Brand Books: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom (2008)
In an attempt to wean myself from my brand-whorish ways, I'm reading a number of books about branding, marketing, and consumer psychology. I hope to gain a better understanding of why brands have such a strong pull, and thereby to diminish the pull itself. I'll be posting interesting quotations from these books here, for my reference and possibly others' interest.
"This time around, Dr. Montague decided to let the test subjects know whether they were sampling Pepsi or Coke before they tasted it. The result: 75 percent of the respondents claimed to prefer Coke [versus about half or less in the blind taste test]. What's more, Montague also observed a change in the location of their brain activity. In addition to the ventral putamen [which is active when we find tastes appealing], blood flows were now registering in the medial prefrontal cortex, a portion of the brain responsible, among other duties, for higher thinking and discernment. All this indicated to Dr. Montague that two areas in the brain were engaged in a mute tug-of-war between rational and emotional thinking. And during that mini-second of grappling and indecision, the emotions rose up like mutinous soldiers to override respondents' rational preference for Pepsi. And that's the moment Coke won.
All the positive associations the subjects had with Coca-Cola-its history, logo, color, design, and fragrance; their own childhood memories of Coke, Coke's TV and print ads over the years, the sheer, inarguable, ineluctable, emotional Coke-ness of the brand-beat back their rational, natural preference for the taste of Pepsi. Why? Because emotions are the way in which our brains encode things of value, and a brand that engages us emotionally-think Apple, Harley-Davidson, and L'Oréal, just for starters-will win every single time." (p. 26-27)
"Less extreme cases of brand obsession typically take root in adolescence and even earlier. If children experience social difficulties in school, studies have shown they're far more likely to become preoccupied with collecting. Collecting something-whether it's coins, stamps, leaves, Pokémon cards, or Beanie Babies-gives children a sense of mastery, completion, and control, while at the same time raising their self-esteem, elevating their status, and just maybe even compensating for earlier years of social difficulty." (p. 105)
"Most religions celebrate a sense of grandeur, as well (although a few emphasize austerity). Have you ever paid a visit to the Vatican? Among the vaulted ceilings and beautiful frescoes, the rich tapestries, furniture and paintings, one comes away with the realization that all of us are mere mortals, dwarfed by something far greater than ourselves. Preserving this sense of grandeur is so important, in fact, that no building in Rome is permitted to be higher than St. Peter's Cathedral. Think of the splendor of the Temple of the Golden Buddha in Bangkok, adorned with a nearly eleven-foot-tall Buddha. Made from solid gold, it weighs over two-and-a-half tons and is valued at nearly $200 million. Many companies similarly work to inspire feelings of awe and wonderment, from the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas to Dubai's extraordinary (and extraordinarily weird-looking) Hotel Burj Al Arab, which seems to sit angled in the waters like a spaceship that's just toppled to earth. In fact, just think of any number of luxury brands-the Louis Vuitton flagship store in Paris, Prada's flagship store in Tokyo, Apple's flagship stores in New York and Chicago. All marketed to stir up notions of grandeur." (p. 115-116)
"Ritual, superstition, religion-whether we're aware of it or not, all these factors contribute to what we think about when we buy. In fact, as the results of our brain-scan study would show, the most successful products are the ones that have the most in common with religion. Take Apple, for example, one of the most popular-and profitable-brands around.
I'll never forget the Apple Macromedia conference I attended in the mid-nineties. Sitting in a packed convention center in San Francisco among ten thousand cheering fans, I was surprised when Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO, ambled out onstage, wearing his usual monkish turtleneck, and announced that Apple was going to discontinue its Newton brand of handheld computers. Jobs then dramatically hurled a Newton into a garbage can a few feet away to punctuate his decision. Newton was done. Cooked.
In fury and desperation, the man next to me pulled out his own Newton, threw it to the foor, and began furiously stomping on it. On the other side of me, a middle-aged man had begun to weep. Chaos was erupting in the Moscone Center! It was as though Jobs had announced that there would be no Second Coming after all. It occurred to me suddenly-as it would again, years later, when I paid a visit to the temple-like Apple store in midtown Manhattan and stood in awe as a slant of mid-morning light streamed in through the clear glass, beaming off the Bethlehem-star-like Apple logo suspended by filament from the ceiling-that this wasn't any ordinary product demonstration. For its millions of fervent constituents, Apple wasn't just a brand, it was a religion." (p. 120-121)
[The above passage-ironically, given Apple's famous Super Bowl ad-reminds me eerily of Nineteen Eighty-Four's doublethink, and in particular a scene from the novel in which an entire crowd of people simultaneously changes their idea of which country they are at war with.]
"To sum up, our research showed that the emotions we (at least those of us who consider ourselves devout) experience when we are exposed to iPods, Guinness, and Ferrari sports cars are similar to the emotions generated by religious symbols such as crosses, rosary beads, Mother Teresa, the Virgin Mary, and the Bible. In fact, the reactions [i.e. patterns of brain activity] in our volunteers to the brands and religious icons were not just similar, they were almost identical. When these subjects viewed emotionally weaker brands, however, completely different areas of their brains were activated, suggesting that weaker brands didn't evoke the same associations." (p. 125-126)
"No matter how old you are, if you take a whiff of Johnson & Johnson's Baby Powder, chances are good that all those primal childhood associations will be reignited in your memory. Being fed by your mother. What it felt like to be held in her arms. These kinds of associations are why some companies use the scent of vanilla-which is found in breast milk (and, not coincidentally, is the most popular scent in the United States)-in their products. Why do you think Coca-Cola chose to roll out Coca-Cola Vanilla and Black Cherry Vanilla Coke lines over any other variety of flavors they could have created? In fact, the scent of vanilla is so appealing, one experiment carried out in a local clothing store in the Pacific Northwest showed that when 'feminine scents' such as vanilla were sprayed in the women's clothing sections, sales of female apparel actually doubled." (p. 146-147)
"Neuroscientists have even studied how our brains make decisions about how much we're willing to pay for a product. When subjects view luxury products such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci being sold at full price, both the nucleus accumbens and the anterior cingulate light up, showing the pleasure of anticipatory reward mixed with the conflict about buying such an expensive doodad. But when consumers are shown the same products priced at a significant discount, the 'conflict' signal decreases as the reward activation simultaneously goes up." (p. 196-197)
"But perhaps the biggest lesson companies have learned from neuromarketing is that traditional research methods, like asking consumers why they buy a product, only get at a minuscule part of the brain processes that underlie decision-making. Most of us can't really say, 'I bought that Louis Vuitton bag because it appealed to my sense of vanity, and I want my friends to know I can afford a $500 purse, too,' or 'I bought that Ralph Lauren shirt because I want to be perceived as an easygoing prepster who doesn't have to work, even though all my credit cards are maxed out.' As we have seen again and again, most of our buying decisions aren't remotely conscious. Our brain makes the decision and most of the time we aren't even aware of it." (p. 198-199)
[And no, in fact, I hadn't read that last passage before I wrote my last entry about Ralph Lauren.]
"This time around, Dr. Montague decided to let the test subjects know whether they were sampling Pepsi or Coke before they tasted it. The result: 75 percent of the respondents claimed to prefer Coke [versus about half or less in the blind taste test]. What's more, Montague also observed a change in the location of their brain activity. In addition to the ventral putamen [which is active when we find tastes appealing], blood flows were now registering in the medial prefrontal cortex, a portion of the brain responsible, among other duties, for higher thinking and discernment. All this indicated to Dr. Montague that two areas in the brain were engaged in a mute tug-of-war between rational and emotional thinking. And during that mini-second of grappling and indecision, the emotions rose up like mutinous soldiers to override respondents' rational preference for Pepsi. And that's the moment Coke won.
All the positive associations the subjects had with Coca-Cola-its history, logo, color, design, and fragrance; their own childhood memories of Coke, Coke's TV and print ads over the years, the sheer, inarguable, ineluctable, emotional Coke-ness of the brand-beat back their rational, natural preference for the taste of Pepsi. Why? Because emotions are the way in which our brains encode things of value, and a brand that engages us emotionally-think Apple, Harley-Davidson, and L'Oréal, just for starters-will win every single time." (p. 26-27)
"Less extreme cases of brand obsession typically take root in adolescence and even earlier. If children experience social difficulties in school, studies have shown they're far more likely to become preoccupied with collecting. Collecting something-whether it's coins, stamps, leaves, Pokémon cards, or Beanie Babies-gives children a sense of mastery, completion, and control, while at the same time raising their self-esteem, elevating their status, and just maybe even compensating for earlier years of social difficulty." (p. 105)
"Most religions celebrate a sense of grandeur, as well (although a few emphasize austerity). Have you ever paid a visit to the Vatican? Among the vaulted ceilings and beautiful frescoes, the rich tapestries, furniture and paintings, one comes away with the realization that all of us are mere mortals, dwarfed by something far greater than ourselves. Preserving this sense of grandeur is so important, in fact, that no building in Rome is permitted to be higher than St. Peter's Cathedral. Think of the splendor of the Temple of the Golden Buddha in Bangkok, adorned with a nearly eleven-foot-tall Buddha. Made from solid gold, it weighs over two-and-a-half tons and is valued at nearly $200 million. Many companies similarly work to inspire feelings of awe and wonderment, from the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas to Dubai's extraordinary (and extraordinarily weird-looking) Hotel Burj Al Arab, which seems to sit angled in the waters like a spaceship that's just toppled to earth. In fact, just think of any number of luxury brands-the Louis Vuitton flagship store in Paris, Prada's flagship store in Tokyo, Apple's flagship stores in New York and Chicago. All marketed to stir up notions of grandeur." (p. 115-116)
"Ritual, superstition, religion-whether we're aware of it or not, all these factors contribute to what we think about when we buy. In fact, as the results of our brain-scan study would show, the most successful products are the ones that have the most in common with religion. Take Apple, for example, one of the most popular-and profitable-brands around.
I'll never forget the Apple Macromedia conference I attended in the mid-nineties. Sitting in a packed convention center in San Francisco among ten thousand cheering fans, I was surprised when Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO, ambled out onstage, wearing his usual monkish turtleneck, and announced that Apple was going to discontinue its Newton brand of handheld computers. Jobs then dramatically hurled a Newton into a garbage can a few feet away to punctuate his decision. Newton was done. Cooked.
In fury and desperation, the man next to me pulled out his own Newton, threw it to the foor, and began furiously stomping on it. On the other side of me, a middle-aged man had begun to weep. Chaos was erupting in the Moscone Center! It was as though Jobs had announced that there would be no Second Coming after all. It occurred to me suddenly-as it would again, years later, when I paid a visit to the temple-like Apple store in midtown Manhattan and stood in awe as a slant of mid-morning light streamed in through the clear glass, beaming off the Bethlehem-star-like Apple logo suspended by filament from the ceiling-that this wasn't any ordinary product demonstration. For its millions of fervent constituents, Apple wasn't just a brand, it was a religion." (p. 120-121)
[The above passage-ironically, given Apple's famous Super Bowl ad-reminds me eerily of Nineteen Eighty-Four's doublethink, and in particular a scene from the novel in which an entire crowd of people simultaneously changes their idea of which country they are at war with.]
"To sum up, our research showed that the emotions we (at least those of us who consider ourselves devout) experience when we are exposed to iPods, Guinness, and Ferrari sports cars are similar to the emotions generated by religious symbols such as crosses, rosary beads, Mother Teresa, the Virgin Mary, and the Bible. In fact, the reactions [i.e. patterns of brain activity] in our volunteers to the brands and religious icons were not just similar, they were almost identical. When these subjects viewed emotionally weaker brands, however, completely different areas of their brains were activated, suggesting that weaker brands didn't evoke the same associations." (p. 125-126)
"No matter how old you are, if you take a whiff of Johnson & Johnson's Baby Powder, chances are good that all those primal childhood associations will be reignited in your memory. Being fed by your mother. What it felt like to be held in her arms. These kinds of associations are why some companies use the scent of vanilla-which is found in breast milk (and, not coincidentally, is the most popular scent in the United States)-in their products. Why do you think Coca-Cola chose to roll out Coca-Cola Vanilla and Black Cherry Vanilla Coke lines over any other variety of flavors they could have created? In fact, the scent of vanilla is so appealing, one experiment carried out in a local clothing store in the Pacific Northwest showed that when 'feminine scents' such as vanilla were sprayed in the women's clothing sections, sales of female apparel actually doubled." (p. 146-147)
"Neuroscientists have even studied how our brains make decisions about how much we're willing to pay for a product. When subjects view luxury products such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci being sold at full price, both the nucleus accumbens and the anterior cingulate light up, showing the pleasure of anticipatory reward mixed with the conflict about buying such an expensive doodad. But when consumers are shown the same products priced at a significant discount, the 'conflict' signal decreases as the reward activation simultaneously goes up." (p. 196-197)
"But perhaps the biggest lesson companies have learned from neuromarketing is that traditional research methods, like asking consumers why they buy a product, only get at a minuscule part of the brain processes that underlie decision-making. Most of us can't really say, 'I bought that Louis Vuitton bag because it appealed to my sense of vanity, and I want my friends to know I can afford a $500 purse, too,' or 'I bought that Ralph Lauren shirt because I want to be perceived as an easygoing prepster who doesn't have to work, even though all my credit cards are maxed out.' As we have seen again and again, most of our buying decisions aren't remotely conscious. Our brain makes the decision and most of the time we aren't even aware of it." (p. 198-199)
[And no, in fact, I hadn't read that last passage before I wrote my last entry about Ralph Lauren.]