Branding to a Caveman

It's important to understand how the brain works if you want to build a lasting brand. Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote a number of books on this topic in the '90s. The 22 Immutable laws of Marketing and Positioning: The battle for your mind are my two favorite. Their major point: be first in the customer's mind -- first in the market or category and first in positioning into customer's mind. Why? Because most people won't remember the second as easily. There are a number of explains to support this theory. If you look at Coca-Cola ($28.9 billion of sales) and Pepsi ($39.5 billion of sales) today they are both successful in the same category and Coca-Cola is the "real thing" (first in the minds of consumers) but Pepsi had successfully position itself as the youthful coke as the "new generation" to carve a new category.

The human brain is an incredible machine. A new book, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, by New York University psychologist Gary Marcus tackles the idea that we have two thinking systems inside our skulls. He argues that human evolution has created two distinct ways of thinking - an ancestral system that is instinctual and reflexive, and a more modern, deliberative one that involves reasoning. He explains that humans developed "contextual memory", which means we pull things from our memory by using context or clues that hint at what we are looking for, therefore we are better at the quick retrieval of general information rather than specific details.
Examples of this are seen in branding everyday, where we take complex products and simplify them down to one meaning full word. i.e., Vehicle Safety = Volvo, Fights Cavities = Crest, Just do it = Nike, It tastes awful = Buckley's, King of beers = Budweiser

So what does this mean when building brands? That you should keep it simple - stupid proof! Synthesizing its position down to a single thought or word has a better chance of survival.
Another insight Marcus reveals is that most pleasures are attributed from the ancestral, reflexive system. This would explain why we are always distracted and are attracted to anecdotal and emotional hearsay that affect the way we see the world, filter information and make irrational decisions.

While we like to portray ourselves as highly evolved logical, reasonable bioforms, we are still tied to our basic instincts. Tapping into this insight, brands must have an infinity to the non rational side of the brain. This would explain a number of successful products who have built their brands on emotion and why the best products don't necessarily win.

As David Ogilvy's quote "The customer isn't a moron, it's your mother," should be rewritten to finish, "it's a caveperson."