Brand impact in the mind

 
Neuromarketing II Brands are created in the mind. The well-known neuropsychologists Christian Scheier and Dirk Held explain how and why in their new book. 
Pepsi has a problem. Although the sweet drink comes out on top in blind taste tests, Coca-Cola sells much better. The Pepsi test shows that it is not the palate that is the decisive selling point, but the brand. Christian Scheier and Dirk Held get to the bottom of such brand phenomena in their new book "What makes brands successful". Unlike many authors before them, they do not describe the symptoms of influential brands, but analyze the complex processes in the mind. With the help of findings from brain research and psychology, they attempt to unravel the mystery of strong brands. Decisions are unconsciousScheier and Held are not neuroscientists who use colorful pictures to explain the thinking apparatus and how it works. They outlined this to some extent in their last book "How advertising works". In the follow-up work, the authors describe the specific processes and their effect on branding in the mind. The focus here is on the subconscious. According to Scheier and Held, what we do and don't do has little to do with rational decisions. Over 95 percent of our purchasing decisions are made unconsciously. The central drivers of this "implicit" decision-making system are reward and meaning. The appeal of a brand results from their interplay. In principle, Scheier and Held are not revealing anything new here. However, the authors have managed to present the complex subject matter in comprehensible models. Scheier/Held describe what successful advertisers have been doing intuitively for a long time with the help of many interesting practical examples.
Conclusion: At the end of the day, advertising only has to do one thing: sell. To what extent the new book helps advertisers to do this is for the reader to judge. Anyone who has read the last book "How advertising works" can expect little additional information. However, the new book is certainly not one of the many hundreds of other books that repeatedly explain the added value of brands and fall back on meaningless formulas.
Christian Lüscher
 
See also:
Farewell to illusions
What makes brands successful - neuropsychology in brand management. By Christian Scheier and Dirk Held. Haufe Verlag, 230 pages, Fr. 49.90.

 
 

A young discipline Neuromarketing is a young branch of research
which has become more popular thanks to advances in brain research over the last ten years. Neuromarketing combines classic market and consumer behavior with neuroscientific research. This has at least partially invalidated the homo oeconomicus model (WW March 14, 2007, "Werbe-Operation am offenen Hirn"). You can read about the current state of research in the article "Abschied von den Illusionen
" by Werner Fuchs.