The light has a warm, golden glow, sparkling, shimmering like a beautiful Christmas tree. Chocolate and peppermint hang in the air, drawing you in, surrounding you, enveloping you. Wafting in the background is Louie Armstrong’s timeless rendition of “Cool Yule”, his gravelly voice bouncing off the gold and red foils sitting on tiered, majestic shelving. Everything seems to quiet down; indeed, the world seems like it’s stopped spinning. Your shoulders ease, you draw in a full breath, taking it all in. Every worry seems to fade away.

And then you take a bite.

The most divine thing you’ve ever tasted. The texture on your palette, the way it slides across your tongue like silk. You want to savor it, yet you crave more. Your heart is swelled, transporting you away. And for just a minute, the world may just be… perfect.

Is this heaven. Or is just… Godiva?

Death by chocolate: not a bad way to go...

A brand is a set of codified signal designed to communicate specific ideas or values.

From the moment you walk in, Godiva is communicating with you through a meticulously crafted set of Signals. And they do it very well. The music, lighting, packaging, aromas, taste and space combines to take you away, transporting you into a world of sweet and luxurious decadence.

Brands are nothing more than a codified set of signals, and each one will sink or swim based on the strength, relevance and consistency of these signals. In order to succeed, a brand must be exactly what it claims to be – on every level, at every touchpoint and through every one of our senses.

Since the times when humans first roamed the earth, we’ve been communicating through signals. We used all of the cues around us – facial expressions, posturing, gestures and movements, vocal intonations – to separate friend from foe, opportunity from danger.

In modern times, this sixth sense still exists, although its buried under an avalanche of sensory overload and modern worries. Although it may not seem like it, we are constantly using all of our senses to, well, make sense of the world around us. What’s dangerous? What’s fun? What’s luxurious? What tastes good? Signal detection is our ultimate B.S. detector.

The effectiveness of your brand’s signals determine whether consumers choose you or someone else.

Even something as simple as taste isn’t so simple. Because we use aroma, shape, color and texture to determine if something will taste good before we even eat it (as Martin Lindstrom pointed out so wonderfully in his book, Brand Sense).

When we take in a brand’s signals, what we’re really looking for is consistency. Is this brand what it claims to be? Or is it, in essence, lying to me? Which is why brands that master the touchpoints will win out. And those that don’t will be relegated to the dustbins of history…

Godiva signals luxury and decadence – by chocolate. But what if the actual chocolate wasn’t so highly crafted as to feel a certain way in my palate? (It is, and the store staff is trained to know this.) Or if the noise from outside the store overwhelms the ambiance within it? Or if the lighting was too bright and didn’t communicate that luxurious warmth?

Those seemingly insignificant nuances which many businesses seem fit to ignore are actually powerful signals which ultimately determine whether your customers buy from you or someone else. And in a world that is complex and noisy, such meticulousness is no longer a luxury. Brands must not only understand the power of signaling, but they also must be able to continually decode and frame their own signals so that their message is clear and resonant.

And your signals are clear as day.

I have a friend who was absolutely perplexed. Every time his wife was upset about something, he’d try to figure out her problem and solve it. Which just upset her even more, to the point that she was getting frantic. When he told me this story, I just laughed.

“Just shut the hell up and hug her. Lt her know that it’s gonna be OK.”

“It’s that easy?”

“It’s that easy. She doesn’t want you to solve her problem. She’s telling you she’s scared about something, and she just wants you to make her feel safe.” (Honestly, are guys really that dumb? Sometimes I honestly wonder how any of us ever get laid…)

Sure enough, he calls me the next day to tell me how well it worked. He felt like an idiot. I felt like a champ.

Brands are no different. Every day, I read about how consumers are in control. Consumers now control the conversation. Consumers now tell the brands what they want. Consumers are calling the shots.

Excuse me, but no.

Sure, consumers are all over social media, comparing prices, talking about brands, checking out the competition for something better.

But the idea that consumers are now in control is simply untrue. As the master of influence, Kevin Hogan, has said, “People cannot tell you what they really want” – as anyone who’s ever sat in a focus group can tell you. Sure, consumers will rattle of  a spate of ideas and demands. BBut what they really want – all of their desires, hot buttons and buying triggers are buried deep in their subconscious. They can’t simply can’t articulate what it is.

But, like my friend’s wife – like all of us – they will know it when they get it – and when they don’t. It’s up to you to read between the lines and discover what’s really buried in their heads.

We are all human and the yearning for something greater makes us profoundly human

Because, in the end, people really want to be led to the Promised Land, whatever that means to them. Whatever your religion, culture, belief system, we are all human and the yearning for something greater makes us profoundly human. And, yes, we’re only talking about brands here, but things we buy are reflections of our hopes, fears and dreams. It is not a stretch to think that a brand can fill some of these needs. Those that do it most authentically will win out.

You can lead them. You don't even need the beard.

You must be the shepherd. You must give to them what they can’t get themselves. You must uncover their hidden desires. You must make their dreams come true. It’s a crazy, complicated, chaotic world. Everyone’s shouting at each other. Brands are trying to shout even louder. None of it’s working.

But you don’t have to shout. All you have to do is uncover their truest, deepest desires. Do that and you’ll connect with them on such a profound level that the rewards will be unparalleled.

Get this right, and you’ll lead your market. Get it wrong, and you’ll end up sleeping on the couch in the Walmart parking lot.

I’ll close with an example. In a project for a financial services company, our customers continually said they wanted “backtesting” – shorthand for verified, historical results. But to actually look at those past results would take hours - completely unrealistic for consumer group that, on average, spent about 10 minutes a day using the actual product.

Instead, I asked myself what they really wanted. And the answer was simple: a belief that the system worked, that they wouldn’t lose a lot of money. They wanted certainty. To know that, if they used our system, everything would be OK.

Instead of backtesting, we built simple education and contextual cues into the product. These cues appeared during pivotal changes in the market, precisely when our customers would most likely get scared and want reassurance. The result was that customer retentions increased, backtesting requests dramatically decreased and, best of all, we didn’t have to build an expensive add-on that nobody would have used anyway.

Everybody has their own Promised Land. Take a chance. Go find it for them.

Love. Sex. Power. Survival. Discovery.

They’re not the 5 deadly sins. They are the 5 Human Needs. And they drive every consumer’s purchase. Everywhere. In every store, website and market in the world.

If you’ve read this blog before (and if you haven’t, seriously, shame on you. Really, I’m hurt.), you know that I’ve talked extensively about how all of our buying decisions are really driven by our most primal instincts. And that the brands and messages we take in are filtered through our lower brain – or Croc Brain.

But what are those primal instincts? They are: Love & Connection, Survival, Sex, Power and Discovery. I’ll touch on each of them briefly here; full posts on each need are coming soon…

The Need for Love & Connection

“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.” - Hungarian Poet Janos Arany

Love: It is the primary driver of all human behavior. Without it, we are lost, alone, disoriented and scared.

But with love, everything is better. The world is a brighter place. The fear disappears. Challenges are no longer daunting.

We are social animals. Volumes of research has shown how much we all need love, but if you need further proof, just remember what it was like the first time you fell in love. When you greeted an old friend. Or feeling part of something bigger than yourself.

Consumers buy love. Every day. We buy it in clothing, cars, fragrances. We seek it in the company of sports fans (sports teams are very much brands), or  in sensory store experiences. We patronize brands that embody the causes we believe in. Do you think Zappo’s gets more business because of its culture of happiness? Or that the Body Shop’s history of supporting social issues matters to its customers? You bet it does. Anything that makes us feel more attractive, more accepted and more accepted is selling, at least in part, Love.

How are you using Love in your brand?

The Olympics has it all: Love, Survival, Sex, Power & Discovery

The Need for Survival

There’s not a whole lot of elaboration on this on. We all have a strong urge not to die. I know I do. I really don’t feel like taking a dirt nap anytime soon.

Brands that appeal to our base survival instinct? How about mutual funds, which prey upon our fears of not having enough in the future? Or the pharmaceutical industry, which has invented a whole array of pretty meaningless diseases that will somehow kill us (or is it just the side effects)? Or here’s one: Cars. Crash-test dummies anyone? Selling not dying is a thriving business.

How can you appeal to your customers’ survival instinct?

The Need for Sex

OK, if I have to explain this one, you’re on the wrong blog. Fashion, cosmetics, fragrance, alcohol, cars, fitness, entertainment… And those are just the overt ones. Sex is subtly sold in more industries than I can count. Mutual fund investing? Yup, they’re selling sex, but not how you think… Suffice it to say, we all want to get some.

Selling sex is actually pretty tricky, as Martin Lindstrom explains so well in Buyology. Even so, in what ways does your brand appeal to our desire for sexual attractiveness?

The Need for Power

Power is really about control. Feeling oriented. Can I control my future, my life? Or am I at the mercy of forces that are beyond my control?

Not to beat a dead horse, but mutual fund investing is a big seller of control (even though it’s an illusion). How about politics? (Vote for me and your life will be back under control.)  Or smartphones (what will I do without my apps)? Power and control are, of course, more important to men, as they are rooted in the traditional male role of providing for and defending his family.

Think of power in control in the context of how your customers view themselves, their lives and their futures.

The Need for Discovery

As long as humans have lived, we have explored our world. We’ve roamed the continents, sailed the oceans and explored the stars. We have also created magnificent works of art, built impossible cities and expressed ourselves in countless ways. Discovery is something that is profoundly human. No other animal has the impulse for progress and exploration the way people do. We are simply born to see what is beyond that horizon.

Discovery is the most ambitious of our needs. It is about fulfilling our potential as humans. It is, ultimately, about hope. What hope do you offer?

Status. It has been sought as long as people have roamed the earth.

It is power, money, sex, notoriety and everything we own, wear, drive and do.

While status is often thought of as a symbol, it is really much more than that – a survival instinct that was genetically hardwired into our brains millions of years ago. And our desire for Status is ultimately about our deep need for Love & Connection – one of our 5 Human Needs. Brands that genuinely fulfill this need will be the ultimate winners.

To learn why, we must go back a couple million years.

Our need for Status is ultimately about our deep need for Love & Connection – one of the 5 Human Needs

Status: It's more than bling.

In prehistoric times, life was harsh. Food was scarce and often had to be hunted down, at great risk. Predators and rival clans threatened to unleash devastating attacks without warning. Life expectancy was short. An infant faced a difficult road to simply make it to adolescence. Think Mad Max, without all the freaky costumes.

In the backdrop of this was man. With little in the way of language, tools or skills. Slower, smaller and weaker than every other animal in the wild. And struggling to hang on.

But humans did have one advantage – two, in fact. First, they had thumbs, allowing them to make tools, something no other animal could do. Second, crude as it was at the time, humans had intelligence, the ability to pool their efforts in groups in order to maximize their abilities.

It was in this environment that Status was absolutely paramount. Not the luxury it is today, but utterly necessary to man’s physical survival.

In order to survive, humans needed to do three things: Eat, fend off predators and mate. Therefore, in order to have value to the group, a person needed to possess one of three skills in order to be valuable. The ability to hunt, to fight and to be fertile.

Men, because they were physically stronger, were responsible for hunting and defending the clan. Women were responsible for bearing and raising children. .

Because a human could not survive on his own, being accepted into the group was vital to ensuring his or her survival. And the way to be accepted was to be valuable to the group, to possess one of the three essential skills: the ability to hunt, fight or be fertile.

These skills became prized not only by the group but also by the opposite sex. Strong, capable men were attractive to beautiful, fertile women – and vice-versa.

So these three skills – these indicators of Status – not only became qualities necessary for physical survival, they were also critical for acceptance into the group and attraction of a mate. The latter two qualities are still very evident today.

We’ve now evolved (sort of, anyway), but sexual attractiveness and group acceptance are still things we all want.  Most of us live in places where our survival – barring an illness or accident – is assured. But love, sex and acceptance are vital to our wellbeing.

Our brains, however, are still genetically hardwired to seek Status as a means of survival. Which is why consumers often attach status in, well, just about anything. Having an iPhone, wearing a brand of clothes, the restaurants we eat at, the sports teams we cheer for, our religion, our flag, our Twitter followers, and on and on and on.

Status is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s often how we attach meaning to our lives. Belonging makes us feel more connected, more loved and more alive. And while this can – and is – manipulated by brands, the desire we have for Status is, at its heart, pure.

And in an age where people are increasingly dissatisfied with top-down, centralized organizations, tired of corruption at the highest levels of government and business and continually seeking more meaningful experiences, the brands that genuinely bestow status upon their customers will be those that win out.

Today’s post is a bit of a long one, but an important, so bear with me…

Conventional wisdom follows that people are, by and large, rational. This is certainly the viewpoint of many executives, managers and policymakers the world over.

Recently, however, the field of behavioral finance has come into vogue, which, according to Wikipedia, uses “social, cognitive and emotional factors in understanding the economic decisions of individuals and institutions…” I’d write the rest, but I fell asleep while reading it.

In short, behavioral economics acknowledges that how people actually think has some bearing on the decisions we make. Which I find to be pretty laughable, because as anyone who’s ever traded the financial markets, sold a product or, you know, interacted with another human being knows, how we think has everything to do with the decisions we make. (Maybe this is why just about every economist in the world whiffed on the 2008 market crash…)

As anyone who has ever interacted with another human being knows, how we think has everything to do with how we act.

But I digress.

My point is this: the reasons behind why we do what we do are “soft” – the fuzzy, intangible things like emotions, beliefs, values, needs and desires. This has often been given short shrift in the business world, where it’s a hell of a lot easier to think that people can be modeled, plugged into some spreadsheet or equation. That if we just uncover the logic behind what customers want, then delivering it will be a piece of cake. But the truth is, as they say, is far more elusive.

Show me a logical thinker, and I will reveal the totally illogical reasons behind what they’re really thinking.

Because the truth is that people are not rational. We simply rationalize our emotional decisions.

Earlier in this article, I mentioned the financial markets. I mentioned it because finance is considered to be one a profession dominated by logic, reason and math. The truth, however, is that the financial markets are easily the most irrational place on the planet.

The most IRRATIONAL place on Planet Earth: the financial markets

I’ve traded them for five years – futures and currencies – some of the most unrelenting, unforgiving markets in the world, where you can lose your life savings in the blink of an eye. For years I struggled, until a trader friend of mine in Chicago revealed the secret sauce: the markets are 100% psychological. They move up or down, not because of some P/E ratio, what the Fed does or what the lastest GDP number is. They move because millions of people make decisions to buy or sell every day for one reason and one reason only: they hope to make money.

And that’s got nothing to do with logic. Because if it did, then most people would make out OK, when the facts tell a different story: 95% of all traders lose money and quit.

And while this is a subject for many more posts (which I will duly be writing), suffice it to say that the few traders that take everyone else’s money understand this. Which is why an entire industry of trading coaches and psychologists exists to serve them. (In fact, the renowned Tony Robbins acts as a personal trading coach to one of the most successful traders in history.)

It’s absolutely critical for brand managers, strategists and businesspeople to understand how people really think.

It is absolutely critical for brand managers and strategists – indeed for anyone who’s in the business of selling anything to anyone – to understand how people really think. There is a definite process. A system – if you will – that our brains use to take in, filter and interpret every incoming message we receive. Every piece of information, every sound, taste, touch and smell.

And it is not logical. It is utterly primal. Informed by our most basic survival instincts. And colored by our deepest emotions and desires – all of which is buried deep enough so that we’re barely aware of it. Only, after the fact, do we rationalize our decisions, telling ourselves we bought something because it was useful, that we made an investment because it was “cheap”, or that we greenlighted a product because its revenue projections were solid.

I’ll be getting into much greater detail about what that process is, and how it manifests itself in the real world on shoppers, brands and buying.

Huddled in the frigid weather, the disciples waited for hours to taste the rarified air of the great cathedral. Their breath misty, their bodies shivering, they stood, barely able to contain themselves. Some had waited all night. Others had arrived late, only to find an endless line of followers. And then finally, one by one, they were admitted into this holiest of shrines.

The Apple Store.

Perhaps there is no brand that engenders a cult-like following quite the way Apple does. How else can we explain how people will line up all night to buy a phone that can be purchased two weeks later in the mail? Or the sea of white earbuds, bobbing up and down on a city street? Or the ubiquitous vernacular: “You got an app for that?”

This may seem to have nothing to do with consumerism. Until you consider that we buy things because of what they mean to us. Not what they do for us.

A modern-day cathderal.

Martin Lindstrom has written extensively about the connection between brands and religion. So with a tip of my cap to his fine body of work, I’ll expand upon it here.

What is it about religion that is so powerful? Is it that it makes us feel connected? Or part of something bigger than ourselves? Or that everything will be OK in the end? Or is it all three?

Whatever your belief system (including whether you personally believe in God or not), the idea of religion speaks to one of our deepest desires: our need to believe that we can each be all that we ever wanted to be. That we can not only reach for the stars – but that we can touch them.

A brand is nothing more than a set of beliefs. The strongest brands make you believe something. The weakest brands do not.

Lindstrom cited 10 pillars of religion which can be applied to brands: A sense of belonging, grandeur, storytelling, common enemies, clear vision, sensory appeal, symbolism, rituals, evangelism and mystery. Powerful brands like Apple, Coke, Walmart, Trader Joe’s have built these pillars into their brands.

Religion is so powerful because it appeals to all of our 5 Human Needs.

Being a part of a religion gives us a sense of belonging (Love) and also of power (Control). The mystery, storytelling and grandeur appeals to our Need for Discovery. Evangelism and uniting against common enemies appeals heavily to our Survival instinct.

And what about Sex? Our need for Sex is satisfied not just by actual sex but also by status. Belonging to a powerful and popular group is a powerful status signal. (And if you need any proof, go ask a Mac user about Windows…)

In the end, we all want to believe. We’re not seeking mere products, but deeper, more meaningful things… like Romance (by Ralph Lauren), Joy (dishwashing liquid) and even a dash of Hope (clothing)?

All in the pursuit of our True Religion (jeans).

How people make decisions is a fascinating process. It’s also a pretty simple one – provided you know how it works. The trouble is that most people are unaware of the human decision-making process. Too many brands, ads and messages that inadvertently trip the very subtle – and very sensitive – fear circuits buried deep within the minds of their audience. As a result, their messages are instantly forgotten.

In many circles, the conventional wisdom is that people make logical decisions about what will and will not benefit them. The truth, however, is that our decisions are 100% emotional – illogical, irrational and generally pretty crazy.

Rather than coolly assessing the features and benefits of any product or service, we respond to what moves us – what makes us feel good, inspired, happy, sexy, powerful, safe. This is how we decide what is valuable to us and what isn’t.

Our response to brands, stores and marketing messages is a chain reaction of emotions, filtered through our most primal instincts, and then interpreted by our subconscious.

Every thought we have is filtered through are most basic instincts.

Roaming the aisles or roaming the tundra?

All of this goes on behind the scenes, almost of all of it unknown to even the person making the decision. (There’s a reason they call it unconscious thinking, right?.) The chain works like this:

1. A message comes into our brain, through one of our senses – our eyes, ears, nose, mouth or skin.
2. That message first passes through our lower brain – or Crocodile Brain. Every animal has a croc brain, and it’s concerned with one thing and one thing only: surviving. It has three – and only three – impulses. Eat. Fuck. Kill. More importantly, our croc has barely evolved, meaning part of us is, quite literally, still stuck in the Stone Age.
1. (We actually have 5 Human Needs, both physical and emotional, which you can read about here >)
3. Our croc brain decides if this message constitutes a threat. If it does, our fight or flight reflex will kick in. (How we define threats completely defies logic and is usually triggered by very subtle cues.)
4. If it’s not a threat, our croc brain will then kick the message up to our subconscious, where, long story short, we attach a meaning to it. It makes me feel good, calm, sexy, hungry, curious, etc.
5. Then we rationalize our decision. We decide that the features or benefits made us feel good. Or that these shoes are a great deal. Or a million other reasons.

The point is this: we’re not rational. We only rationalize – after the fact.How we define threats is totally illogical. It is 100%

This thought process is precisely why sensory branding, creating experiences, social media and other, more emotionally-resonant forms of marketing are so effective. We are emotional animals. We’re capable of incredible depths of feeling, yet we’re also ruled by a primal brain that believes we’re still living in the wild.

This has profound effects on how you, as a manager, strategist or marketer must position your offerings.

You must understand that your customers are filtering everything about you through their most basic survival instincts.

This isn’t to say that we’re running around like wild animals (OK, sometimes we do. Hell, I spent 5 1/2 years in college – I’ve been there…) It’s simply to say that all of the wonderful – and sometimes not so wonderful – emotions, ideas and beliefs consumers have are filtered through a lens that is millions of years old.

And once you understand what that lens is, consumer behavior makes a hell of a lot more sense.

In future posts, I’ll get into much greater detail about our 5 Human Needs, how we Frame everything we take in, and how all of this applies to brands, retail environments and marketing. There will be many updates coming down the pipe, so makes sure to subscribe to make sure you don’t miss any.

The Modern-Day Consumers

Shopping. It’s so easy a caveman really can do it.

In fact, he does it every day. Because he is us. Freaky, huh?

As the fields of neuroscience and marketing collide, one thing has become abundantly clear: though we live in the modern world, our instincts are still buried in the past. By about a million years. And while you may think that you’re communicating, marketing and selling to your customers here in 2011, the simple truth is that our brains receive all incoming messages with a filter that’s a million years old.

And this profound affects for how you must build your brands, market your offerings and, ultimately, communicate with your customers.

Our brain’s filtering system has profound effects on how your customers perceive your branded messsages.

Sure, we all live here in the modern world, glued to our iPhones, cable tv and gourmet food. But a part of our brain is, quite literally, still living in the caves. The reason lies within how our brains have evolved. Or, in this case, how they haven’t.

Our brains are split into three parts:

1. The lower brain, or as I call it, the Crocodile Brain. Responsible for our survival instincts. Eat. Fuck. Kill. Crude, yes. But my point is simple. The croc brain knows nothing of the modern world and its social etiquette. Its needs are base.
2. The mid-brain. Home to our subconscious. Thoughts, feelings, associations. Freud, as you may know, had a field day with it.
3. Our neo-cortex, where we process language, logic and solve-problems.

Brand managers and strategists often talk about touchpoints – the individual points of contact a consumer has with a brand. The general wisdom is to maintain consistency across all touchpoints – a very smart strategy.

But when a brand fails to do so, what are the repercussions. And more importantly, how do touchpoints affect our deepest perceptions of a brand?

Consistency across touchpoints appeals to our survival reflex, creating positive associations with a brand.

To understand why, let’s take a quick journey across the multiple touchpoints of one of the most meticulously crafted brands in the world: Lexus – and see how its touchpoints trigger our basic survival instincts.

The sweet feel of luxury...

Whoosh… you open the door to your Lexus RS. You slide into the soft, leather seat, the warm smell of luxury enveloping you as you close the door with a firm seal. The wheel feels just right in your hands, as you start the car, the engine purring with quiet power. The sounds of classical music fill the cabin. As you pull out of your driveway, you’re in an exclusive world of sophisticated style.

Lexus had mastered the art of touchpoints, meticulously crafting the experience of luxury and performance. Each sensory element appeals to our crocodile brain’s desire for novelty and pleasure. Add it all up, and you get a powerfully positive experience of style, luxury and performance.

But while our subconscious experiences the pleasures of driving a Lexus, our croc brain is obsessed with more basic needs, like our survival. And it is always on the lookout.

An inconsistent brand experience will not kill us, but our crocodile brains simply don’t know this. They’re still living a million years in the past.

A brand with consistency across its touchpoints creates a recognizable pattern – sort of a shortcut for how our subconscious encodes value. When we take in sensory information, we immediately recognize the specific combination of colors, shapes, textures, aromas, sounds and tastes. Our brains group all that information together into a pattern and then assigns one or more emotions to that pattern.

It’s a way for our brains to deal with the tremendous amounts of information we take in every day. We immediately categorize groups of stimuli and then assign a value to it, so that when we encounter similar patterns again, we don’t have to waste our brain’s processing power trying to figure out what it is. We already know. All of this occurs instantly and subconsciously. All we know is that when we get into a Lexus feel warm, stylish and powerful.

But forming these patterns takes time. We have to experience them repeatedly for our brain to categorize and form associations, which is precisely why strong brands rely on consistency and repetition. (Novelty plays another key part in how our croc brains assign value, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Lexus is a perfect example of a brand whose sensory patterns are consistent across all of its touchpoints. Whether I’m watching a commercial (sight and sound), browsing their website (sight) or driving an RS (sight, sound, touch, aroma), I have the same associations: style, luxury, performance.

However, when a brand is inconsistent across its touchpoints, our survival instinct immediately goes on red alert. The pattern we expected to see is not there. And if we don’t recognize it, can we trust it? And if we can’t trust it, will it kill us?  (What would happen if you got into a Lexus and the upholstery was cloth, and the dashboard switches felt cheap and plastic?)

And while an inconsistent brand experience will not kill us - our crocodile brains simply don’t know this. They’re still living a million years in the past.

As an executive, manager, strategist or designer, such small inconsistencies may not seem like a big deal to you, but to your customers, they are literally a matter of life and death.

“Hmm… what’s this?”

“Oh, this looks pretty cool. Yeah, I like the color. And it smells soooo good… but the bottle, I don’t know know… I’ve never really seen anything like it. Maybe it’s too high end for me? How much does this cost?”

“Oh, what the heck, I want a different style… Yeah, I’ve gotta get it!”

And so goes the human animal – Homo Shopperus – in her journey through a world of knowns, unknowns and, as Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying, unknown unknowns. In other words, a world of novelty.

The fact that novelty is crucial to a brand’s success isn’t exactly… novel. But you may be surprised to learn why.

Viktor & Rolf's innovative Flowerbomb packaging

Human beings have five basic needs – what I call our 5 Primal Needs. Survival, Love, Sex, Power and Exploration. Since the dawn of humanity, we have been exploring our world. We emerged from the caves and spread across the land. We crossed the land bridge between Asia. We built ships and set sail across the oceans. We built railroads, wired our world and touched the stars. Ours is a history of constantly seeking out uncharted territories, both large and small. It is a need as old as humanity itself.

Simply put, we’re genetically wired to explore, to learn, to grow. And the brands that are able to fulfill this need will position themselves to do very well.

The key is to create something novel – without scaring the hell out of your consumers.

But there’s a catch…

Because too much novelty can actually trip the fear circuits way down in our croc brain. Instead of stimulating intrigue and curiosity, it can trigger our fight or flight reflex, causing your customers to run away. And all those warm, fuzzy feelings disappear, replaced by negative associations that are very difficult to overcome.

On the flip side, if your brand is ordinary, it has no appeal to our Primal Need for Exploration. We all need to experience new things, to be intrigued, stimulated, have fun. It’s what keeps us alive. Brands that have no differentiating qualities give consumers no reason to engage with them. Why would I buy cologne if it smelled like everything else? Would I even try it if the packaging was the same as the other colognes? After all, I have limited space on my arm for cologne testing, so I’m going to be pretty discriminating about what even makes it to the test stage.

As a brand shepherd, what attributes give your brand that sense of novelty? How can you craft your brand’s language that appeals to our need for Novelty, without triggering our Survival Instincts? 

It’s a competitive world, and you’ll need insight, strategy and, above all, creativity, to build a brand that hits just the right notes.