Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
—Mark Twain
WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, MY PARENTS WOULD SOMETIMES take us on Sundays to St. Cecilia’s Church in the New York City suburb of Englewood, New Jersey. Built in 1866, St. Cecilia has an imposing air and a storied legacy. Home to the first coaching job of the legendary Vince Lombardi, it became noteworthy after his successful eight-year stint as the football coach of St. Cecilia High School, which included two consecutive undefeated seasons in 1943 and 1944, well before Lombardi became the most revered leader in the history of the National Football League.1 Lombardi consistently racked up championships, including winning the first two Super Bowls. But what he was truly famous for were his inspiring locker-room speeches and his amazing ability to win despite having the odds stacked against him. It would be no surprise if Vince had learned much of his motivational skills in the church where he got his start. A devout Catholic, he had studied to become a priest before turning his attention to football. I know that for me, those early ecclesiastical teachings would be instrumental to my instruction in the art of influence.
Lombardi once said, “If you can’t get emotional about what you believe in your heart, then you’re in the wrong business.” While our imagination creates the vision of our intentions, our emotions move us in the direction of making them real. Like great evangelists, coaches, or inspiring business leaders, Lombardi bridged the ethereal and secular worlds with his uncanny ability to lead winning teams on the field. He said, “Leadership is based on a spiritual quality; the power to inspire, the power to inspire others to follow.”2
But what does it mean to inspire? We use the word all the time in marketing and advertising, especially when we are briefing creative teams to come up with the communications intended to generate product sales. To inspire has carried several meanings over the centuries: to blow on or breathe into, to infuse with thought or feeling, and to guide or arouse by divine or supernatural influence. Perhaps without consciously realizing it, many in the marketing industry are already taking a page from the St. Cecilia playbook and from one of the great models of human persuasion: religion.
Just as we can learn a great deal about people today by studying the origins of early humans, much can be gained by exploring the past success of humanity’s institutions. The historical establishment of the Catholic Church is an example of how organizations can shift feelings to change beliefs and behaviors and to attract and retain loyal followers.
The Catholic Church is one of the world’s oldest, most organized institutions, and by far the largest religious group within Christendom. Christianity remains the “best-selling” religion with nearly 2.2 billion “customers” worldwide.3 Catholicism ranks as the dominant “brand” with about a 50 percent share in a very crowded segment.4
The term “catholic” means “universal” or “of interest to all.” So it’s no wonder that the Catholic Church would be the biggest corporation in the United States based upon their real estate and business holdings, exceeding that of AT&T, Standard Oil, and US Steel combined.5 By Catholicism’s name alone, the religion has identified itself as an absolute, available to all people. As Steven Pinker says, “According to surveys by ethnographers, religion is a human universal. In all human cultures, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that ritual can change the physical world and divine the truth.”6 Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, says, “There’s now a lot of evidence that some of the foundations for our religious beliefs are hard-wired.”7 And, as the neuroscientist Andrew Newberg indicates, “When we think of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, we see a tremendous similarity across practices and across traditions.” Newberg says there are universal features of the human brain involved in religious practice: the frontal lobe, which focuses our attention in prayer and meditation; the limbic system, which creates feelings like awe and joy; and the parietal lobe, which is the seat of our sensory information.8 Newberg points out that the circuits of the parietal lobe also detect where the body begins and ends, but when we are participating in prayer and meditation, this circuitry can be silenced, creating a powerful feeling of oneness with the universe and with God.9
The forces that drove the widespread acceptance of religion are likely the output of both nature and nurture. When questioned about the notion of preprogramming, Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins said, “I am thoroughly happy with believing that children are predisposed to believe in invisible gods—I always was. But I also find that indoctrination hypothesis plausible. The two influences could, and I suspect do, reinforce one another.”10
The past success of the Catholic Church stems from not only a natural inclination to religion but also a very clearly defined and emotionally charged mission: to save humanity from sin and glorify God forever by spreading the gospel of Jesus. Catholic indoctrination also has a clearly defined process of how to accomplish that goal, a perfect case of unconscious branding and a prime example of a “hypnotic modality.” Hypnosis is a form of focused attention that is very similar to meditation and prayer. It creates access to the unconscious mind, engendering feelings of openness and oneness with the universe. This happens all the time, not just when we are on our knees or in the lotus position, but even when we are engrossed in reading a good book or sitting in a darkened theater watching the latest movie. According to George John Kappas, the director of HMI College of Hypnotherapy, “A hypnotic modality is anything that attempts to control or modify behavior by affecting our belief system.” Therefore, effective efforts at religion, teaching, and even marketing and advertising are by definition hypnotic modalities. The goal of every communication, whether one is being offered the eternal salvation of God or the benefit of using a stronger and more absorbent paper towel, is the acceptance of a suggestion.
Kappas says there are three key ingredients to every hypnotic modality. The first is authority. The subject must perceive the presenter as an authority figure in order to begin considering accepting the message. To start, the presenter must establish control of the environment through one-upmanship, a social dynamic whereby the presenter is perceived to hold a position of power, control, and higher status. A common technique to establish authority involves the use of special clothes. For instance, doctors wear white lab coats, law officers wear blue uniforms, and military personnel don progressively more decorated uniforms as their accomplishments and status ascend. These special clothes suggest authority. So much so that when actor Peter Bergman, who played Dr. Cliff Warner on the soap opera All My Children, starred in a commercial for Vicks Formula 44 and espoused, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV,” many viewers took his words as a credible endorsement. Since they had often seen Bergman in a white lab coat, in their eyes he had license to become a real medical authority.
Catholic Church law insists that the priest wear “suitable clerical clothing, according to the norms issued by the Episcopal Conference and according to legitimate local customs.”11 The list starts with the alb, an ankle-length white linen vestment with sleeves, and ends with the zucchcetto, or skullcap. The list is a veritable dictionary of cloths, crosses, pom-poms, tassels, and cloaks.
The priests are not only adorned in incredibly elaborate clothing, but they also stand before worshippers on elevated stages behind great podiums with distinguished titles and accomplished credentials. The word “reverend” means “worthy of respect” and everyone knows you must always obey your “father.” The congregation is required to display deference to the clergy, subserviently kneeling in prayer. Clearly, the churchgoers are neither in control nor are they the authority in this situation. Have you ever felt authoritative when you were on your knees? For marketers, techniques that establish authority include awards, industry accolades, and the ever-present claims of best-selling or category leadership.
The second key ingredient is doctrine/paradigm/translogic. One or more of these must be present in order to establish the credibility of the messenger. In terms of importance, doctrine ranks higher than paradigm, which in turn ranks higher than translogic, but all three can play a pertinent role in the effective communication of an idea. Doctrine— the highest form of rational proof—is the one that religions leverage most. It represents the written proof of whatever theory is being communicated, suggesting that it has been inspired by a higher authority even than the presenter. In the case of religion, this would be the word of God as transmitted through the Bible. In marketing, illustrations of doctrine can be expert third-party tests and product reviews done by consumer advocacy groups like Consumer Reports, trade press information, expert bloggers, or even the news media in general.
Paradigm is a model of how something works, such as visual representations, verbal proof points, numerical charts, and graphs. Examples of paradigms in advertising range from common product demos to facts and figures supporting competitive claims to method of action explanations such as Listerine’s “kills germs by millions on contact.”
Translogic is last and represents temporary logic. Like the number 44 in the cold medicine Vicks Formula 44, or the trademarked Retsyn in Certs breath mints, when a number or technical sounding ingredient is offered, the product takes on a more proven, credentialed, perhaps scientific aura, suspending the prospect’s resistance and prompting people to contemplate the brand’s merit.
The third and most important ingredient is overload of feeling. We need to be overwhelmed with sensational feelings to gain access to the reactive, unconscious part of the mind. When the conscious mind is preoccupied with information input from the environment, we lose our ability to critically filter the message. We thereby default to the unconscious, which faithfully responds to these emotions in the form of visceral and physical reactions. We don’t choose our emotions. They often choose for us. If you don’t create this deeper level of experience, the message will be dealt with only logically. It will fail to effect the belief system of the subject and thus have little or no effect on behavior. In advertising, the most important thing is to get the receiver to feel the experience and perceive the message as real, which can happen by generating tears, smiles, laughter, chills, or goose bumps.
This critical ingredient, overload of feeling, is what distinguishes the Catholic Church from its competitors. During Catholic mass, there is a deluge of emotional and sensory stimulation that moves people toward the goals and visions of the captivating mission of the church. Let’s deconstruct how the church maximizes the impact on each of the five senses. There is the inundation of entrancing visuals: the full spectrum of colorful light emanating from the stained glass windows, the abundant flickering candles, the intricately elaborate and ornate architecture, and the beautiful artwork. There are ample and pervasive sounds: the colossal bell summoning the congregation to mass, the deep bellow of the organ, the many melodic voices of the choir, the singing of worshippers in unison, the rhythmic chanting of hymns, and the hypnotic cadence of the priest’s patter. There are the tactile and kinesthetic experiences: the repetitive rituals as you shift your body from sitting on the hard, wood seats to standing at attention, to kneeling, to the ceremonial holding of hands. There is the feel of the leather-bound bibles or textured vinyl covers. And the reverberation of the organ throughout the building coalesces the auditory with the kinesthetic. There is the distinct experience of receiving the consecrated elements of the Holy Communion: the taste of the bread and the flavor of the wine, both symbolic of the body and blood of Christ. And there is the olfactory, the smell of the billowing wafts of smoke from the thurible as it swings back and forth, emanating incense throughout the chapel.
It is impossible not to experience this ceremony without succumbing to the feeling of sensory overload, which, of course, is no accident since this is the crucial ingredient to change beliefs. This very real experience overwhelms the limits of the conscious mind, producing the enraptured state that denies the brain access to rational resistance, opening our unconscious and emotional mind to new suggestions, new beliefs, and new behaviors—actually suspending our ability to function voluntarily.
As the late Roy Disney said in his shareholder speech of 2004,
The Walt Disney Company is more than just a business. It is an authentic American icon—which is to say that over the years it has come to stand for something real and meaningful and worthwhile to millions of people of all ages and backgrounds around the world. This is not something you can describe easily on a balance sheet, but it is tangible enough. Indeed, it is the foundation on which everything we have accomplished as a company—both artistically and financially—is based. I believe our mission has always been to be bringers of joy. . . . We do this through great story telling, by giving our guests a few hours in another world where their cares can be momentarily put aside, by creating memories that will remain with them forever.12
A critical step in the evolutionary process of becoming human was expressing ways to externalize consciousness and represent our thoughts in the physical world, going beyond the realm of our imagination to make fantasy a reality. The paradox of branding is that the goal is to stand for something that transcends the physical product yet roots that experience in very tangible, powerfully moving ways, just as religion has done. The Disney brand is one of the most powerful in the world, and the reason why a trip to Disneyland is so cherished is that it turns our fantasies into realities through a cornucopia of escape, emotion, and sensory delight.
Costco, which many may think of as a value-driven rational brand, succeeds where others don’t because they turn shopping trips into real life adventures, or what Senior Vice President of Costco Jeff Long calls “treasure hunts.” While most competitors have been struggling to break even or stay in business, Costco remains the number one wholesale buying club in the country, posting a massive 25 percent increase in quarterly profits, topping even retail giants like Target and Home Depot. In comparison, its biggest rival, Sam’s Club, announced the closing of ten stores in early 2010. One of Costco’s secrets of success is to “let them get lost.” The Costco stores induce a trancelike sensory overload, overwhelming customers with the immense square footage of the retail environment, aisles upon aisles of brand variety and bulk product offerings. Costco strategically places popular fresh items in the back of the store and intentionally doesn’t put signs up to show where the products are, forcing shoppers to wander the store instead. This turns the mundane task of product purchase into an exciting expedition of discovery and delight.13
Everything we do in life we do because of how it makes us feel. While we often perceive emotion and feeling as synonymous, behavioral neurobiologist Antonio Damasio draws an important distinction when he observes that emotional processing is really comprised of two steps. Emotions are complex neural and chemical responses that start off unconsciously, becoming conscious feeling states only when sensed by the body. Damasio explained it this way in an interview with New York Times columnist David Brooks: “Emotion, by definition, to begin with is nonconscious . . . we learn about it through feeling. It’s when we feel the emotion that we know we have it. Feeling is like the sea level of the water.” Damasio adds: “Emotion is really about action. It is a collection of automated actions.”14
The implications of this are clear. If marketers are not generating emotions and feelings, we are not taking advantage of the very things that drive behavior. Branding is more than stimulating an intellectual process of imaginative thought. It is about experiencing those thoughts as emotionally charged feelings that lead to real actions. Feelings are turned into waking thoughts, which then become intentions, and finally, purchase. The goal of every marketing program should be to infuse products with emotions so strong that customers become loyal not just to the brands but to the brand missions, instilling devotion and uniting people and marketers with common causes and shared values.
What makes Catholicism different from many other Christian faiths is a belief in the physical and not just the mental. The Catholic Church teaches salvation by works, meaning you have to actually do something to gain salvation. The observance of the Sacraments, rituals like baptism, in which a child is blessed with water, and communion, in which churchgoers ingest the bread and the wine (which is offered at every mass, unlike other churches that practice this sporadically) are tangible ways to demonstrate the physical presence of Christ. These are outward signs of inward grace that take us beyond our head to our heart and body.
Successful brands every day act similarly—that is, go beyond our head—which supports the observation that “brands are the new religion.” Two separate studies, done by business and marketing professors at Tel Aviv, Duke, and New York Universities, found that nonreligious people in the United States rely on brands to a much greater degree than do religious people. This suggests that brands may play a similar role as religion, providing people with a measure of self-worth and everyday tangible ways to create meaning, identity, and a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.15
Marketers are in the business of selling states of emotion, not products or services. Feelings exist not for our amusement or to make us happy, but rather to guide us in living successful lives, to move us away from harmful choices and toward better fortunes. As Damasio says, “An emotion consists of a very well orchestrated set of alterations in the body. Its purpose is to make life more survivable by taking care of a danger or taking advantage of an opportunity.”16 Like religion, brands play off our hopes and fears, our joy and our suffering. Yet despite the amount of evidence and conversation in advertising and marketing about the importance and effectiveness of emotion on sales, there is still a prevailing industry belief that rational efforts alone are more effective and do the so-called heavy lifting for the brand. Cognitive science strongly refutes this position, as do the architects of successful brands. Scott Bedbury, who is credited with building strong brands like Nike and Starbucks, says, “A great brand taps into emotions. Emotions drive most, if not all, of our decisions. A brand reaches out with a powerful connecting experience. It’s an emotional connecting point that transcends the product.”17
Research suggests that even hard-nosed retail brands like Walmart benefit tremendously by emotionally bonding their consumers instead of speaking to their rational, value-conscious sides. In fact, being a satisfied customer is not enough these days. The mere suggestion of satisfaction intimates a state of complacency and a simple calculation of value = quality + price. If you really want loyal followers, and not just customers, your company must go above, beyond, and over the top, like Disney, Costco, or even Catholicism. It’s not about selling a convenient product at a good price; it’s about establishing unconscious, emotional ties. There is evidence that retail brands like Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, and Macy’s perform much better when they can establish such connections with their customers. A market research study of retail chains indicated that while only about one in five shoppers in the United States felt they had an emotional connection to a retailer, the ones that did were much more valuable as customers, brand advocates, and evangelists. Emotionally connected customers were highly desirable compared to those who indicated that they were merely “familiar” or “satisfied” with the retailer. These emotionally bonded customers were four times as likely to shop at their preferred retailer and 50 percent more likely to recommend the brand. They were also four times as likely to follow their brand on Twitter and Facebook, and ten times more likely to shop at their retailers’ site on a mobile device.18
Emotions exist to guide behavior, but there are times when they don’t always make sense. If you still need further convincing that we don’t purchase logically, look no further than our dual brand purchases of teeth whitener and mouthwash. Why in the world would anyone brush with toothpaste clinically proven to whiten teeth and then rinse with a brightly colored green mouthwash containing blue dye #1 and yellow dye #5? Try as you might, you would be hard pressed to find a major brand of mouthwash that doesn’t contain artificial dyes in shades that would be most unflattering to the teeth. But through past repetition of other colored products, our unconscious minds have learned to associate the color green with the feeling of clean, fresh, and minty. So much so that now every time we see the color green, it comes with a powerful emotional affect, overriding any concerns about why we are buying whitening toothpaste.
Likewise, why do we love the smell of a new car so much? The scent symbolizes the pride of ownership that elevates our ego with a feeling of specialness and importance. But this fresh, new odor is actually a potpourri of poison and toxic gases. An independent green organization announced that much of the material in most car interiors contains chemicals known to pose major health risks—chemicals linked to birth defects, premature births, impaired learning, and liver toxicity among other serious public health threats. Even when the new scent fades over time, we voluntarily extend our daily exposure to additional chemical cocktails by purchasing fake new-car scents. According to a fragrance industry spokesman, these so-called air fresheners contain chemical compounds such as aldehydes, esters, and ketones.19
We are not rational creatures; we are emotional beings. And sometimes those emotions can lead us to questionable decisions and irrational behaviors, even if their evolutionary purpose is to keep us from harm’s way.
If our biology has predisposed us to religious thought, there has to be a lot more to it than just people making up stories about the existence of God. Because religion is highly emotionally charged, it can appear nonsensical in nature in that its practice is not driven by rationality. But emotions remain purpose-driven actions that serve important evolutionary goals. Rather than simply undermining religion, we are best served to explore and understand its usefulness. Whether in the world of marketing or religion, we need to remind ourselves that how we determine value in our lives doesn’t always have to make logical sense. Indeed, it is through our emotions that we assign such value in the first place.
And certainly, religion has had its fair share of detractors questioning its rationality. As George Carlin once said: “Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! . . . But He loves you.”20 And in the comic novel by Peter De Vries, the Reverend Mackerel says, “It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.”21
We are irrational by nature, but many strategies, including religious worship, evolved for rational reasons, because they work and because they can deliver real, important benefits. Even though religious truth has been challenged by the evolutionary sciences, we can still use those same evolutionary sciences to explain the existence and proliferation of religion and its utility to humanity. Some scientists argue that shared religious beliefs spread widely because they helped our ancestors survive, prompting the formation of tightly knit groups that improved cooperation for hunting, foraging, and protection. Whether or not God exists may be a moot point. Many agree that the question itself is simply beyond the scope of scientific inquiry.22
And sometimes the truth of the matter is that truth doesn’t really matter. What’s important are the results and the outcomes. As the evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban explained to me in a 2011 interview: “I think that one way to think about it is that being right is not necessarily the best thing for any given organism, particularly for a social organism. Being right is usually pretty good. But there’s lots of times when being wrong is more important than being right. So a really simple example is: Suppose I hear a stick cracking behind me and I’m walking in the woods. I can’t quite tell if it’s a bear or the wind. I’d probably rather err on the side for thinking it’s a bear. I’m probably going to be wrong, but I’m usefully wrong.”23
Science itself is built on models and not necessarily absolute truths. In 2011 scientists said they had discovered subatomic particles that travel faster than light.24 The bedrock of physics is derived from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the observation that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. This is based on the fundamental principle that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. But this law has now fallen into question, potentially unraveling everything we know about physics, and everything that has helped explain the behavior of the physical world for the past century. If Einstein’s theory turns out to be wrong, is it not fair to say it was usefully wrong?
Steve Jobs was known to bend the facts, a tendency Apple software designer Bud Tribble labeled the “reality distortion field,” a phrase he adopted from an episode of Star Trek. Some believed this was just a clever way to say that he tended to lie. But maybe Jobs simply realized that our realities are largely shaped by our minds. Jobs could convince anyone of practically anything, however farfetched, because he would mold reality to the purpose at hand. He had the charisma to inspire his team to do the seemingly impossible and change the course of the computer industry with a fraction of the resources of his competitors. Apple programmer Bill Atkinson believed that Jobs would deceive himself so that he could better convince others to believe his vision. Self-deceit has an evolutionary advantage as it makes for extremely confident leaders and, in this instance, dramatic progress in technology, great new products, and incredible brand growth.25
The main distinction between the endeavors of religion and those of marketing is that businesses focus mostly on the facts, the conscious, and the logical, and religions focus their efforts on the ethereal, the unconscious, and the emotional. Humans are about nine-tenths emotional and one-tenth logical, so business targets not only miss their mark, they do so by a long shot. Ironically for logically minded business practitioners, their math simply doesn’t add up. As Daniel Pink observed in his best-selling book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, “The goals of management are usually described in words like efficiency, advantage, value, superiority, focus and differentiation. Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts. Business leaders must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper soul stirring ideals. Humanize what they say and you may humanize what they do.”26
Translating insights about the abstract unconscious mind into more concrete and conscious terms is not without its challenges. But one model from Robert Dilts, a leading consultant in the field of business leadership, has proven to be very useful. Dilts’ clients have included Apple Computer, World Bank, Hewlett-Packard, Ernst & Young, Lucasfilm Ltd., and more. From his esteemed work, he has developed a behavioral hierarchy that he calls the “neurological levels,” inspired by the work of anthropologist Gregory Bateson and his “logical levels of learning” construct. This prioritized framework, by demonstrating how the mind relates to the world around us and the relative influence of that relationship on changing our behavior, can help marketers better focus their message on the dimensions that are most impactful.27
At the highest and the most impactful neurological level is spirituality. This level focuses on the vision of the bigger picture, our connection and contribution to something greater than self, and our feeling of interconnectedness and unconditional devotion to a higher cause. Spirituality reflects the bigger soul-searching question at the heart of religious philosophy, Why are we here?
One of the great advertising examples of the motivating power of spirit comes in the famed De Beers campaign “A diamond is forever,” which was named the number one slogan of the century by Advertising Age. Launched in 1938, the approach fuels one of the most successful and longest-running marketing campaigns in history, helping position the brand as the leading diamond company to this day.28
“A diamond is forever” is a deceptively simple sentiment that captures the essence of unconscious branding. Since all humans seek a greater sense of connection and enduring purpose, the campaign speaks powerfully to the very real but very ethereal essence of spirit as embodied in the lasting bond between people in love. And it is not just the message. Diamonds themselves are both metaphorical and tangible embodiments of the everlasting, with the age of some stones estimated at 4.25 billion years old.29
The next level is identity. This level encompasses our personal mission, our sense of self in relationship to others and our personality and inner purpose. It challenges us to think and act and reflects the question, Who am I? For example, it is through the perpetual meaning of our identity that great brands like Dr Pepper are truly empowered. It wasn’t simply the unique flavor of the product that made the beverage so popular and adored. It was the promise of a distinct, enduring personality, the “always one-of-a-kind original” that makes you different. This evocation of identity was best encapsulated by their famed tagline, “I’m a Pepper.”
The next neurological level comprises values and beliefs. These are perceptions that we hold to be true about the world and the things that are significant and relevant to us—including our desires and motivations. They answer the question, What is important to me? These include attitudes about the product and one’s lifestyle, from a desire for “whiter whites and brighter brights” when choosing a detergent, or the desire to be a better mom by choosing Jif peanut butter.
Below that is the level of behavior, or What do I do? These include shopping habits and purchasing behaviors, the types of media with which you engage, and activities that you do professionally or in your spare time.
And on the lowest level are the external dimensions of behavior, or the environment in which we live. These are reflected in the questions Where? and When? Think of this as the various places and times you encounter the brand or its messages, such as in your living room where you see the actual television commercials, or the point-of-purchase, buy one get one free promotions, or the eye-catching package designs that you find on the shelves of your local supermarket.
As you go up the hierarchy, the levels become more psychologically encompassing and therefore more impactful. The higher you go, the impact on behavior will become more abstract and unconscious, but it will also be more influential in changing actions. Conversely, the lower you are on the hierarchy, the more tangible and conscious the behavioral result but the lesser the influence on changing behavior. In addition, a change at the higher levels automatically influences and reorganizes the levels below it. If you want to change someone’s behavior at a specific level, it is best to focus your efforts on the level or levels above it. Einstein’s belief that “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it” is central to this model.30
For instance, if you change the perception of a brand at the levels of spirit and identity, it automatically shifts the levels below, altering the audiences’ values, beliefs, behaviors, and environment. The devotion to Harley-Davidson and Apple is a dedication to the brands that is spiritual in nature and a reflection of who you are as a person. When you buy these powerful brands, you automatically become part of a better club and a bigger mission. Brand purchasers are empowered with a sense of belonging to a higher cause and an aspirational and exclusive group. And once you see yourself as a Hog owner or a Mac guy, it affects many other things about you, including what you believe, what is important to you, the people you relate to, where you hang out, and what you do.
The problem is marketers spend most of their effort and resources on the lower rungs of the hierarchy, the what, where, and when of consumer behavior. They focus on what consumers say in market research, what the product does, and what words or images to use in the ad explaining its benefits. They then spend their time and effort determining where and when to run those messages in media plans.
Marketers need to shift their focus toward the sources of real power and feelings, concentrating their efforts up top where unconscious branding occurs most, on the higher cause, the vision, mission, and meaning to people and humanity. That is how they can instill the sense of purpose and personal identity in the prospect that will command loyalty and dedication to the brand. In other words, in order for the brand to be most effective, it needs to reflect who we are and why are we here.
Not only is this model helpful for developing marketing messages, it is also an extremely valuable tool for maximizing business operations. Dilts contends that the key to a healthy psyche and a healthy organization is to align your objectives from the top down, starting with a clear goal of why you are doing what you are doing and the logical tactics to support that vision.31
In Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why, he makes an insightful, eloquent and inspiring case that, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Focusing on the product and the bottom line alone is bad for business. Yet the bottom line has always been the main reason most people do business. This approach is not only wrongheaded, it can be tremendously damaging to economies and human lives. Sinek and I worked together at Euro RSCG in New York when one of our clients, the then-CEO Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, acquired MCI, the telecommunications giant. Ironically, MCI was a powerful brand that had previously succeeded through a clear sense of mission: “To free consumers and business people from the constraints and costs of the monopoly that AT&T had on the telecommunications market.” MCI, a healthy and storied brand, would fall victim to the financial pressures and tactics of Ebbers’s WorldCom, whose only clear vision was increasing shareholder value at all costs. Senior executives at WorldCom did whatever it took to inflate revenue, even if it meant breaking the law and orchestrating one of the biggest frauds in the nation’s history, which ended in a 25-year prison sentence for Ebbers and left the company in ruins.
Whether to help to align corporate initiatives or to provide fodder for marketing communications, the more you begin with a clear focus on how to shift prospects’ feelings, the more likely you are to succeed. I have the privilege of being responsible for developing brand strategy for Volkswagen in the US as their agency partner. The company is among the few great brands borne out of a very clear and emotionally charged mission. The name Volkswagen in German means “people’s car,” and this company began as a vision and belief that everyone should have access to automotive transportation. This clear sense of purpose has made it one of the most powerful brands and one of the largest auto companies in the world. Working with our clients, we have developed a new mission that has the brand on track for remarkable growth in America: the belief that “Everyone deserves a better car.” This universal expression threads the needle of empathy, emotion, and higher purpose for all car buyers—a belief that the feeling of owning and driving a German-engineered vehicle should not be reserved for the privileged few. By the end of 2011, this strategy had helped drive the brand to the best market share stateside in 30 years with a 26 percent annual increase in sales,32 and Volkswagen was on its way to becoming the fastest growing car company in America as reported in 2012.33 This is not just a message we send to prospective customers but rather a way to do business, creating an impetus for everyone who manufactures, markets, or sells the brand to get out of bed each day with a bigger and more important task than just moving sheet metal. The essence of the brand is a feeling, even if the tangible experience of the premium vehicle is what makes it superior.
Rouse hearts, not heads. If your meetings feel more like math classes or accounting lectures, you need to infuse more meaning, emotion, and inspiration into your business. As Steve Jobs once said: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”34 If you don’t love what you do, change your mission or quit your day job. If your vision statement reads more like a business goal of dominance than a higher cause of purpose, take a page from the religion playbook and find one that inspires people and their devotion.
You need to make the higher vision the centerpiece not only of your marketing but of all your operations. According to Harvard-trained brain experts Jeff Brown and Mark Fenske, we remember better and encode more strongly when (1) We are in a highly emotional state; (2) The message has significant meaning; (3) It’s really unusual; and (4) We are paying close attention.35
Increase your emotional acuity. Emotions, not words, are the universal language of humans. Don’t ask people to explain how they are feeling; observe it firsthand. Psychologist Paul Ekman’s pioneering work on emotions has demonstrated that facial expressions are biologically determined and universal across cultures. He has developed a system that trains people to reveal and recognize subtle unconscious “micro expressions” that would often have otherwise gone unnoticed. If you are going to become a more empathetic marketer, you need to first become a more empathetic person.
Leverage multiple senses. Inspire and excite all of the senses in your marketing efforts. If you are not leveraging the five senses across the range of marketing experiences, you are not leveraging the full range of human experience. Make sure that your message is expressed in multidimensional ways that fire up the senses. We can better recall and appreciate the taste of bacon when we hear, see, and smell it sizzling on a hot grill—and the same goes for any other product on the market.
Are there hidden opportunities in your current brand experiences? For instance, BMW transformed the annoying buzzing sound you hear when your seat belt is unfastened into an opulent melodic note similar to the classy strum of a harp instead of the clamor of a cheap alarm clock. Instead of “Buzz!” you hear “Bling!” befitting of luxury and the premium nature of the brand.
Employ ritual. Rituals are some of the most powerful ways to brand because they often involve multiple sensory experiences and repetitive acts, driving information into the unconscious mind. For instance, Apple has turned the process of unboxing your new product into a ritual not unlike opening gifts. When I last purchased my iPhone, the salesperson handed the box to me with the words “do the honors.” See if your brand already has a ritual. Like the two-part pouring process of Guinness, these rites can inspire a highly successful campaign or slogans like the beer’s “Good things come to those who wait.” If you don’t have a ritual, try to create one out of an authentic experience that is natural to the brand.
Bridge digital with experiential marketing. Given the power of the physical, digital marketing feels dangerously at odds with these essential real-life experiences. Experiential marketing, such as brand-sponsored events, is an underused yet impactful way to inform people about a brand. Leverage digital media with experiential marketing by tying these efforts together, such as using social media like Facebook to recruit and invite target prospects in easy cost-efficient ways. And, whenever you have events, make sure to create and use digital memories of them by posting and sharing them online afterwards.
Smile more often. Because emotions are contagious, processed unconsciously, and without our conscious control, the best way to spread emotion is to go there first. In one study, even brief exposure to images of smiling or frowning faces, shown so quickly that subjects were not consciously aware of them, affected the amount of money test subjects were willing to pay for a drink. When shown happy expressions, thirsty participants were willing to pay about twice as much for the drink as compared to those that saw angry expressions. Conscious feeling was not influenced. The subjects didn’t report feeling more positive or negative after viewing these images. The researches called this phenomenon “unconscious emotion” since participants were neither aware of the stimulus nor the shift in emotion.36
The implications for marketers suggest that we are always picking up unconsciously on the emotions of those around us, so we need to be careful about what suggestions we are sending others. For instance, while not a new idea, training retail employees to smile makes good business sense. The more positive the emotions we send, the more positive the results we will get back.