Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [84]
A moon rock is pretty special. There are a limited number of them in the world. And after all, it comes from the moon. What an exquisite present, you think. You’re shocked, genuinely overcome.
The fact of the matter is that I found the rock by the side of the road, put it in my pocket, and threw it into a box. Aside from the everyday miracle of geology and tectonic plates and all that, it’s just a rock. But once I stamped it with certain properties—historical significance, geological rarity, whatever—it became so much more. In other words, when we brand things, our brains perceive them as more special and valuable than they actually are.
Another thing I believe we’ll be soon seeing is the advent of the twenty-four-hour human brand. Take Paris Hilton, for example. Many of us have little respect for her, but the fact remains she’s become a walking, talking, giggling, partying brand. Whether she’s starring in an amateur Internet porn film, dancing at a new Tokyo nightclub, promoting her new clothing line, or doing a stint in jail, Paris is a human brand that creates headlines and publicity wherever she goes. Similarly, the larger-than-life CEO of Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson, has become less a business tycoon than a living brand. Whether he’s spending the week at his private Caribbean island, hot-air ballooning over France, or announcing plans to rocket to the moon, he’s never far from the public eye. And in the future, I think companies will embrace personal brands more and more, creating real characters in order to get more exposure, and in turn sell more stuff.
But this is all just the beginning.
My study has, I hope, helped to demystify much of what goes on in our subconscious minds. And that has far broader implications than helping some guy in an office think up new ways to convince consumers that his tap water was actually bottled by the von Trapp children during an Alpine bike ride.
Neuromarketing is still in its infancy, and in the years ahead, I believe it is only going to expand its reach. Though it may never be able to tell us exactly where the “buy button” resides in our brains—and thank God for that, a lot of people may say—it will certainly help predict certain directions and trends that will alter the face, and the fate, of commerce across the world.
And anyway, what choice do we have? Can we, as individuals, escape the reach of marketers and brands and the new face of advertising that appeals to our subconscious minds? It’s not easy to do in today’s world. Perhaps, if you drove to the supermarket, loaded up on food for the next decade or two, and then locked yourself inside your house or apartment with double-bolts. Unplugged your television. Switched off your cell phone. Canceled your high-speed Internet connection. In other words, cut yourself off from the outside world altogether.
But I suspect life would get a little stale and dull before long. You would be safe from marketers, but at what cost?
The alternative? A world in which you face the onslaught of advertising with a better understanding of what drives and motivates you, what attracts and repels you, what gets under your skin. A world in which you are not a slave to the mysterious workings of your subconscious, nor a puppet of the marketers and companies that seek to control it. A world in which before rushing out to buy that new vanilla-scented skin cream or that shampoo with the mysterious X-factor or that pack of Marlboros that your rational mind knows will deposit fat globules into your lungs, you will pause. Because that is a world in which we, the consumers, can escape all the tricks and traps that companies use to seduce us to their products and get us to buy and take back our rational minds. And I hope that by