Have you ever had an overly logical “moment” (or perhaps overly logical client)?
Two left brains?
I recently had a client who I swore had two left brains. This incredibly smart client was very good at “brain twisters”. His team would go into “brain jam” sessions to untangle and resolve complex issues. Logic was their natural habitat.
And while logical thinking served them well in their consulting engagements, it was detracting from their marketing message and their brand image.
I knew this client would need to understand the logic about what I was going to recommend to them (which was more emotional engagement). So I turned to Parick Renvoise and Christophe Morin, who do an excellent job of explaining the latest consumer brain science in their easy-to-read book, “Neuromarketing, Understanding the ‘Buy Buttons’ in Your Customer’s Brain.”
I routinely recommend this book to my left-brain-dominate clients because it gives them the logic behind employing emotionally engaging approaches to their brand identity and marketing communications. Once they get the logic, it’s easier for them to make changes in their marketing.
The book is based on the fundamental principle that the oldest part of the human brain, the primal or “reptile” brain, has the ultimate “veto” power in buying decisions and therefore it should be the marketer’s PRIORITY audience.
Morin and Renvoise outline six key things our primal brains respond best to:
1. Self-centeredness | The primal brain is wired for self-preservation so it’s always on the lookout for “what’s in it for me?” So, your marketing needs to be buyer-centered, not seller-centered.
2. Contrast is your friend| Speaking in high contrast terms, not shades of grey, is more readily understood by the primal brain. So high contrast words and ideas are important, like slow vs. fast, broken vs. fixed, before vs. after).
3. Speaking in Tangibles | The primal brain doesn’t easily process abstract concepts. So being more concrete in your ideas helps your message to be understood more quickly.
4. Focusing on beginnings and the endings | The primal brain will have a tendency to pay more attention to the beginning and the end of communications, thus forgetting whatever falls in the middle. So, your opening and closing statements are really the most critical, one engages the other is often a call to action.
5. Being visual | The primal brain is wired to make decisions based on visual input since the optic nerve is directly connected to it. So visuals, or visual words, are very helpful in communicating ideas.
6. Getting emotional | The primal brain has been shown to have electrochemical responses to emotions (i.e. hormones flood our brains) and as a result we actually remember events better when we have experienced them with a strong emotion. Think about those vivid memories or song lyrics that “move” you. So putting emotional triggers in our marketing helps cement our messages in our audiences’ memory.
If you know anyone who is trying to be a steward of more right brain approaches to their marketing, order this gem through Amazon, it’s a bargain at under $15!
