What is a brand?

First things first, let’s get a definition out of the way. What is a heuristic? A heuristic is a mental shortcut people use to make judgments & solve problems quickly. I bring this up because it is vital that we all understand that all of marketing is rooted in Neuroscience & psychology. All of it. 

Let’s explore the insights gleaned from a study conducted at the Baylor School of Medicine. The study is called the neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Super catchy name. The neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Let’s paint the picture of the study. This was a peer-reviewed study conducted by a team PhD. neuroscientists. They did it blind, they did right and it’s very well cited. 

They used fMRI brain scans & anonymized the drinks served to study subjects to test the preference between Pepsi & Coke. We won’t break down exactly how they conducted each experiment but in short, they served the drinks in either unlabeled, incorrectly labeled, or correctly labeled cups. If you are interested in all of the details about the experiments, you can click this link to receive a pdf copy of the study. What’s really important is their discovery, so let’s see what they learned. 

In this group of the study, subjects were served coke in an unlabeled cup, a cup labeled Pepsi, & a cup labeled coke. What this chart on the left shows is a strong preference for the cup labeled as Coke. People drank the exact same substance from the cup & with the expectation in their mind that Coke would taste better. So who do ya think is doing a better job marketing their brand? Now, this is interesting, but what’s really fascinating to me  is what was seen on the fMRI brain scans. On both the scans for subjects shown an anonymous cue and a Pepsi can, there was no significant brain activity in the key parts of the brain. 

Let’s take a look at what happened when subjects were served Coke after being shown an image of a Coke can. 

Now let’s note that the brain did not look like this when subjects were served Coke after the anonymous cue. But when they knew it was Coke, look at all of this activity in the Hippocampus & in the DLPFC. All of this activity, in pleasure areas of the brain. Knowing it was Coke literally changed what happened in the brain itself. The preference test was not some sort of fantasy belief, it did taste better when they knew it was Coke. Now, what does this tell us? It tells us that branding is about setting & creating expectations. Brands can literally make drinks taste better, & make products from companies like Apple make its users feel more creative while using them. 

First things first, let’s get a definition out of the way. What is a heuristic? A heuristic is a mental shortcut people use to make judgments & solve problems quickly. I bring this up because it is vital that we all understand that all of marketing is rooted in Neuroscience & psychology. All of it. 

Let’s explore the insights gleaned from a study conducted at the Baylor School of Medicine. The study is called the neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Super catchy name. The neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Let’s paint the picture of the study. This was a peer-reviewed study conducted by a team PhD. neuroscientists. They did it blind, they did right and it’s very well cited. 

They used fMRI brain scans & anonymized the drinks served to study subjects to test the preference between Pepsi & Coke. We won’t break down exactly how they conducted each experiment but in short, they served the drinks in either unlabeled, incorrectly labeled, or correctly labeled cups. If you are interested in all of the details about the experiments, you can click this link to receive a pdf copy of the study. What’s really important is their discovery, so let’s see what they learned. 

In this group of the study, subjects were served coke in an unlabeled cup, a cup labeled Pepsi, & a cup labeled coke. What this chart on the left shows is a strong preference for the cup labeled as Coke. People drank the exact same substance from the cup & with the expectation in their mind that Coke would taste better. So who do ya think is doing a better job marketing their brand? Now, this is interesting, but what’s really fascinating to me  is what was seen on the fMRI brain scans. On both the scans for subjects shown an anonymous cue and a Pepsi can, there was no significant brain activity in the key parts of the brain. 

Let’s take a look at what happened when subjects were served Coke after being shown an image of a Coke can. 

Now let’s note that the brain did not look like this when subjects were served Coke after the anonymous cue. But when they knew it was Coke, look at all of this activity in the Hippocampus & in the DLPFC. All of this activity, in pleasure areas of the brain. Knowing it was Coke literally changed what happened in the brain itself. The preference test was not some sort of fantasy belief, it did taste better when they knew it was Coke. Now, what does this tell us? It tells us that branding is about setting & creating expectations. Brands can literally make drinks taste better, & make products from companies like Apple make its users feel more creative while using them.