I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.
—Vincent van Gogh
IN 1955 SHIRLEY POLYCOFF JOINED AD GIANT FOOTE, CONE & Belding to work on the newly acquired Clairol account, becoming the lone woman writer at the agency in a male-dominated industry. Driven by her spunky determination and intuitive understanding of the female market, and despite all the historical disadvantages of being a woman, Polycoff had an advantage in her field, which almost exclusively targeted women, who were the traditional purchasing agents of the times. Her assignment was for Clairol’s hair color line. Her job was to “make it respectable,” removing the stigma that had long tainted the idea of dying one’s hair. Perhaps she understood this because of her own experience.
When Polycoff reached her teens, she became distraught as her blond hair, what she viewed as her only physical distinction from her attractive raven-haired sisters, began to darken. This prompted her to do what only women who were considered “fast” back then would do. She went to a local hairdresser and asked to have it lightened so that the front would match the back. Little did she know that this small act of defiance would inspire her to become a role model for several generations of women.
In 1956 Polycoff penned the titillating ad slogan, “Does she . . . or doesn’t she?” a campaign that would forever shift the fashion sensibilities of American women.1 At first, obtuse executives at Life magazine refused to run the suggestive print ad, concerned over what could be perceived as its smutty connotations. Polykoff challenged them, suggesting they survey the women around their office to see if they found any offense in the statement. She knew what most advertisers failed to see, and still fail to consider: the inner workings of the human mind. She knew that no decent lady in the conservative 1950s would ever admit to the off-color overtones of the risqué line. She was right. The women polled reported no such offense, keeping the unstated implications to the confines of their own imaginations. So the magazine’s executives decided to run the ad and, according to Polycoff, “Everybody got rich.”
Almost overnight the slogan would become a national catch-phrase, helping to transform hair coloring from an exotic, low-class aberrance to a cultural norm, accepted and flaunted by many. The incidence of hair coloring skyrocketed from 7 percent to about half of all American women within a decade. And sales of Clairol soared, going from 25 million to 200 million, accounting for more than half the total of hair color sales, a market share dominance that endures today with industry sales in excess of 1 billion.2
Polycoff’s feminine intuition paid huge dividends in the face of male-minded, overly rational resistance because of her deep and intrinsic understanding of the art of persuasion. Before anyone considers doing something out in the real world, they often first do so inside the private domain of their own mind. The imagination drives how we perceive something, particularly when faced with such a rebelliously suggestive phrase as “Does she . . . or doesn’t she?”
It would take more than thirty years before another advertising slogan would lead the imagination and change behavior on such a grand scale. This would come in the form of an eight-letter phrase that would go on to become one of the most lauded and influential campaigns in advertising history.3 Nike’s “Just do it” suggestively stimulated people to take action across the globe while simultaneously elevating the brand to become the world’s largest sporting goods manufacturer. The campaign that spawned the phrase gave rise to the Nike decade, boosting Nike’s share of the domestic sport-shoe business from 18 percent to 43 percent, from 877 million in worldwide sales to 9.2 billion in the ten years between 1988 and 1998.4
Like “Does she . . . or doesn’t she?” the effectiveness of “Just do it” was due to its ability to lead the imagination by being artfully vague. Its creator, Dan Wieden, co-founder of Nike’s ad agency Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Oregon, had come up with the phrase in the middle of the night after remembering the final words of convicted killer Gary Gilmore, who upon his execution said, “Let’s do it.”5 From that small and dark recollection, Wieden conceived and inspired an entire movement. The open-ended suggestion went on to convince everyone from the fair-weather walker to the world-class winner that they could push through their own uncertainties and accomplish whatever goal they might hold. Nike reported receiving letters from people who confided that the phrase had driven them to do everything from leave an abusive husband to accomplish a heroic rescue from a burning building.6 Had the slogan instructed people to “Just get off your ass and go jogging,” it would have been summarily rejected. By leaving the “it” to people’s imagination, the phrase inspired their dreams and opened their wallets.
Runner’s World publisher George Hirsch summarized the strength of the line to move people: “The Nike ‘Just do it’ slogan gains new power for us all. This is really advertising that comes from the heart and goes straight to the heart and the gut.”7
Great copywriters like Wieden and Polycoff, whose poetic lines stimulated action for so many, know something that escapes the average individual. They intuitively understand the psyche in a way that has long eluded scientists, allowing them to be guided by their unconscious hunches and not deductive rigors. Wieden and Polykoff had intuited the rules of the persuasion game before science could. Freud conceded many decades ago: “Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me. Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.”8
Freud yearned to learn what scientists now know. Today, neuro-science is providing access to the viscerally perceptive streams of the poets and persuaders, explaining their gifts through two inexorable cognitive truths of humanity. First, the brain doesn’t always clearly differentiate between something real and something imagined.9 Our imagination and our perception of the real world are closely linked since both functions engage the same neural circuitry. Numerous scientific studies confirm that visualization and mental imagery enhances actual physical performance,10 demonstrating the very real benefits of mental rehearsal. From playing sports, to succeeding in business, to buying the car of your dreams,11 behavior change therapists have learned that guided imagery of future goals is often greatly enhanced through the process of mental rehearsal. If you can get someone to imagine something vividly enough, you are well on your way to making the suggestion real.
Advertising that fires up our imagination in the direction of our intended goals acts as an exercise in this form of mental rehearsal. The simple process of imagining makes us more likely to buy because we have gone through the motions quite literally in our own minds. Practice does indeed make perfect.
Second, allowing people to go inside their own minds, and to use their imaginations, transforms the message from a universal one to a uniquely personal concept, prompting individuals to perceive the message as their own idea and not an attempt at external manipulation. Much in the same way that we often believe that “the book is better than the movie,” when we create our own narrative, replete with characters, scenery, and images of our creation, we identify more strongly with the story and what is being said. The more people feel and relate to the experience on a personal level, the greater their commitment to buy the brand. This is the essence of intrinsic motivation and the opposite of external manipulation. We do it because we want to do it, not because someone else told us.
Imagination is the primary device of all great persuaders and inspirational leaders. Martin Luther King Jr., the most prolific proponent of the Civil Rights movement, brilliantly employed this prime directive of influence and, in turn, changed the course of an entire nation. Through his famous “I have a dream” speech, King rallied Americans for change: socially, legally, politically, and culturally. Those words would become the most memorable and productive moment in his pursuit to end segregation and prohibit discrimination. By encouraging all people to look within themselves, he allowed them to find a place of common vision and a hope for a better future.
The goal of the marketing communication should be to transport people to a destination of their own making, which in turn should lead them to the destination of the brand itself, an approach exemplified by the classic and effective ad for the moisturizing bath foam Calgon. A distressed and harried mom exclaims, “Calgon, take me away,” while floating in her bathtub—inside a metaphorical bubble to her unknown destination of choice. The imagination takes the viewer away, while presumably the desire for that outcome takes her to a grocery store to buy some Calgon.
Imagination is the process of forming mental images. Great writers succeed not just because of the words, but also because of the pictures and feelings attached to the text. This is why images can often be more powerful than words. They are the language of the unconscious, highlighting the truth to the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” If you want proof of this human truth look no further than the campaign that propelled the Apple iPod to become the world’s top-selling MP3 player, an effort driven by the brilliant art direction of the ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day in Los Angeles. In October 2003 Apple introduced their outdoor “Silhouettes” campaign to Los Angeles, following it with a national television and print effort. The imagery of the ads was strikingly simple yet convincingly animated: black silhouettes of people who were sharply contrasted by white iPods and colorful, bold backgrounds. The silhouetted characters were shown listening and dancing to their favorite music. The only word in the ad was the product name “iPod” next to the Apple logo. Despite analysts’ predictions of only 400 million, the “Silhouettes” campaign helped Apple achieve an incredible 1.2 billion in net sales during the first quarter of 2005 alone, accounting for nearly 90 percent of category share,12 and winning the Grand Effie award in 2005.
By supplanting real people with the darkened silhouettes, prospects were empowered to project themselves and their identity into the experience, giving them the opportunity to find their own meaning and relevance. When the mind has the chance to fill in the blank, it does so in uniquely stimulating and evocative ways, taking with it a personalized message that allows the individual’s personality to shine through. Apple has built a global movement around this concept, creating an identity that is at once its own and that of everyone who owns their products.
The power of concealed and interpretive identity helps explains the overwhelming viral success of our own efforts at Deutsch LA with Volkswagen’s “The Force” television commercial. The Darth Vader mask added an element of mystery and intrigue so that viewers could envision their own mini-Darth, projecting and personalizing their own story through their children and family. Had the spot revealed who the little boy actually was, this ability would have been lost. Deutsch has an agency philosophy that we all adhere to known as, “Human spoken here.” This belief states, “All great stories are built around human truths, no matter what channel they live on. The best songs, the best movies, the best ads let you see yourself in them somehow.”13
Digital technology offers new, imaginative ways to connect personally and powerfully with potential customers in traditional ways like direct marketing. A great example of this comes from a Toronto Porsche dealer who went around some of the Canadian city’s most affluent neighborhoods with a shiny white 911 sports car, a digital camera, and a mobile printer. Taking photographs of the brand new vehicle parked in the driveways of these upscale homes, the dealer printed out custom ads and dropped them into the mail slots. The campaign featured the provocative headline: “It’s closer than you think.” The result was an astonishing 32 percent response rate, which means about a third of these prospects called to schedule a test drive, a staggering improvement over the very low single digit response rates typically deemed successful in traditional direct mail efforts.14
Archaeological evidence suggests that our imaginative abilities evolved about fifty thousand years ago during the Upper Paleolithic era. For the first time in human history, a remarkable set of human singularities emerged, becoming routine parts of our stone-age lives. They showed up in the forms of religion, science, art, language, fashion, music, dance, and advancements in tool use. Humans were exhibiting the skills to be imaginative in everything they encountered, and this unprecedented cognitive capacity has become a defining characteristic of modern humans ever since.15
Imagination gives us the ability to combine dissimilar concepts. The most evolved form of this mental operation is called “double scope blending,” what cognitive scientist Mark Turner refers to as the “engine of human imagination.” Turner explains, “It operates largely behind the scenes. Almost invisibly to consciousness, it choreographs vast networks of conceptual meaning, yielding cognitive products, which, at the conscious level, appear simple.”16
Double scope blending gives us the ability to combine two distinct conceptual worlds into one combined reality. This confers our uniquely human capacity to see ourselves taking on a better life, and it allows us to imagine that such a life might be aided by the benefits of a new brand. As the writer Steven Pressfield eloquently states: “Most of us have two lives. The life we live and the unlived life within us.”17 In today’s market economies, people buy brands because they’re buying into what they wished their lives would become. Imagination is the vehicle that makes it possible for us to understand what that might be like, allowing us to blend two separate realities, not just for purposes of fantasy or amusement but for real change for the better. It is an evolutionarily adaptive process that helps us to succeed in the challenges we encounter in our lives. As Turner puts it, “These blended conceptions are put together for the important purposes such as making real choices.”18 We evolved to be imaginative not only to invent new things but also to help us make better decisions. If marketers don’t tap into our imaginations, they are not taking advantage of the fundamental process by which we make brand choices.
Imagination occurs at the watermark of our metaphorical iceberg, the confluence of the external world and our internal state, the blending of conscious and unconscious. It is very much a necessary part of our everyday existence. As neuroscientist Chris Frith says, “Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality.”19
Imagination is a place of two-way communication between what we are aware of and what lies below the surface. Here the conscious mind is able to eavesdrop on the deeper remote associations of the mind in an effort to actualize new connections unlocking creative solutions to life’s challenges. Conscious thoughts are sent to the unconscious seat of motivation, communicating the words, feelings, or images that we encounter in our daily lives, such as seeing a pair of shoes online, talking with a friend about a ski resort, or watching an ad for the latest dish detergent. These thoughts and ideas insinuate themselves in the immense intelligence of the unconscious mind, which often seeks to realize these suggestions into action. The unconscious communicates back to us in the form of dreams and daydreams, intuitions, hunches, new ideas, and plans, telling us, “Maybe I should buy those shoes” . . . vacation in the Caribbean Islands, or purchase that detergent. There is a neurobiological truth to the spiritual saying “thoughts are things.” Unconscious thoughts become matter when we materialize those thoughts into actions, which can thereby lead us to brand purchases. What we manifest in the physical world often starts out in our minds as nonmaterial intentions. The goal of the marketer is to instill a sense of collective consciousness that turns into the power of mass intention. Coined by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, collective consciousness reflects the unifying force of shared beliefs and attitudes within a society.20 The more people share the same dreams, fantasies, desires, favorable beliefs and attitudes toward your brand, the more likely they will buy it.
When products and services are designed to engage man’s unique capacity for imagination, companies can benefit from one of the most influential of human truths. That’s why we love movies, books, television, theater, spectator sports, and video games. They let us observe, imagine, and create new worlds. When Electronic Arts created the Sims, a life simulation game that empowered people to live vicariously through another character’s life, they tapped into a deep longing of the human imagination. The Sims went on to become the top-selling PC game in history in 2003 with worldwide sales in excess of 6.3 million copies.21 In 2009 with the introduction of Sims 3, the game again topped the worldwide list as the top-selling PC game, making it the most successful launch of a game in the 27-year history of Electronic Arts, and the sixth time in the decade that the Sims led the annual PC chart.22
Our interests in our dream world are even displacing our interests in the real world. This is strongly evident in the widespread increase of fantasy sports leagues. Fantasy sports have existed in obscurity for decades, but with the rise of digital connectivity, their enthusiasts have grown exponentially. According to polls, the industry doubled between 2003 and 2008, from 15 million fantasy players to nearly 30 million. The information in these surveys suggests that many participants in fantasy leagues have an even greater interest in and affinity with the performances of their imaginary teams than in that of their “real” favorite team in the National Football League. If imagination can shift such a powerful allegiance as that of a sports fan, imagine what it could do to the field of marketing.23
When you tell a brand’s story, you are laying the foundation for successful communication, because story telling is at the essence of how humans relate to one another. When George Lucas created the screenplay for Star Wars, he leveraged this truth in the very first words of the script, writing: “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” When we hear a story coming, the depths of our minds open to receive whatever communication is about to be transmitted. That’s because story telling is key to how we think, decide, and behave. As Mark Turner says, “Narrative imagining—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend on it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining. . . . Most of experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories.”24
Our penchant for story telling emerges from the two-part process of decision making. Since our brain is designed to lead with emotion first and logic second, our nature inclines us to tell stories, giving meaning to what our bodies are sensing and feeling at any given moment. In essence, our minds are designed to make up stories about how our bodies are feeling. Our quick and intuitive unconscious mind is automatically reacting to the environment while the conscious mind is fabricating those interactions into logical narratives. It is busy making sense of the experience that is unfolding as we constantly try to understand the world around us. Story telling is not only how we do that but also how we communicate those ideas to others.
As hunter-gatherers, we spent hundreds of thousands of years sitting around the fire telling stories. It is how we related to one another. Unfortunately, many of the ways in which we now do business and communicate are disconnecting us from our story-telling origins. Immersed in our spreadsheets, sales charts, target projections, and Powerpoint presentations, we are removing ourselves from the natural patterns of effective communication. We need to know how to better communicate with our colleagues as well as with our customers. So much of what we do in marketing today depends on our ability to sell a product in such a way that prospects and customers will remember what the brand stands for and why they should care about it. You can’t tell a brand story effectively in a linear, logical Powerpoint presentation, complete with graphs that look more like convoluted eye charts. As the writer Daniel Pink says in his book A Whole New Mind, “Stories are easier to remember because in many ways stories are how we remember.” Because of this we need to make story telling part and parcel of all of our business efforts, internally and externally.
When Mark Hunter joined Deutsch LA as our chief creative officer, he stood on a stage before 400 colleagues eager to meet him for the first time. He didn’t qualify himself. He told a story. Mark recounted his trip to Brussels to present a Euro Effie award. There was one little hitch. He wasn’t just a presenter. He was the co-host of the big, black-tie gala event with a popular Belgian TV personality, and was briskly handed a script “the size of a screenplay with onstage interviews with Flemish and German ad-land bigwigs with names impossible to pronounce.” But Mark went on, thinking, “You only get ridiculous opportunities like this a few times in life,” only to experience yet another glitch, “the one in a million chance that the bloody teleprompter went blank.” But rather than panic, he quipped, “Technology, eh! At least I’m hosting a show, not landing a plane for you!” The screen finally came back up and off he went.
Through his telling tale, Mark had already demonstrated his communication expertise. He instantly established rapport with his new agency as we all empathized with the feeling of being onstage before strangers. He demonstrated authority. He had, after all, been chosen to host a prominent industry event awarding ad effectiveness. He displayed competency, unflappably handling adversity and coming through in the clutch. Did he do this all by design? Of course not, he was just telling a charming story, a skill that great creative leaders intuitively share.
Warren Buffet is not only one of the most influential business leaders and one of the richest men in the world; he is also a master storyteller. When he was once asked what his worst investment was, his response was evocative and ironic. He tells the story of his first large investment, which involved the purchase of his namesake holding company, Berkshire Hathaway. Buffet said, “We went into a terrible business because it was cheap. It’s what I refer to as the ‘used cigar butt’ approach to investing. You see this cigar butt down there, it’s soggy and terrible, but there’s one puff left, and it’s free. That’s what Berkshire was when we bought it—it was selling below working capital—but it was a terrible, terrible mistake.” While many business leaders will bore you with easily forgotten financial facts, Buffet doesn’t just tell stories, he sells stories. Creating a sound bite not easily forgotten but easily passed on to others, he provided a multisensory metaphorical handle that you can see, feel, and even taste, invoking deeper imagery and richer associational territory.25
Story telling is the cost of entry in today’s increasingly cluttered branding marketplace; when done right, it helps to spread information and embed messages. For example, one of the enduring attributes of Volkswagen in America is the belief that they’re built to last—perhaps due to the many old Beetles and microbuses still on the road today, or just to the simple fact that German vehicles feel more solid. To bring this insight to life in another one of the Volkswagen commercials created at Deutsch, we showed viewers a child’s birthday party in the backyard of a suburban home. There is no dialogue except for the angry grunts of a determined child as he repeatedly takes a whack at a colorful piñata shaped like an automobile. All to no avail and much to his chagrin, the hanging papier-mâché SUV remains intact while partygoers look on in deadpan disbelief. The piñata-as-metaphor simply hangs there, swaying and spinning, and then slowing to reveal the VW logo. The voiceover announces: “Built like a Volkswagen.” The father grabs the bat and tries his hand in frustration . . . whack after futile whack. This story and the metaphor of an indestructible piñata said more about the brand’s durability and design than any banal message about “sturdy B-pillar construction” or “laser seam welding.” It was the type of ad that people talked about because it was a charming story and not just a set of facts.
By the end of 2011,Volkswagen had achieved record sales in the US on four of its models including the Tiguan, the vehicle featured in the piñata television commercial.26 Volkswagen is on track for their ambitious longer term plan to triple sales in America, assisted by the power of story telling and the magic of metaphor. In 2012, Volkswagen was selected as the CLIO Awards 2012 global advertiser of the year honoring the brand whose global work achieves creative leadership and demonstrates a commitment to innovation in advertising, proof that creative excellence and ad effectiveness are not mutually exclusive. As Luca de Meo, the Global Director of Marketing of Volkswagen Group puts it, “All of the Volkswagen Group advertising for the past year worked to build on the brand’s heritage of telling human stories in a simple and powerful way, and we’re glad that people are connecting with the ads.”27
Symbols are abstract cultural representations of reality. Unlike signs, which are precise and direct, symbols defy literal definition and require emotional interpretation. According to psychoanalyst Carl Jung, a symbol doesn’t have any definition. Instead, it has multiple levels of interpretative nuances that let people discover subjective transcendent meanings and insights. Great brands are symbols, not signs. They must stand for something more than the product itself. As Jung put it, “The sign is always less than the concept it represents, while a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning.”28
Cultures have long used symbols to change the way the world thinks, guiding movements and even altering the course of mankind. Not surprisingly, the most powerful symbols of all are those that embody religious significance, such as the Christian cross, the star of David, or the Muslim star and crescent. These emblems reflect missions that drive people at the highest level of identity and spirit. Humans began using symbols to express their identity about 100,000 years ago. Our ancestors used symbolic adornments such as jewelry, which is believed to represent their affiliation with groups or their social status within groups.29
Today, brands have become the new symbolic ornamentations of social identity and religion-like affiliation. As Mike Sheldon, CEO of Deutsch LA, says, “We look at brands as clubs or, in a way, religions. If you look at some of the most powerful brands in this country—Volkswagen, Nike, Apple—they’re something that people gravitate toward that transcends product and transcends pricing.” Sheldon’s sentiment has anecdotal support from a team of British neuroscientists that scanned the brain of an Apple fanatic and found that the brand was activating the same regions of the brain that religious imagery stimulates in people of religious faith.30 Martin Lindstrom corroborated this finding when his research discovered that when people viewed images associated with strong brands like Apple’s iPod, Guinness, Ferrari, and Harley-Davidson, their brains exhibited the exact same patterns of responses as they did when viewing religious images.31
When a brand borrows equity from other symbols, it is bootstrapping that product to the cultural movement already represented by that emblem. Victorinox, the maker of the Swiss Army knife, is far more recognized by its logo than by its brand name. The logo is unconscious branding at its finest, conferring benefits from its favorable associations with other well-known symbols: the Christian cross, the Swiss flag, and the shield, along with their respective connections to spirit, craftsmanship, and protection. With these rich associations, the logo itself does much of the heavy lifting in the brand’s marketing efforts. Company leader Carl Elsener says that traditionally, “Victorinox was not so much ‘about the marketing,’ and ‘all about the product,’ manufacturing and providing the best knives possible.” This is a luxury you can afford when you have a powerful brand symbol.32
Known primarily for its pocketknives, Victorinox’s business was drastically impacted by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Almost overnight the brand declined 30 percent in sales revenue as airlines forbade knives on planes. But Victorinox would find resilience and strength in its brand as it continued to extend beyond its core knife business to include watches, travel gear, fashion, and fragrance. A previously product- and manufacturing-focused company quickly became brand- and image-focused. In 2009 these new product lines, still displaying the resonant image of the Victorinox logo, represented up to 60 percent of company sales revenue, a huge success in brand diversification and line extension by any stretch of the imagination. And, it accomplished this growth without denigrating the core business, continuing to export knives to over 100 countries on all five continents, commanding an enormous 80 percent market share outside Switzerland, and, as of 2011, producing 34,000 pocket-knives per day.33 When your brand is a powerful symbol, it can be effectively leveraged and extended because it is solidly grounded in the unconscious.
Be as clear on your own mission as you are on that of your customers’ mission. Marketers often think the answer lies in the words of the customer when, truth be told, only you truly hold the keys to your own castle. When you are very clear and specific on a meaningful corporate vision and strategic purpose, and when your beliefs and values are in alignment and match the sensibilities of your audience and product, people will follow you and your brands.
Promise a better life, not just a better product. Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Remember that deep down, people are consistently yearning for someone to lead them to a better existence. If your campaign simply talks about your product and fails to inspire people about life’s possibilities, then you will fail to connect to the deeper places of motivation within the prospects’ psyches.
Use metaphors to inspire creativity. Metaphors are ideal to inspire creativity in marketing and advertising team members. Summarize your brand challenge as a metaphor and not a set of verbal constraints. Metaphors encourage the overlapping of ideas, which are the engines of imagination. Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran believes that metaphorical thinking and creative thinking are linked, because creative people are eight times more likely to have a peculiar condition called synesthesia, which is characterized by the cross-wiring of the brain’s sensory perceptions.34 Synesthetes might perceive numbers as colors or tastes as geometric shapes, for example, the number one is red, or sugar feels round. To some extent, we all share some overlapping of senses evidenced by such phrases as “loud tie” or “sharp cheese.”
Employ stories to uncover and communicate. Use story telling not only in your brand communications but also as a tool to gather information in qualitative market research. For instance, marketing consultant Dr. G. Clotaire Rapaille asks people to tell stories about words or concepts to get at what he calls “culture codes.” These are common, unconscious associations, borrowed from Carl Jung’s concepts of archetypes and a collective unconscious. This approach uncovers deeply embedded motivators for advertising. For instance, Rapaille found that the cultural code for SUV is “domination,” which is why the Hummer at one point became such a popular brand, representing domination of the road and suggesting a sense of status and safety in the reptilian brain. As Rapaille is quick to point out, “The reptile always wins.”
Feel free to dream. We live in a culture that discourages dreams, fantasy, and daydreams as well as the information that comes from them. If you are a lucid dreamer, you know how real and rich these experiences can be. Even through the filter of the conscious mind, recalled dreams can often help people receive practical insights and workable intuitions. When you are trying to solve business problems, work on trying not to think so much. Find a way to get distance from the problem by shifting your focus elsewhere or inward. And always keep a pad and pen next to your bed as you sleep.
Remember, audio is the “theatre of the mind.” Radio advertising has become the bastard stepchild of the marketing world. But because it requires internal interpretation, its well-told narratives are by their very nature often the strongest persuaders. Reconsider the story-telling power of this medium and begin considering the imaginative uses of online digital audio, which can tell a story and fire up the senses, as well as motivate people to imagine owning or using whatever product is being sold.