

What we now know about unconscprocessing and memory also supportstheory, first described by Robert H(2000, 2001) and no w embraced by o t

of low-attention processing. The fact one cannot remember a brand or comnication when directly questioned not mean that it has not been encodemay well influence behavior.

People do not passively receiveinformation about brands andcommunicationsthey transmute it intosomething personaily reievant

Some sort of alchemy is going on.

association cortex of the brain is invoin integrating the information derived different sensory input systems (viauditory, etc.). Memories (semantic, cedural, and episodic) are laid down time because a system designed to renize the outside world must also sknowledge about that outside world

Not all types of memory are storethe associative cortex; many other bregions are involved in the totality

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WHAT DO CONSUMERS DO

People do not passively receive information about brands

and communications^they transmute it into something

personally relevant.

mental processes included underthe term"memory." In particular, the systems thatare responsible for emotion are intrinsically

involved as well as the parts of the brain that

drive us to action.

Continual exposure to a range of per-ceptual experiences allows for the devel-opment of well-developed memories.Onthe basis of millions of experiences, wegradually build up a reliable and stablepicture of the outside world.

We learn to recognize a dog by anybreed, any angle from which we see it,near or far, by smell, visual information,auditory sounds, touch,and so on.

What is " I " in "i feel," "i tiiink," and "i

remember"?The brain mediates between two worlds:the external and internal environmentsofthe body. The external environmentis easyto understand. It Involves all the stimulioutside the confines of our bodies that weprocess. The internal milieu refersto thosesystems that keep us alive: respiration,body temperature control, digestion,sex-ual reproduction, the hormonal, chemicaltransmission of messages to different parts

of the body, and so on.The internal milieu also includes the

Hmbic system, whichis described by someauthors as "the centre of emotions" (Fran-zen and Bouwman, 2001):

The Iimbic system is the powerhou se ofthe brainthe place wherethe desires,motivations, emotionsand moods thatsteer our behaviour are awakened.. . itis a very complicated bodyof intercon-

nected structures that are responsibleforour emotional reactionsand also playsan important role in the selectionof stim-uli for our attention and in the forma-tion of long term memory.

Solms and Turnbuil explain that theinternal processes of the viscera are criti-cally importan t to understanding our sub-jective experience: "The perception ofvisceral information is registered con-sciously as a feeling of emotion and (viaassociation) as reminiscences, in the formof: T saw that, and it made me feel likethis'" (Solms and TurnbuU, 2002).

Consciousness enablesus to know howwe feel. It is introspective and evaluative,

and tells us when something feels "good"or "bad" or "in between."

Intuition has now been explained. It isnot magic or "women's stuff," it is simplythe result of the implicit learning systemthat relies on a "feeling" that is emotion-ally mediated. Intuition is not immedi-ately susceptible to proof, nor is it easyfor people to explain why they have a"good feeling" or a "bad feeling" aboutsomething or somebody.

This affective knowledge is central tolearning, problem solving, and decisionmaking.

Alex Biel's work (1990) on the factorsthat make up liking is linked to this newlydeveloping knowledgeof subjective expe-rience and inner life. Liking is a subjec-tive feeling. It is tied up somehow withconsciousness. Because it is a feeling in-side the body, it is therefore the conse-quence of emotional processing systems.

Emotions and feelings are understoand explored completely differentlyneuroscientists compared to market rsearchers. There are only four or five c

emotion systems common to both hmans and animals (rage, fear, seekireward, panic,and play). These determbehavior (they make us do somethinthat makes sure the species survives.

Everything else describedas an emotiis a cognitive process of attaching laguage to feelings. Feelings are the resof the moleculesof emotion that have thown particular pathways and waysaction throughout the body as well as tbrain. We are able to talk about feelingsfeel uptight, angry, sad, upset, nervy, dpressed") without always knowing winternal physiological processes have btaking place, although these feelingsacommunicated, botht o ourselves and t o oe r s , quite clearly through body langua

Every person we come across in oulives, every event we experience is accompanied by an internal visceral/phys

logical patte rn or anchor. We feel warmsome people and cool or indifferentothers. We are drawn toward certainativities or experiences and "pushed awaby others. We cannot necessarily explwhy. It is intuitive.

HOW SHOULDWE THiNK ABOUT

ADVERTiSiNG NOW?

There are many kinds of information thuman beings cannot retrieveat will.U

conscious processing happens,as its namsuggests, unconsciously, and it is simpunavailable to efforts at remembering.

Most of what business peopleare intested inhow brand (company, intution, produc t, service) experiencesancommunications influence peoplhappen unconsciously unless thereisparticular event or autobiographimemory we can release.

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It can be inferred from behavior thatthere has been an influence, but it isnot easy to prove in advance that mar-keting interventions will have the de-

sired scale and nature of effect. Memory is dynamic. What we remem-

ber is not laid down as a permanentrecord. Every time we remember, wereconstruct the memory depending onwhere we are, what we are doing, whowe are with, why we are there, andwhat else is going on around us. Whatthis means is simply that people do notremember accurately, no matter howyou ask them.

We learn about a brand through themultiple experiences we have with it indifferent ways and conditions over time.Each exposure or experience is inte-grated with those memories that are al-ready embeddedto create a totality ofmeaning. This meaning is personal but itis also shaped by broader socioculturalinfluences and contexts. Human beings

are both individual organisms and socialanimalswithout either, human beingsare inhuman.

People do something with brand com-munications and experiences. It is not aone-way process. Coauthorsh ip of mean-ing is a reality because the externalstimulus of a brand does not fall onvirginal ground; complex associations

to the category, to competitive brands,to brands in noncompetitive categories,and to the particular brand in questionalready exist.That is why concentrating on adver-tising/paid-for commu nication is a tinypart of the way we coexist with brands.Multiple touchpointsaccidental andplannedshape the meaning of thebrand. Advertising is only one inputamong many.

We "like" (using Biel's definition) somebrands and feel drawn toward them, andwe are indifferent to or actively dislikeothers. Brands are anchored by a feeling

difficult to articulate in words but acces-sible nonetheless. It is an intuitive andsimple relationship.

"Liking" a brand means that we

are more open-minded about its com-munications and initiatives,

notice it among a mass of competitors, use it as a heuristic (rule of thum b) to

make a quick decision, forgive it if it makes mistakes (within

limits), transfer our liking onto other initiatives

connected with the brand (e.g., newproducts/brands or to the companyitself),

become advocates for it and help topromote it through our networks,

are more tolerant of its advertising, remember more about it for longer pe-

riods of time, and

integrate it internally with other posi-tive associations so that it is likely totrigger in more situations.

R E C O N S T R U C Ti N G B A S i C P R i N C i P L E S

The 1980s and 2000s are different worlds.Advertising is no longer king. Brandshave taken center stage and are built andmaintained through multiple channels ofactivityinternet, word of mouth, directmarketing, PR, brand experience, retail

environn\ents, service, design, sponsor-ship, partnerships, and so on. "Gettingcloser to the consumer" has moved upthe agenda of importance to reach theears of senior management. There are vis-ible signs of "customer-centric" thinkingboth in large organizations and small onesthat are mandated from the boardroom.

For practitioners, especially qualitativeresearchers, it is possible (at last) to ex-plain rationally and logically what we in-

tuitively know about people, and how awhy they say and do what they do. Tnew science also offers quantitative searchers the opportimityto be creative a

to design new ways of measuring the csequences of brand-consum er interactio

Jim CarroU, chairman of the agency BBlaid down a challenge:

There was a t ime when an advereffectiveness was judged on whethewas saying the right thing, to the ripeople, in the right way. The sugcoating was whether the ad was enttaining and engaging. That'sa ll changeThe ability to engage, inspire a nd enttain is now at the heart of strategy. Hayou (researchers) the tools to measemotion ? (Carroll, 2004)

This challenge is not simply one for vertising research or for researchers. Itone for the whole marketing communCan everyone embrace the idea that gagement, inspiration, and entertainm

lie at the heart of successful brands, athat the challenge for those responsifor brands is to embrace a different moof thinking with different principles atcenter?

Here are 10 very simple (but scientcally proven) principles:

1 . People do not say what they mean

mean what they s a y . Most of what drattitudes and behavior is not acces

ble to conscious introspection. "Rsons why" are postrationalizationsmake sense of our actions to oselves (and others) because we mnot know, other than intuitively, wwe do w hat we do. Providing ratio"reasons why" helps people to plain a choice (useful in commodcategories with poor brand differeation) but it does not necessarily amotivation or behavior.

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2 . People dance with brands fieetingly. It is

estimated that each of us has about

10,000 brands stored in our heads,

along with every person we meet,

place we visit, or event that happens.Simply, brands are unimportant in the

fabric of everyday life except for the

fractional moments people interact

with them. It is important to look at

people in their real lives and figure

out where the most powerful touch

points with the brand liewhether

this is the people who represent the

brand, other brand users, packaging

lying in the street, word of mouth, or

call center operators.

3. Brands a r e emotionally anchored. A brand

in the brain is made up of sets of cells

that communicate with each other sit-

uated in different parts of the brain.

This is called a brand representation.

Brands are cognitively and emotion-

ally encoded in the brain. It is the

emotional anchoring of the brand that

determines how we process informa-

tion about it, what we notice about it,

and how open we are to its initiatives.

The more positively the brand is an-

chored, the better its chances of achiev-

ing its ambitions.

4. Words are poor tools. There is no objec-

tive meaning of a word. Words are

fuzzy and imprecise. It is difficult for

people to articulate thoughts and feel-

ings (internal milieu processes) when

they are asked. People's vocabulary is

often limited, especially compared tothat of university graduates who work

in marketing, advertising, and re-

search. Words need help.

5. The unconscious exists. Accept it. Even

if hypnosis were an accepted every-

day practice, it does not tap the

unconscious.

6. Intuition exists. Trust it and learn how

to use it in your work. Whether you

work in marketing, advertising, or re-

There is no such thing as "ration al" versus "em otiona i"

the two are intertwined. Sometimes "rationai" appears

to take the high ground, but "emotionai" is the underiy

ing force .

search (or any other discipline), find

ways to tap into people's intuitive

responses to what you are planning.

"It feels right," "It feels wrong," "Not

sure" are good signposts.

7. Emotions rule. "Emotions constitute an

integrated element of the seemingly

most rational decision-making. When-

ever thinking contradicts with emo-

tions, emotions win" (Franzen and

Bouwman, 2001). There is no such thing

as "rational" versus "emotional"the

two are intertwined. Sometimes "ratio-

nal" appears to take the high ground,

but "emotional" is the underlying force.

8. Behavior and attitudes are context depen-dent. People behave differently in dif-

ferent circumstances. Behavior and

attitudes change depending on the

"where," "why," "what," and "who"

of the situation. The same is true of

recalling activities or associations con-

nected with a brand. Different con-

texts enable different memories to arise.

9. Memory is dynamic. M e m o r y is not

static and fixed like a photograph.

Memories can be distorted or changed.Brand associations are like memories

and change too. While some associa-

tions are "hard-wired" and deeply em-

bedded, new associations can be built

that, over time, create a different brand

meaning.

1 0 . There is no such thing as absolute truth.

Statistics lie. People in focus groups

are influenced by the laboratory-like

setting, by the personalities of other

members of the group, and by the

moderator and observers. What they

say in this context is not "the truth."

Interviewing people at home gives cer-

tain insights but is not "the truth"

either. Nor is pure observation "the

truth," as you cannot know why some-

one is behaving as they do unless you

are in their head. Semiotics does not

give you "the truth," nor does inter-

viewing experts,

W E N D Y G O R D O Nis a cofounder and partner at Acaci

Avenue, a research and strategy consultancy formed

in September 2002. Previously a founding partner o

The Fourth Room, a strategic brand consultancy, and

before th at a founder of The Research Business inte

nationai. Dr. Gordon is a feiiow of the MRS, visiting

professor at Birmingham Business Schooi, and hon

ored by the U.K. Women's Advertising Ciubas one o

its "Women of Achievement." She has written two

booi

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