Unconscious Branding How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing

For too long marketers have been asking the wrong question. If consumers make decisions unconsciously, why do we persist in asking them directly through traditional marketing research why they do what they do? They simply can’t tell us because they don’t really know.  Before marketers develop strategies, they need to recognize that consumers have strategies too . . . human  strategies, not consumer  strategies. We need to go beyond asking why, and begin to ask how, behavior change occurs. Here, author Douglas Van Praet takes the most brilliant  and revolutionary  concepts from cognitive science and applies them to how we market, advertise, and consume in the modern digital age. Van Praet simplifies the most complex object in the known universe—the  human  brain—into  seven codified actionable  steps to behavior  change. These steps are illustrated using real world examples from advertising, marketing, media, and business to consciously unravel what brilliant marketers and ad practitioners have long done intuitively, deconstructing the real story behind some of the greatest marketing and business successes in recent history, such as Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign; “Got Milk?”; Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?”; and the infamous Volkswagen  “Punch  Buggy” launch as well as their beloved “The Force” (Mini Darth Vader) Super Bowl commercial.

Douglas Van Praet is executive vice president at Deutsch LA, one of the nation’s hottest ad agencies, where his responsibilities include group planning director for the iconic, highly acclaimed and coveted Volkswagen account.