OUR ALIBI

WHY DID YOU JUST CLICK ON THIS SECTION OF OUR WEBSITE?

Was it the heading that made you wonder what this bit’s all about? Have you seen enough of the rest of the site and were sufficiently intrigued to want to know a bit more? Or maybe you’ve just arrived and clicked on this section without thinking about it too much. Whatever the reason that’s going through your mind right now, the chances are you just felt like clicking on it. And you’re now justifying that decision. This is pretty much how our brains work when we make any decision, including which brands we choose.

WE FEEL FIRST, THEN WE THINK.

Of course we all like to think the opposite is true - that we’re totally rational beings when it comes to making decisions. And so are consumers - because this is what they say in research groups. Hence brand building focuses on finding rational insights and developing propositions against these. Ask any marketer how important emotion is in building brands and the reply is usually along the lines that an emotional benefit is a nice-to-have-but-not-necessary-to-have addition to a rational product benefit. But empirical scientific research shows that emotion is much more fundamental than this in human decision-making and therefore in building competitive advantage. New insights have emerged in the areas of psychology, neuroscience and social anthropology that point to a growing consensus that human decision-making is emotionally driven.

OUR BRAINS ARE PRIMARILY WIRED FOR EMOTION.

Because the emotional area of the brain - the Limbic System is larger than the rational area – the Prefrontal Cortex our brains process more emotional activity than rational (1). And signals that run from the emotional brain to the rational brain outnumber signals running in the opposite direction by a factor of ten to one (2).

BREAKTHROUGHS IN NEUROSCIENCE HAVE CONFIRMED THAT PEOPLE ARE PRIMARILY EMOTIONAL DECISION-MAKERS

Leading neuroscientist Antonio Damasio studied people with brain injuries that had damaged the part of the brain where emotions are generated. In all other respects these people were normal - they just lost the ability to feel emotions. Damasio found that because the emotional centres were damaged, these people could no longer make decisions. He argued that the concept of left-brain/right-brain thinking is wrong, contending that emotion is in the driver’s seat when making decisions (3).

“A man makes a decision for two reasons – the good reason and the real reason.” - JP Morgan

We decide with our hearts and then rationalise our decision with our heads. At the root of why we do this, lies what French psychologist G. Clotaire Rapaille calls the “Intellectual Alibi” - the “good reason”.

THIS HAS PROFOUND IMPLICATIONS FOR MARKETING.

Whilst consumers tell researchers the reasons they prefer one brand to another, what businesses are building growth strategies around are actually their “Intellectual Alibis”. The real reason people make brand choices – the deep-seated emotional truth - is being largely overlooked. The power of emotion in driving brand choice is not about consumers; it’s about people. Emotion is at the root of all human behaviour. To truly influence people’s purchase intent emotion needs to sit right at the heart of your strategy. This isn’t about making nice ads, it’s much more fundamental than that. If you can make your brand more emotive, and if you can leverage that emotion, it will give you the ultimate competitive advantage. And you won’t need an alibi.

(1) Baker 2006
(2) Hawkins and Bakerslee 2004
(3) Damasio “Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain” 1994