Editor’s Note: While this article is consumer marketing-focused, it is increasingly believed that lessons culled from the world of consumer marketing can be applied to B2B marketing as well. There are some nuggets of wisdom for B2B marketers in this article.
Most brand choices are made instinctively, without much thought. Scientists have discovered that 95% of all choices we make are instantaneous, requiring little or no deliberation. Daniel Kahneman, the famous Princeton psychologist who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the Prospect Theory, calls this the brain’s System 1 process.
System 1 choices are made quickly and effortlessly using “gutfeel.” This revelation may be painful for marketers schooled to believe otherwise. They were told that consumers first rationally evaluate competitive product differences, and that process then triggers certain feelings within them and finally they make a choice through a combination of functional and emotional factors. Kahneman’s discoveries imply that the game actually is over within microseconds, long before that train of thought leaves the station.
Here’s what happens: Throughout our lives as we undergo a range of experiences, our brain sits there not only choosing, but also watching and learning. The latter come in handy when similar (not necessarily identical) choices must be made in the future.
For example, our brain may make the following two rules: “keep things simple” or “be happy with what you have.” In behavioral science, these two specific premises are respectively referred to as the “Occam’s Razor bias” – meaning that given two solutions to a problem, we humans gravitate to the simpler answer; and “loss-aversion bias” – or that people are more sensitive to what they stand to lose versus what they could gain. Behavioral economists call learnings like these cognitive biases because, in certain circumstances, they result in us making sub-optimal decisions.
But hey, most of the time, these principles serve us well and we use them extensively to make instant choices. These rules are part of our cognitive wisdom or belief system, and they’re hard to change. Marketers are well advised to go with the flow and design their brand positioning around these beliefs and not against them.
Thus, when a brand like Staples comes along with its big red button and tells us that it’s the “easy button,” we get it: Staples is the simple and snap answer, the Occam’s Razor solution, to our office supplies problems. It certainly beats doing a comparative spreadsheet on the prices of hanging file folders!
So, what kind of beliefs and biases should marketers build their brands around? Simple! Use the following four vectors of what’s called “cognitive ease” in designing your brand message:
- Make your brand feel familiar: Brands that are aligned to things that we know well will feel familiar and thus preferable. ACT II became the leading brand in the popcorn category by claiming its microwaved kernels were just like their movie theater cousin. Everybody already knows and loves that experience, don’t they? So, by anchoring their product to the familiar theater experience, ConAgra used the well-known “anchoring bias” to make their product a superstar.
- Make your brand feel true: When a brand feels authentic to us, we prefer it. RxBar used what I called the “transparency effect” to make its breakfast bar feel honest and true. Look at the label for their Chocolate Sea Salt bar, for instance. It says right there — 3 Egg Whites, 6 Almonds, 4 Cashews, 2 Dates and… “No B.S.” In this age of know what you eat, doesn’t that tiny list tell you all there is to know about what’s inside? That’s why the company went from the kitchen counter of a fledgling entrepreneur to a $600 million sale to Kelloggs in just four years!
- Make your brand feel good to me: Brands that make you feel good about the choices you make in turn come to be preferred by you. Call it positive reinforcement if you will. Economists give this type of cognitive bias the term “choice supportive bias.” When Humira, Abbvie’s $20 billion blockbuster drug for rheumatoid arthritis was first launched, its marketers took care to emphasize not what the drug could do (despite being arguably miraculous), but what the physician could do with it in its line “Look what you can do with Humira!” After all, it was more important to support the great choice the doctor was making by prescribing Humira.
- Make your brand the easy choice: Making decisions is stressful. So this brand strategy isn’t about arguing that your brand is convenient, which you can do, say, by having a faster product or easier (1-click) buying process. Rather, it’s about taking the stress out of choice. StitchFix recognized that, for many people, figuring out what kind of clothes they’ll look good in is anxiety laden. So, using a combination of an AI model and actual humans, they pick the clothes that will look great on you. You’ll get a new box of fashions at a frequency and style that suits you, and if you don’t like it, you can send it back. Why sweat it? StitchFix is the favored Occams razor choice.
Luckily, psychologists and behavioral economists have already cataloged well over one-hundred cognitive biases that are commonly seen in populations across the world. That treasure trove is a good place for brand marketers to go and try on ideas for size when designing or repositioning brands. After all, why reinvent the wheel?
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