The Brand and The Brain
Brand loyalty changes brain waves and creates activity in the brain that is now measurable through neuro marketing studies! Amazing! Your loyal brand customers’ brains literally “light up” when they experience your brand.
In a recent “Cool News” e-mail, this research was reported:
"A brand," says Mr. Fleming, of the Gallup Organization in a New York Times article by Sandra Blakeslee, "is more than a file symbol in the marketplace ... It has a face of the people who interact in the marketplace. "Those people are, of course, often the "lowest-paid employees" of the brand marketer, "who create, or fail to create, the emotional connections that lead to brand loyalty."
And it’s on this level -- usually the local level -- where many brands are wildly inconsistent. "For me, a good example is Continental Airlines," says Mr. Fleming. "I love the airline, but maybe that's because I fly out of Newark. I know people in Houston who do not have the same experience."
Mr. Fleming is quoted because earlier this year he conducted an interesting study of 16 Japanese women, designed to gain insight into why they were loyal (or not) to a particular upscale department store. It was one of these neuromarketing studies, which means the women, who ranged in age from 22 to 66, "placed their heads into machines that track blood flow." That way, Mr. Fleming could see whether a particular stimuli lighted up the amygdala," the part of the brain that's considered to be "a sensory gateway to the emotions." It seems the most "brand addicted" consumers have really active amygdalas. For purposes of this study, the women were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 a total of 32 questions -- centered on emotional matters tied to respect, pride, fairness, honesty, trust and perfection.
A third each of the women had identified themselves as either passionately loyal, loyal but not fanatical or neutral. They were asked to imagine their most recent experience at the department store while providing their ratings. The control for this study was their most recent experience at a bank (!). Sure enough, the brains of the passionately loyal were lighting up all over the place for the department store, while all of the women pretty much flatlined when it came to the bank. Why is this important? Well, consider this: "If a company could turn 5 percent more of its customers into loyalists, with hooks into their amygdalas, profits would increase 25 to 100 percent a customer." That's according to Frederick F. Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Effect. Mr. Fleming's research was presented in late October before the Society for Neuroscience, at their annual meeting.
Talk to you soon,
Kae Groshong Wagner
CEO, Founder — North Star Marketing
Award-winning Author, Speaker
Brand Consultant
CEO Advisor for Sales & Marketing