Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [52]
So why are products like Guinness, Ferrari, Harley-Davidson, and Apple “smashable”? Well, a few drops of Guinness are just as recognizably Guinness as a whole pint; the wheels of a Harley are as unmistakable as the bike itself; and a piece of scrap metal from a totaled Ferrari could be nothing else—thanks to its signature shade of red. And though it may make you wince to hurl that iPod against a brick wall, when you’re gathering up the pieces, you’ll know what “smashable” truly means. In fact, take a look at the front of your iPod right now. Do you see the Apple logo anywhere? I doubt it, because there isn’t one. But yet, would you ever mistake it for any other brand? I doubt that, too.
I used smashable brands in this portion of the study because those are the brands that tend to be stronger and more emotionally engaging—in other words, they enjoy a passionate and loyal following. But in order to get a better picture of our relationship to strong brands, I knew I needed to assess our volunteers’ response not just to strong brands, but to weak brands, too. So I included Microsoft, BP, and countless other brands sharing the same profile. Why these? Well, these are all brands that I consider to provoke limited or even negative emotional engagement among consumers. In other words, they leave most of us cold.
Regardless of whether we were showing our volunteers “strong” brands or “weak” ones, it was important that each was a leader within its category. That way, we could be sure that the results wouldn’t be skewed by lesser or unknown brands.
Before our study got under way, we asked our sixty-five subjects to rate their spirituality from one to ten, with ten being the highest. Most termed their devoutness between seven and ten. This time around, we’d also narrowed down our volunteers to males, since we were combining our study with a related, and male-skewed, experiment: did sports, and sports heroes, activate the same areas of the brain as religions did? After all, just like members of religions, sports fans have a strong sense of belonging, usually to a hometown or favorite team; teams have a clear mission (to win); and, of course, a strong sense of us vs. them. Sports also offer a strong sensory appeal (think of the smell of a fresh-mown football field on game day, or the mouthwatering aroma of stadium hot dogs, or the sound of the national anthem played before the game begins). Few things seem grander than a championship title or a medal or a trophy, and stories and myths (the Curse of the Bambino, for example) abound everywhere in the sports world. So I decided to compare how the brain responded to sports icons and sporting paraphernalia, compared with how they responded to religious imagery.
One by one, over the course of a few days, our volunteers filed into Dr. Calvert’s lab and were hooked up to the fMRI machine. The room went dark and the images began to flicker past: A bottle of Coca-Cola. The Pope. An iPod. A can of Red Bull. Rosary beads. A Ferrari sports car. The eBay logo. Mother Teresa. An American Express card. The BP sign. A photograph of children praying. The Microsoft logo. Finally, images of selected teams and individuals from the worlds of football, soccer, cricket, boxing, and tennis. A church pew, followed by David Beckham, followed by a nun’s habit, followed by the World Cup. And so on.
WHEN DR. CALVERT analyzed the fMRI data, she found that strong brands brought about greater activity in many areas of the brain involved in memory, emotion, decision-making, and meaning than weak brands did. This didn’t surprise me terribly much. After all, it makes sense that an image of BP Oil would inspire less emotional engagement than a shiny red Ferrari.
But it