More on the Buyer Brain

After my Feb. 14 essay on the “Buyer Brain,” several readers wrote to ask me to elaborate and provide examples. To catch you up: In that essay, I pointed out that, with respect to buying decisions, it is useful to understand the human brain in terms of three distinct parts – the reptilian brain, the limbic brain, and the neocortical brain, representing instinct, emotion, and thought. My thesis was that, to compete in the 22nd-century digital marketplace, CEOS, copywriters, and marketers will have to take a holistic approach to the sales process, including marketing to prospects, onboarding new customers, and serving existing ones. Prior to the internet, general advertising companies could dominate their markets by focusing their marketing on instinct and emotion. Likewise, direct marketing companies could grow huge by focusing on emotion and thinking (i.e., rationalization). Today, every business of every kind must appeal to and satisfy all three parts of the brain. Below, I answer two questions that account for most of those I received…

From BP, a direct marketer – re my claim that direct marketers need to appeal to instinct (the lizard brain): 

 “I’m thinking that the lizard brain might be the ad, or some image/headline that immediately makes someone stop and pay attention. Some kind of pattern interrupt of sorts, since the lizard brain is basically scanning for something new and different to pay attention to because, in the past, it could be a lion waiting to attack you. Can you give a few examples?”

My answer: Exactly. With the hundreds of micro-messages a typical consumer is exposed to on the internet every day, it’s no longer possible to capture attention with headlines like “How to Lose 20 pounds in 10 Days.” Such a promise could underline the pitch, but to distinguish your ad from so many others, you have to do more than that. Something that stops the casual reader in his tracks – if only for a second. There are several ways to do that. Some are verbal – usually single words that feel somehow wrong or out of place. And some are visual – images, photos, even typefaces that are in some way jarring. Of course, it’s not enough to simply interrupt. The rhetorical device you choose must also appeal to a lizard instinct. For a moment, and only a moment, it must scare him like a snake in the grass or allure him like an irresistible aroma.  

From KB, a general advertising executive: 

“You said that people in my line of work understand instinct and emotion. I get that. How does the neocortical brain come into play?”

My answer: In the pre-internet days, goods marketing via general advertising sent people into stores where real live salespeople closed the sale and then sent customers home to experience their purchases. Nowadays, more and more goods are simply delivered directly from the distributor to the customer. This directness means that all sorts of things the salesperson did to convince the customer that she made a good purchase are missing. So, to keep refunds down and repeat buying high, general advertisers will be asked to do much more: to create materials that will help customers rationalize their purchases ex post facto.