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Brainfluence
100 Ways To Persuade and Convince Consumers With Neuromarketing
Roger Dooley
Decoys
Our brains aren't good at judging absolute values, but they are always ready to compare values and benefits. If you see an inferior product for a similar price, you're more likely to decide to buy the target product. Real estate agents good at this - they'll show you a range of houses that ostensibly meet your criteria, leaving till last the one they want to sell you. Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational makes the same points about Economist subscriptions and breadmakers. Restaurant menus also prime examples of deliberate decoy pricing - the $45 bottle of wine looks like a good deal compared to the $100 ones.
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Lesson from this is that sellers need to either drastically prune the number of choices (lesson of the jam stall in supermarket) or else provide some guidance: "If you like strawberries, you will love our strawberry-ginger jam. It's full of fruit flavor but has some really interesting spicy notes, too." Even more important online sales, where plethora of choices just confuses buyer, but seller never sees this.
Scent
75% of our emotions are generated by what we smell.
We process scent even without being aware of it. Got women to sniff shirts worn by two groups of men - one group worn by men who'd watched an erotic film, other group who'd watched a neutral doco. The women reported no difference, but MRI scans showed their brains lighting up in completely diff area when smelling shirts from first group.
Survey of McDonald's customers found that in America a third , and in Britain 40%, thought restaurants smelled of stale oil (and that the smell made meal less pleasant). But other customers reported that they liked the smell and that it made their mouths water.
Nestle created the Nespresso, a home-brew coffee machine that produced cup of coffee just as good as the coffee shop version. But until they modified it to release more coffee aroma, it wasn't rated as highly at home as t was in the coffee shop.
Sound
Children with learning or behavioural problems learn maths quicker if calming music played. Banks are perceived as having higher values if they play classical music. 'Snap crackle pop' ad campaign as USP which differentiated cereal amongst range of me-too products which talked about flavour.
Gruesome warning labels on cigarette packets became associated with the pleasure of smoking and actually became a cue to smoke. Put a smoker in MRI scanner and can see the brain craving smoke when warning labels shown.
We are very susceptible to social identity cues - we love to belong to a group, and sign up for groups with very little persuasion. Psychologist Henri Tujfel found he could get people to make a meaningless choice and assign them to a group based on that choice. They would then become emotionally invested in these meaningless groups, cheering their victories and mocking other group.
Apple Computers exploited this with ads which basically showed Apple users as 'cool' and everyone else as nerds. No product info or rational reasons, just emotional cues portraying Apple users favorably and mocking rest.
Asking undecided voters to write their age on a card doubled the percentage who thought John McCain was senile. Voters who indicated their race on a card were twice as likely to believe Barack Obama was a socialist.
Message is that if you can prime your target audience with cues that separate them from other groups, and remind them of the difference, they will be more likely to believe your message.
Adjectives
Restaurants skilled at using vivid adjectives to entice - instead of a ham cheese and egg sandwich, you're seduced with "Our breakfast Power Sandwich starts with lean, hardwood-smoked ham and freshly-cracked eggs ...." Your challenge is to find the adjectives that work for yr product or service. You want evocative adjectives (not cliched ones) in yr product descriptions, but when giving ordering instructions or a call for action, strip down to nouns and verbs for quick, easy comprehension.
We are deeply impressed by stories. The fabled ad which starts "They laughed at me when I sat down at the piano...." has more profound effect than simply "Impress yr friends by playing piano" because everyone can think of skills they wished they could master, or times when people laughed at them when they tried something. But they have to be positive stories - avoid negative ones because good chance your name will get associated with the wrong message.
Fundraiser
Charity running golf tournament. Far better to offer a million-dollar prize for hole-in-one than to offer 5 $1000 prizes for getting closest to the hole. The big prize will get many more punters, and insurance against big payout will be less than $5000. The insurer will set the rules to minimize chance of payout (eg run elimination rounds and only offer big prize when down to last 12 players)
It's not value of what you get, it's that something positive happened to you. So ideally you provide a small positive surprise at the same time as display the brand. Ideally provide sample in a situation not already swamped with other samples, and train the host to mention the name of the brand at same time as presents it. Zappos.com became online success partly by surprising customers with overnight delivery after they'd ordered
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