Introduction

We cannot underestimate how complex our brain is. Neuroscience

is the study of the human brain and how every part of the brain
works together.

Our brain is the centre of our consciousness, senses, personality and

attitudes. It processes everything as electrical activity – from nerves that
control our movements, receptors that manage the way we feel the world
around us, processes for how we remember things, through to our dreams,
desires, fears and hopes. Our charge of all our decisions, so it's important we
understand a little more about what drives those decisions for a better
understanding of our own personal responses and those of our colleagues and
consumers.
The brain works to make things easy – to ease the processing power it is using. This is why
it is so important we direct the brain's processing capacity where we want it to focus.

Our brains operate in two different modes: System 1 and System 2.

• System 1 is often talked about as our automatic pilot, responsible for processing huge
amounts of information (mostly but not exclusively visual) every second. This is the
operating system that is instinctive and intuitive. It makes decisions based on learned and
coded behaviour that can be traced back millions of years.

• System 2 is often referred to as our rational brain (or the pilot). This operating system is
much younger in evolutionary terms; it is in this system where our conscious thinking
happens and so our System 2 is slower, more controlled and rule governed.

'Decision making' – such as which advertisement you notice or which product you buy –
happens as the stimulus of the world is received first in System 1, responsible for our
immediate understanding of the world, and then in System 2, responsible for the reasoning System 1 System 2
of this world. Autopi lot Sl ow
Fa s t Seri al
“System 1 runs the show, that’s the one you want to move.” Daniel Kahneman Impl icit Expl i cit
Effortless Effortful
As s ociative Logi cal & s keptical Deliberately
Di fficult to control or modify No self- control led
a wa reness Wi th s elf-awareness
Did you know?

• The brain accounts for 2% of body weight and consumes 20% of its energy.

• We have 70,000 thoughts a day (so we need to organize them for maximum
productivity)

• We make 35,000 conscious decisions a day (that’s just the conscious ones).

• Our brain processes 400 billion bits of information every second but we are
conscious of far less than 1% of this.

• Over 85% of thought, emotions, and learning occurs in the unconscious mind.
A map of the brain Frontal lobe
Dea ls chiefly wi th cognition and memory. Ability to
Parietal Lobe concentrate, judgement, consequence analysis,
probl em solve, plan, personality (i ncluding emotional
Pl a ys an i mportant role i n i ntegrating i nformation tra i ts).
from s everal s enses. Also processes s patial
ori entation, some parts of s peech, vi sual perception,
a nd pain and touch sensations.

Limbic System
Occipital Lobe Loca ted on both sides of the thalamus,
i mmediately underneath the cerebrum. It
The vi s ual processing centre of the brain. It contains control s the basic emotions (fear, pleasure,
mos t of what i s referred to as the “visual cortex”. It is a nger) a nd drives (hunger, sex, dominance, ca re
a l so the part of the brain where dreams originate. of offs pring).

Cerebellum Brain Stem Temporal lobe

Chi ef function is motion-related activities. Contributes Serves as the brain’s Chi ef auditory receptive a rea and contains the
to coordi nation, precision, accurate timing, but does wa rning s ystem and Hi ppocampus, which is the chief region where long-
not i nitiate movement. Regulates fear a nd pleasure s ets alertness l evel. term memory i s formed. Also deals with high-level
res ponses, and some cognitive functions such as vi s ual processing (faces & s cenes).
a ttention a nd l anguage.
The main functions
Emotion, Memory and Recognition are very important functions and are
also inter-connected. The following pages provide a basic understanding
of these in Neuroscience terms.

Emotion

Memory

Recognition
Emotion
What is an emotion?

From the Latin: to move/move outwards i.e. to initiate movement. Emotions propel us
into motion, they make us act, they drive action i.e. they predispose us to make a
decision. Emotions are crucial in decision making.

"Despite what we like to think – we are not purely rational processors of information,
we are not machines. Our behaviour is driven by our emotions. The brain is designed
to mark ‘emotions’ and ‘feel’, not just to think."
Emotions drive decision making

Emotions guide, drive and enrich our behaviour, helping us to navigate and interpret the
world around us, providing meaning to everyday existence, values to our choices, and
helping us to make faster and more efficient decisions. They are the basic ingredients of
how we learn and remember. By being more human in our approach, in the way we think
about our tasks and what we create for our brands, using the principles of Neuroscience
we will create more emotionally engaging brands.

Emotions are also critical to memory processing Emotions guide, drive

Emotional engagement is the unconscious ‘feeling’ processed by our brain. When a
situation triggers a significant emotional reaction, it is far more likely to be remembered
and enrich our behaviour
i.e. a memory is created.

By triggering emotions, we open the possibility of retrieving an existing memory or

creating a new one. Therefore, unlocking the secrets of emotional engagement is key to
how people engage with the world – and of course with brands.
Memory
Memory is essential to our very survival because it is the glue of our
experience – it is key to our learning.

How do you know not to put your hand in boiling hot water? Or that it will hurt if you fall
over? You will have a memory of touching something hot or scraping your knee in the
past and that experience becomes a memory.

Physiologically, memory is not confined to a particular area of the brain, unlike some
brain processes. While some regions of the brain are more related to memory
processing than others, memory storage lives throughout our brain and is far less
'concrete' as a concept than you might think.
Three things to understand:
1. Memory isn’t a perfect facsimile

Memory is not literal and it is not perfect. It is active, flexible, adaptive, dynamic, and
subjective. It interprets, makes mistakes and allows us to forget. Don’t think of
memories as a collection of discrete pictures that can be retrieved at will.

2. Memories aren’t always something you can actually actively recall

This doesn’t mean that memories aren’t there. The neurons and the nervous system are
the base of a network of systems which define a flexible, subjective, personal,
disordered and involuntary brain. We each keep an immensely complicated network of
memories, associations, and feelings that influence our decision-making.

3. Memory is not a static concept, it constantly evolves

Memories are not created from scratch each time, but rather existing memory pathways
are constantly ‘under construction’ with new incoming information connecting with and
adapting existing networks. So when a memory is triggered, you are accessing entire
pathways of interconnected memories - a constantly evolving maze with paths opening
around you.
Understanding types of memory: Explicit versus Implicit

"Even though a memory is strong and vivid, it is not necessarily accurate.

Explicit memories, regardless of their emotional implications, are not carbon
copies of the experiences that created them. They are reconstructions at the
time of recall, and the state of the brain at the time of recall can influence the
way in which the withdrawn memory is remembered."

One theory of interest about the effectiveness of communications in recent Implicit:

years is Low Involvement Processing (LIP): we passively process and store Explicit: Tyi ng your s hoes, riding a bike,
large amounts of information automatically, at very low levels of attention. A pa rticular event, attributed to dri vi ng a car. These are a ll
This means that through repeated exposure to communications, connections a time, date, occasion, a ctions we learn but once
will be made despite no overt level of high involvement processing happening. pa rti cular moment. Able to be 'commi tted to memory' we
reca lled. A birthday party or a don't have a conscious
The nature of our long term memory (LTM) dictates that the more often a wa reness of. Implicit memory
something is processed, the stronger it links to the brand. firs t da te.
pl a ys a prominent role in our
everyda y l ives.

Explicit & Implicit

memory coexist.
“When we asked about what they recall about advertising for a brand, they
sometimes recall nothing. But this doesn’t mean that advertising has had no
influence (implicit) on their attitudes towards the brand.” Heath (2004).

Both implicit and explicit memory are important for greater effectiveness.
However, most of our current KPI’s rely on metrics such as recall, a dimension
only of the explicit memory.
Recognition
Humans are really good at recognising and discriminating all manner of different types
of people, objects and everything in between. Successful recognition has always been
essential to survival – for example to detect a predator or to discriminate food from
non-foods.

Seemingly effortless tasks such as the ability to recognise the words on this page, the
person sitting at the desk opposite you, or your favourite brand of shampoo on the
supermarket shelf, are actually highly complex computational tasks.

To add to this complexity, we must be able to do this under a wide variety of conditions:
we can recognise objects despite variations in orientation, lighting, size, colour, context
and so on.
Recognising something – such as an object or a brand – is a highly automated task that
happens in less than a millisecond. Our brains see objects and images as a series of lines,
edges, shapes, colours and textures. The brain assembles all the visual input into an overall
picture. i.e. the conscious perception of a product is something that happens inside our
heads.

Consciously, we see a glass, a car, a chair... but that's because our brain has done the work
of analysing the lines and shapes and establishing what it is. We don't store images of
everything and everyone we have ever seen (that would be very inefficient!) yet we can
recognise things as what they are.

An object next to a table, with 4 legs – that's a chair. Recognition is driven by both the
object itself and the context. And context builds cues over time. If we look at dietary
products, we will notice many of them use a light blue colour to differentiate from their
more fatty or sugary counterpart. Light blue is a colour code that creates a context for
recognition of food and drink products. In another context the same shade of blue wouldn't
have the same meaning to us.
Humans are wired to recognise faces and are better at identifying faces than any other
object. This begins from an early age. Studies show babies as young as 4 days old have been
able to distinguish between their mother's face and that of another face, even before their
eye sight is fully developed. Tests have shown that there are, in fact, a specific set of
neurons responsible for recognising smiling faces. So we all have a specific set of neurons
that recognise a smile in one another.

Whilst consistency is important for recognition, we cannot always stand still. We need to
be aware of categories developing lots of similar cues to communicate, because it creates
confusion – it makes it hard for our brain to recognise one singular brand. So sometimes it's
OK if every brand in a category is using yellow for a lemon flavoured product. But if all the
brands themselves start to look the same, it becomes really hard for the brain to
distinguish each of the brands from each other. The implication is that we need to keep an
eye on the copycat brands, like our competitors and shops' own labels that ‘borrow’ key
visual and design elements from our well-known brands. Our assets must always be unique
to our brands.
Think about recognition in terms of brand assets and packaging or a key visual

And so, once memory structures have been created with key brand assets, protecting and
evolving these assets becomes key. Whilst design styles mean things don't stand still, creative
strategies should typically seek to evolve and build on the existing memory structures.
Change for change's sake risks undermining the visual shortcuts people associate with a brand,
causing confusion and over time, serious commercial losses.

The speed at which we are able to accurately report the identity or category of an object
without any pre-cueing occurs very quickly, in -350milliseconds (ms). Images can be
presented in -100ms per image which, accounting for the time needed for a behavioural
response, suggests a central visual image is processed in less than 200ms. This timescale is
consistent with the way in which humans and other primates typically explore their visual
environment, with rapid eye movements that involve short fixations of between 200-500ms.
Less than 200ms to identify an object. How long will it take to recognise the cues of your
brand packaging from a distance in the aisle? And how easily could they lose that recognition
if they are expecting a red holding device and one day, it wasn't there anymore?
Top Down vs Bottom Up Processing Examples
Looking at the above symbol your From a bottom-up perspective, you should see a
brain has no context for what it is group of meaningless blobs. However, our brain
supposed to be showing and as such is wired to detect faces, which, from a bio-
engages bottom-up processing, sociological perspective, are among the most
looking at individual elements of the important stimuli in the world. So the floating
shape without giving a specific blob becomes an eye, and from there we
meaning to the symbol itself. construct a nose and a mouth, and the fact that
the picture is labelled as “face” tells your brain
that is what it is supposed to see. So here is the
When you put the symbol into twist… instead of a face, now look at the image
a context (in between letters and see a saxophone player wearing a big hat.
or numbers) your brain has Some of you may have noticed that from the
context and you start to beginning, but for most, being told there is
perceive the symbol as either another image that will alert your brain to search
the letter B or the number 13. for the pattern.
This is where top-down
processing kicks in. The So again, with this top-down processing
context creates the meaning. example, your brain adds meaning to what you
perceive based on what it knows or expects.
Thinking about recognition in our world of FMCG brands and products

Our top-down processing uses what we know to tell us the Moschino product pictured in
the advertisement must be some sort of cleaning product – in the context of packaging,
pump spray structure, light blue coloured liquid for glass cleaner, woman standing behind
glass, brash red letters saying 'Fresh’’ - all this adds up to a cleaning product.

However when we place the product in the context of the brand, Moschino is a luxury
brand, the bottle is too small for an actual cleaning product, the word Fresh is used to
describe a fragrance profile and Moschino sells fine fragrance. And so a different, more
likely picture emerges - the new fragrance from Moschino. The brain has been challenged
with a mixture of familiar cues and context, but with just enough that is unusual to
demand deeper consideration. And that will make the advertisement memorable because
it gave the brain a puzzle to solve.

Recognition is a type of memory retrieval, commonly employed in everyday life.

Recognition Vs Recall

Recognition allows you to simply identify if you have seen the object/person whilst they are in
front of you. You see someone you have met in the street – you recognise them.

Recall requires you to generate an image of something in your mind such as when you're in a
conversation with a friend and they say "you remember my friend Lucy". You must now
retrieve an image of Lucy for yourself.

It is generally found that people can recognise far more items than they can recall.

Cued Recall

Context is an important element to help facilitate recognition and recall. It is a common

observation that returning to a contextual setting is a powerful cue for remembering
something. e.g. you went upstairs to get a pair of socks, once you got there, you couldn't
remember why you went upstairs. When you come back downstairs, you saw your shoes and
immediately remembered that you went upstairs to get socks. Another example of how our
brains can struggle to recognise out of context is when you see a colleague from work at the
gym or the supermarket. They might be dressed very differently to how you usually see them,
and because of that they are out of context. Evoking contextual cues can serve as an
important reminder for your product/brand.
Priming

“Our brand assets don't have to always be explicit to aid recognition. Sometimes keeping
consistent context for your brand might be in the style of an advertisement, a font that is
used, the type of music you're associated with. These can 'prime' the brain to expect your
brand.”

Even partial components in advertising have been shown to drive attention and evoke
engagement with an advertisement – e.g. in recent ad testing, strong emotional engagement
was found during its opening scenes among brand users. Analysis of eye tracking footage
revealed that the partial brand logo visible in the background of the scene was driving
attention among this group and producing high emotional engagement, setting the scene for
the rest of the advertisement.

Recognition involves more than just visual input to allow us to understand what an object
looks, smells, and tastes like. It involves both bottom-up processes, to extract the features of
an object/face as well as top-down information processing, to identify who or what the object
is. With top-down processing this analyses new perceptual input by comparing it with items in
our memory store, such as shapes and sounds which are familiar from past experiences.
Recognition alone is not enough. We need to generate emotional recognition to become
meaningful, not just recognisable to consumers. The brand assets must stand for something.
Neuroscience and Brands

There is no ‘brand area’ in our brain. Brands are simply expectations

based on memories. A brand exists only in people's memories and
evokes associations only according to the meaning that we give them.

We need to help our brands become shortcuts for decision making, and We need to help our brands become
to do that we must understand how to trigger existing brand
memories. By doing so, we will discover a powerful route to unlocking shortcuts for decision making [...] By
emotional engagement and maximising the effectiveness of our
communication, creating brands with a strong emotional connection doing so, we will discover a
which allows people to make decisions effortlessly.
powerful route to [...] maximising
the effectiveness of our
communication
Unlocking emotional engagement

In recent years there has been an increasing number of EuroStudies to

understand the role of brands in the brain. Using fMRI, a brain imaging
tool, Deppe et al. (2005) showed that when evaluating loved and familiar
brands, people primarily use emotions (personal relevance and
experiences) rather than analytical information and working memory
(brand attributes, features, and facts). This can be called ‘hot’ reasoning.
Imagine it in the brain as more 'hot' or 'active' brain activity rather than
'cold' or minimal brain activity. Using emotions to make decisions means
the brain isn't weighing up positive and negative qualities... so less
'thinking', which means less processing power used. We need to create
effortless brands to reduce cognitive control and thinking. Loved brands
have hot reasoning. (Plassmann et al, 2007)

After analysing 880 UK IPA Advertising Effectiveness submissions, the

conclusion reached was that “emotive campaigns – those that rely on
emotional appeal rather than just information and persuasion – tend to
be more successful at building brands than those with a rational product
message, even in highly rational product categories…” (Binet & Field,
Marketing in the Era of Accountability, IPA, 2007)
Using the rational to unlock the emotional

It is important to remember that even very rational benefits lead to

strong emotional rewards – for our brain there is no clear division
between the rational and emotional. Emotion and rational thought is
intrinsically linked, with emotion being the first mechanism of rational
thought. Emotion is the precursor and all emotional functions are linked.
For example, you can't understand memory as a function without
emotion, since emotion creates the memory. What this all means is that
it is important to consider how seemingly rational benefits can be
translated into emotional rewards.

For example

1. Choosing a product because it is on promotion: saving money feels

good, making the ‘smart’ choice.
Seemingly functional benefit assumed as rational.
Rational = save energy (save money as well as doing your bit for the environment).
2. Buying food made with natural ingredients feels good, it makes you Emotional reward = smart choice as saving money and reducing carbon footprint.
feel healthy.
Understand how Ready to apply
the brain works across the 6P’s
and what this mix
means for brands

Key brain facts

and principles