25: The Brand Soma
The author reflects on Damasio's notion of soma, discussed in chapter three, which considered the general emotional evaluation, positive or negative, that arises as a result of a decision: we feel good or bad, in a general way, about the result of a past decision, or expect to feel good or bad about the anticipated result of a present decision.
Brands are decisions, a past or future choice of one option among several, hence soma is involved in the decision, and may play a critical role. As such, soma is a critical consideration for marketers and product managers This has been understood and addressed, in an indirect way, for many years, but neuroscience gives us newer tools to measure soma, which merits some consideration.
What I Mean By The Brand Soma
Damasio's concept of soma is part of the somatic marker theory, which considers the way in which the limbic system creates a positive or negative indicator of emotion to be associated to sense-data - such that when we have a memory of something, we are not limited to a neutral sense of its characteristics (what it is), but emotional ones (how we feel about it).
The author considers "brand soma" as the somatic markers related to a given brand - a subset of all objects that includes those we have obtained or will obtain - and whose significance to marketing is as an indicator of the degree to which a subject is likely to be attracted to or repelled by the brand in future encounters and, ultimately, on their interest in purchasing specific brands.
The formation of somatic markets is reckoned to be nearly instantaneous, effected in the limbic system and driven by the state of the synapses before and during the reception of sense data: we associate a new sensation to the gestalts built by experience, in the way that thoughts and feelings "come to mind" in reaction to a stimulus, based on similar gestalts.
And of greater interest to marketers, the same somatic markers are referenced at the mere thought of future consumption - we experience feelings when we think about doing something that in some cases can release even more dopamine than the actual process of consumption.
This is where emotion impacts advertising: you cannot sell your brand just based on what it does and when people use it. The decision is made by the subject based on how he expects he will feel when he is using it - whether this sense is created internally (by the subject's own experience), externally (by the sense-data provided by the advertisement), or a combination of both.
Brands that succeed in winning customers create a positive emotional association to the brand itself - the subject has a positive soma for the brand before having any first-hand experience of it. However, if the experience of it is negative, the soma is soured - the subject experiences buyers remorse and is repelled by the brand in future.
Therefore, brands that succeed in keeping customers, in winning repeated business rather than one-time business, are attentive to the experience of using the brand, not just the experience of wanting or buying it.
The author uses the example of toys/gifts in breakfast cereal and fast-food meal. If the toy creates pleasure, the pleasure the subject feels is associated to the brand. On the other hand, if the subject is disappointed with the "surprise" inside the box, he is disappointed by the brand.
Of importance: the brand soma is not something different to the brand - it is a part of it, and influences the way the customer thinks/feels about the brand. Assuming the two to be different, and attempting to impact the brand soma alone as a gimmick to increase sales, is a very serious and very common mistake made by marketers.
Rational, Functional, and Emotional
Advertising appeals can be classified as being functional (the features of the product), rational (the logical reason you should purchase it), and emotional (the emotional benefit of purchasing) - and these are often depicted to be at odds with one another, to the point that they are incompatible. To use an emotional appeal, it is suggested that one must abandon functionality and reason.
However, this is not so: the way that we feel about a product is an emotional reaction the benefit we derive from using it (functional), coupled with the way we feel about our decision to purchase it (rational). That is, emotion does not exist independent of functionality and reason.
In this sense, emotion cannot be divorced from rationality and function, as it is derived from those components of experience.
Neurology and Emotional Response
From a neurological perspective, emotional reactions are somewhat complex because the emotional reaction to a stimulus depends on associations and gestalts formed by the idiosyncratic experiences of the individual. A sensation triggers memories, and brings to mind the emotions associated to those memories - neurons react and synapses fire in a cascade, recruiting others.
Also, stimuli are not experienced in isolation: a person is receiving multiple stimuli at once, meaning that there is activity in the brain that will influence the reaction. A person who sees the item in one context versus another will have a different emotional reaction. If he happens to be thinking about some past event or considering some future event, it will impact his reaction. If he sees it when he is feeling tired or thirsty, the emotional reaction will be different to a time he sees it when he is not. If he is in a happy mood, or if something else is upsetting him, it will affect the emotional response.
Much of this is beyond the control, or even the knowledge, of a marketer who wishes to create positive soma for his brand.
Brand Soma, Rationality And Functionality
For decades, the debate within advertising has been between rational and emotional appeal - and it is likely going to continue for many years.
The rational camp maintains that their emotional opponents propone superficial advertisement that creates immediate appeal but ultimately results in long-term dissatisfaction among customers who will discover, when their enthusiasm fades, that they have been hoodwinked into purchasing a product that offers them no functional benefit.
The emotional camp maintain that their rational opponents propone dry and sterile advertisement that has no appeal to customers, and ultimately results in boring qualified prospects away from purchasing a product that they would enjoy owning.
As noted before, the notion that emotionalism and rationalism are inherently at odds with one another is a fallacy, though individuals who are in disagreement often go to extremes and ignore the fact that a "point" that favors the side they have chosen is specious.
The choice of emotional-or-rational is a distraction from the deeper problem: that people are often vague or entirely wrong about their definitions of emotion and reason, and fail to observe that the two are interconnected: feeling derives from thinking, and thinking is influenced by feeling. So long as there is bickering between the two camps, there is little potential for cooperation and common understanding.
The author steps outside of brands to consider social affiliations: it is highly likely that there are a few things about your closest friends that you don't particularly like, but you still choose to regard them as friends; there are also people in whom you recognize positive qualities, yet choose to avoid making friends; there are even people whom you may loathe, but in whom you recognize positive and even attractive qualities.
The point is that social affiliation, the general way we "feel" about an individual, is very similar to gestalts we have about things, and even brands. If we have an overall positive impression of a person or a brand, we tend to minimize, ignore, or simply forgive their negative qualities and maintain a positive impression - and the inverse is true as well.
This phenomenon is of critical importance to brand marketing - and the author concedes it is not an original conception: it has been called the "multiplier effect" or "halo effect." There is also research (Page) that considers that the effect may not be a multiplier, but a contingency effect - that our reaction or impression is contingent upon our general mood and the gestalt that has been established.
It is perhaps a weakness of much advertising research that the brand soma - feelings about a brand - is not factored into the analysis, correlated to positive or negative impression to determine whether the outcome of a study may have been influenced by the brand perception of the test subjects at the time the test was conducted.
Fishbein And Brand Utility
Martin Fishbein derived a model of brand utility, borrowing from Adam Smith's concept of utility, which considers the customer's perception of a prospective purchase in terms of an individuals' subjective perception of its attributes and the value of these attributes.
This is evident in contemporary market research, in which a subject is asked about the qualities of a product (how important is it for a diet soda to taste good?), then evaluating a given brand or set of brands against those qualities (how good does brand X taste).
Per the author, this model "sort of worked, some of the time." The problem is likely in the execution: the questions asked were not the most important qualities, the conclusion was based only on the top few important attributes, only positive attributes are assessed, etc.
Another major problem is covariance among attributes. Where a brand is considered positive in the first few questions asked, it tends to get positive scores in all of the attributes. This is likely an effect of brand soma, in that the subject has formed, and wishes to defend, their general impression of a given brand.
The author notes he has seen the effect "in all our research data." The measured perception of brand attributes tend to rise and fall in harmony for a given brand.
How The Brand Soma Works In Practice
The effect of covariance foils what would otherwise seem to be logical product decisions: if your research indicates sweetness is important to customers, and that the customers perceive your product to be "not sweet enough," the logical conclusion is that sweetening the product will cure the deficiency and improve customer perceptions. However, this is not guaranteed to work in practice because that attribute is part of their overall perception of brand - even if you re-test after sweetening the product, you will likely find the subjects still do not have a favorable impression. This single factor is blurred into the brand halo, which considers other factors.
Our goal in advertising or promoting products is to create not a specific impression of a single product attribute, but a general impression of the brand that will increase its association to all product attributes. We may choose to focus on a few significant attributes more than others, but experience has shown that the single-factor approach to advertising is less effective.
It is the general impression of a brand that increases its popularity and, like a rising tide lifts all boats, causes subjects to have a more positive impression of each of the factors that are considered important for a given product. The stronger the general impression, the more a brand scores will with individual positive attributes.
This does not dismiss the importance of specific attributes. While the general impression is highly influential in creating a positive association to a given brand, the specific attributes drive its positioning. The brand will have a better general sentiment, but when subjects are asked what makes your brand different to others, the individual attributes (sweetness) will be considered.
A caution: marketers should be cautious about brand differentiation. While it is desirable to differentiate your product from others, too much differentiation could lead to the brand being excluded from the product category. This could be a bad thing, unless it is your intention to do so.
As such, the technique of measuring response to a specific advertising message is less significant, and less accurate, than measuring the overall impression of the brand over time. You should not be focused on whether the audience thinks your brand is sweet, but whether they think well of your brand in a general sense, as this will drive your positioning.
Revising Fishbein
Taking these factors into consideration, we should revise Fishbeins equation of brand utility to include the brand soma - that is, the overall impression of the brand should be added to the Fishbein model that considers individual attributes. That is:
Utility = soma + sum(attribute x importance)
(EN: This seems to be a bit stilted, and soma would be watered down when many attributes are considered. Chances are the equation would need to be weighted, but by how much is not clear. Is soma 50% and attributes 50%, or should it be 25/75, or some other mix?)
The Dopamine Moment
To bring the discussion back to the biology of the brain: the somatic
marker theorem suggests that it's not just sensory data that is bundled into a gestalt, but also a "feeling" component, which involves dopamine levels that were experienced at the time the sense-data was received.
As such, the memories laid down by various touch points with a brand (advertisements, packaging, actual experience, word-of-mouth, etc.) are all assessed to dopamine, particularly the extremes of emotion where dopamine was at its highest and lowest levels.
There is also the phenomenon of created memories, for which there is some evidence: subjects can be induced, by sensory experience, to have memories of things that never occurred, so long as they are reasonable. While the technique is not as sensational or dramatic as dramatizations of post-hypnotic suggestion, it has been shown that showing a commercial that leads a person to consider how they might have felt while drinking a soda on the beach provides sense-data that may in future be equivalent to, and mistaken for, the memory of a genuine event.
"This should be a great focus of research," the author asserts. (EN: which suggests that it hasn't been researched as yet, and that the evidence he alludes to is likely observational and requires further study.)
In terms of brand soma, a colleague of the author suggests considering a specific question: "How would using this brand make you feel?" This question gets "straight to the essence" of somatic marker theory and is, in effect, the real question we seek to pose by asking various other questions about a subject's impression of a brand.
It is what matters most to marketing, and "I would venture as far as making this question the objective of all strategic and tactical brand decisions." How does the customer feel about the brand? How would they feel if the firm made a change?
Using The Halo Effect
Oddly enough, a lot of research involves asking questions about the halo effect, and then ignoring the answers. We ask respondents general questions before getting down to the specific attributes and qualities we are considering adjusting, but often discard or downplay the significance of that general impression.
Whether the halo represent the brand soma, or its salience, or just its popularity, the fact remains that the general impression of a brand, good or bad, has a high correlation to the perception of the individual attributes in which researchers (mistakenly) place primary interest.
Because this general impression makes such a significant difference, assessing and improving it should be a major objective rather than being treated as background noise.