One of the greatest books on advertising gives away an incredible reason to build your brand. But because the “secret” is only described in one short paragraph, is mostly missed.
“They are tasting images” - David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising Pg 15)
Ah! What a wonderful revelation. We don’t taste products we taste the image of that product. We taste the brand.
But until now in marketing we have not had the chance to prove this to be true. Simple experiments showed that people did not know the difference between things but that was not enough for skeptics who had no interest in building their brand. Today science opens a new door to re introduce the idea of “tasting images”
Let me introduced you to Read Montague, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, Who has been contemplating the mysteries of life: for instance, the Pepsi Challenge. Remember the series of TV commercials from the 70's and 80's that pitted Coke against Pepsi? A blind taste test was setup. People where asked to taste to Colas. Pepsi was usually the winner.
Why then does Coke appeal so strongly to so many people if it didn't taste any better?
Montague set to work looking for a scientifically convincing answer. He assembled a group of test subjects and, while monitoring their brain activity with an M.R.I. machine, recreated the Pepsi Challenge. His results confirmed those of the TV campaign: Pepsi tended to produce a stronger response than Coke in the brain's ventral putamen, a region thought to process feelings of reward. (Monkeys, for instance, exhibit activity in the ventral putamen when they receive food for completing a task.) Indeed, in people who preferred Pepsi, the ventral putamen was five times more active when drinking Pepsi than that of Coke fans when drinking Coke.
Things that make you go hmmm….Pepsi does taste better.
But in the real world, of course, taste is not everything. So Montague tried to gauge the appeal of Coke's image, its ''brand influence,'' by repeating the experiment with a small variation: this time, he announced which of the sample tastes were Coke. The outcome was remarkable: almost all the subjects said they preferred Coke. What's more, the brain activity of the subjects was now different. There was also activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that scientists say governs high-level cognitive powers. Apparently, the subjects were meditating in a more sophisticated way on the taste of Coke, allowing memories and other impressions of the drink -- in a word, its brand -- to shape their preference.
Pepsi, crucially, couldn't achieve the same effect. When Montague reversed the situation, announcing which tastes were of Pepsi, far fewer of the subjects said they preferred Pepsi. Montague was impressed: he had demonstrated, with a fair degree of neuroscientific precision, the special power of Coke's brand to override our taste buds.
People where “tasting images.”
Amazing! The brand is what lives in the brain of your customer.
What images do your customers taste when they think of your brand?
Remember Brands are mental images. The power to build them is the power to live in your customer’s brain. Not a bad place to be in a crowded world.
Onward.
