Thinking Beyond Science

It’s fair to state that from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep, we interact with hundreds of brands, whether we realize it or not. We make decisions about brands almost every other hour during the course of a normal day.

From the second we turn on our phones in the morning, check Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook notifications and pick an app to hail a taxi to get to work, to the very place we choose to work at, everything is all about brands. We are constantly making choices between the brands we associate ourselves with, consciously or unconsciously. Right from very early on— why we pick one school over another for our kids, the locality we choose to buy an apartment in, the kind of car we drive, the clothes we wear, the movies or television shows we watch, the celebrities we adore, the political parties we support, the places we eat at, the kind of spouse we seek-all of these decisions boil down to us preferring one brand over another.

But what is branding? Branding goes beyond just a logo or a graphic element. When we think about a brand, it encapsulates the sum total of the entire customer experience: everything from the logo, the website, the product or service use experience to the social media experiences, the way the firm answers the phone, the after-sales service, the word-of-mouth impressions and the way customers experience its employees— all of this as it exists in the mind of the customer.

In short, the brand is the way a customer perceives the product and/or the firm. It is the lived experience of the customer. It is critical to be aware of the customers’ brand experience and have a plan to create the brand experience that the firm wants to present.

A brand is something that empowers a company enough to establish a presence in the minds of consumers. It enables recognition, which in turn familiarizes the consumer with the brand, thereby making it an easier, safer and almost automatic choice.

This familiarity translates into a biased preference towards the brand. Neurally, this happens because the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a part in our brain engaged in decision-making, responds to this preference by associating the preferred brand  with a higher reward value, which in turn directs our decision towards the said brand. Thinking about the brand, choosing the brand, talking about the brand or using the brand leads to higher levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain; which neurotransmitter depends on the positioning of the brand. In fact, a study found that individuals processed brand information even before they started the decision-making process! Consistent branding is capable of putting the consumer’s mind at ease during a brand interaction by alleviating the perceived risk.

Source : Brands and the Brain: How to Use Neuroscience to Create Impactful Brands by Arvind Sahay

Good Reads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60693959-brands-and-the-brain