Religions & Brands

For quit some time now many pope have discussed, and toyed with the idea that brands to some extent act as a religion or at the very least exhibit some of the same characteristics as religions. Buyology is a an in-depth 3 year neuromarketing study to identify the effects brands, logos, commercials, advertising and products. Scanning 2,000 consumers brains using fMRI, what we learned was that there is a very strong correlation between brans like Apple and Harley Davidson and religion, in fact they are almost the same regions in the brain that are activated.

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy

In my last post we talked about lifestyle branding, and this is the first time we can physically see that brands are so much more than products, we in fact buy into a believe system.

Brands like Apple have been incredibly good, while brands like BlackBerry are not doing it

A patient goes into an fMRI Machine. (Creative Commons)

that well, trusting and building that trust from religion into the band strategy. For brands and marketers to understand this more clearly the most important thing is to understand what creates a powerful religion, and this has been studies extensively by social and cultural anthropologists, they could be mystery, strong enemy, sensory appeal or can can rituals.

The fascinating things with apple is that they actually incorporate all these elements and is truly sensory, with the iPad, its all about the tactile sensation and visual sensation and even have their own ritual of swiping the screen to the right to unlock it. This ritual of starting up this device is integrated into a while system of how we navigate, and has been adapted into their brand strategy.

What do you think? Do brands really act or incorporate ideas or religion into their brand strategy? Do they carry ideologies like the rest of us?

Darren Browns Powers of Perception

Have you ever wondered where we sometimes come up with ideas and inspiration,or have you ever walked into a store and felt a sense of familiarity with a product or brand that we think we have never heard of. The amount of information that we unconsciously absorb is staggering.

In this Video magician Darren Brown is trying to see whether marketing and advertising executives are just as susceptible to subliminal messages as the rest of us, and the results and MIND BLOWING!

Have you every felt a connection with a product thinking that we have never heard of? Do you think Brands creating surrogate relationships with its customers with Characters like Quaker Oats, Aunt Jemima, and The Green Giant is as strong as a relationship as the one reused to have with our local farmers?I’d love to know what you think!

Lets watch……

Derren Brown wields his powers of perception and mind manipulation over the unsuspecting and the sceptical.

Why The Obama Message Worked!

Frank Luntz is a very interesting man, using focus groups Luntz tests “language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.” Also being Political consultant and a Pollster, On Fox News Luntz shares his opinion on why the Obama message worked so well.

During his 2008 campaign, Obama ran the most positive campaign emphasizing change, and hope and really brought americans together. During his 2012 Campaign Obama ran the most negative campaign looking at the Ads put out int Florida, Ohio, and Virginia.

Obama 2008 TV Ads.

On the Other Side Mitt Romney’s campaign fell flat footed for several reasons. Although people depicted Romney as a decent, moral, and a civil person, we did not hear the differences of how Romney would do a better job that Obama. Although Romney did state the differences in the presidential debate, by the time he said it, it took the message to long to reach people costing him votes in Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, and Colorado.

Obama Ads Targeting Romney:

Another Fact that substantially weakened Romney’s campaign was the simple fact that he did not respond to the Hundred of million of dollars worth of TV ads put out by the Obama administration claiming Romney as a “Politicrate”, and Luntz tells us that these ads have been playing day and night and once people see it with repetition, eventually they will start to believe it.

The Take Away point that Luntz is trying to make its for every campaign moving forward, is that if we are attacked whether it be unjust, unfair or inaccurate we have better response immediately or voters will assume what is being said it true.

Losing The Natural Touch

Have we lost touch with nature? Have we lost our ability to associate ourself with the world, the ability to know where things are coming from in the natural living world?

Humans, like most animals usually have to worry about 3 things: Food, Predators, and Disease. As human technology progressed the agricultural revolution allowed us to produce food as apposed to foraging and hunting, we were able to basically get ride of all the predators, and once we have medicine to take care of infectious disease, we have had the luxury to worry about other obsessions such as status, social issues, and sexual attractiveness perhaps more than any other animals in the history of life on earth.

Geoffrey Miller, a Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico explains to us a puzzling irony in human life today. As technology and history progress we have increased mastery over our environment. With the agricultural revolution, human societies shifted to farming and cultivating our small patches of land instead of having to go out and forage for food.

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Then With the Industrial revolution our reach is much more extended having more technical control over the environment, withdrawing even further into our bourgeois houses, caring about the mechanism that surround us e.g. plumbing, fridge, Car, and TV.

With the industrial revolution today we have a highly mechanized, globalized, computerized supply system leading to the marketing revolution Miller explain that we withdraw even further into ourselves, not worrying about the mechanisms and technology that surrounds us anymore but the brands that surrounds us, we don’t know how to plumbing, fridge, or car works anymore we just know what kind of car, or which kind of fridge we have, causing a gradual withdrawal of focus from our environments into our own narratives.

Do you think that we as a species have lost sense and touch with the natural living world? if not, I would love to hear you opinion. What ways can we better educate not only ourself but future generations about the importance and sacredness of the earth we inhabit today?

 

Drive 4 Prestige

“Individuals conspicuously consume to signal their wealth” is the opening line in a Research paper publish in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology at Cornell University. While the rest of the world is struggling through an economic crisis, the luxury good industry is racking in over $200 Billion annually.

We are already familiar that Brands and Products can represent certain things (ideas, values, beliefs, lifestyles) and we literally buy into certain brands that represent who we are. Other than converting a sense of prestige, social status, wealth, and exclusivity, they also help us express our uniques selves and act as a social signalling conveying social status and and prestige (e.g. Driving a expensive sports car aligns you with a elite group: those who can afford it).

Ghent University in Belgium conducted a study and conceded that merely looking an touching expensive luxury items bestows feelings go instant gratification, and when an actual purchase is made, the reward centre of the brain are highly engaged, a feeling that is exclusive to expensive shopping.

Most successful marketing and advertising campaign have been created to touch upon the consumers ego, hence the reason advertisements encourage us to compete with one another and our neighbours over Television and Cars, and things such as who has the best Christmas and Halloween decoration. But why do these tactics resonate so deeply with us and actually shape our consumption behaviours. Surely marketers did not invent a deep rooted desire for prestige in all of man kind,  what evolutionary purpose did the cultural trait of “Prestige” serve in our earlier ancestors that makes it so prevalent is our human psyche today? 

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Dr. Aimee Plourde a Post-Doctoral Researcher, from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London explains that one of the many differences between humans and other animals is prestige, in term of ranking and social status. Animals have social status and ranking and are conveyed through dominance behaviours (violence, threat of violence and cohesion) but only humans have prestige, respect, power and authority that is freely granted from one individual to another.

Prestige seemes to be very darwinistic in a sense that it has probably been selected in the course of human evolution, since we don’t share this with other primates species, that desire for prestige and perhaps the signalling component as well is something that has emerged over the course of human history. And i would say that it has done so because its adaptive, it confers a benefits of getting increased good, services, respect,

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and authority from others has got to have benefits, therefore natural selection over time has shapes our psychologies and our behaviours in such a way that we both desire prestige and act in ways of acquiring it.

Our evolved dispositions to seek status and desire presage are operating in a context now that are extremely difference from the ones they originally evolved. What way do you think that this can be a hindrance to todays economy and more importantly our society?

* Dr. Aimee Plourde is Post-Doctoral Researcher, Institute of Archaeology, University College London focusing on the role of prestige goods in the formation of sociopolitical hierarchy.