One: Perception and Belief
One elementary quality that distinguishes the human mind from that of animals is in its ability to construct meaning. Our perception and our memory are mechanisms by which we survive. We do not react automatically by the superficial appearance s of things - but instead we distinguish food from poison, threat from opportunity, and friend from foe by the use of our perception and memory
Our perception and memory are generally reliable - but at times they can lead us astray. The greater the complexity of our situation, the more likely we will make mistakes, sometimes serious ones, by applying overly simplistic reasoning.
(EN: Pause here to consider that many books on psychology tend to overlook this, and wish to discredit human reasoning by suggesting that the exceptions overthrow the rules - that because perception can sometimes be faulty, that we should disregard it at all times. Hopefully the author of the present book keeps a reasonable perspective.)
The author mentions cave-paintings from the Neanderthal period as evidence of the ability to think abstractly. A depiction of a hunt is drawn from memory, solid silhouettes representing real objects. While this is extremely primitive, it shows a mental capability that no other species of animal has ever demonstrated.
We may project emotional states and mental capabilities on our house pets and other animals by projecting intelligence onto their posture, expression, or behaviors - but none has demonstrated a capability to think in the manner of our primitive human ancestors.
The author then switches to the concept of brand, originally a mark burned onto an object to indicate its owner or maker. The brand is similar to the silhouette of a man in a cave painting - meant to represent something in minimal detail. But a brand is more similar to a photograph than a cave painting: it is meant to depict not just "a man" but a specific man, or at least members of a specific tribe who are presumed to have similar (if not identical) characteristics.
There's a bit of hair-splitting about what instills a brand with meaning. Certainly, the maker wants customers to believe certain things about their brand - and for many years the maker was virtually the only source of information about what their brand meant. But even in those times, word-of-mouth trumped anything a brand had to say about itself. If a friend said that a brand was low-quality, then the customer perceived the brand as being low quality, regardless of what was said in the commercial advertisements.
In the present day, the customer is more vocal. Thanks largely to the Internet and social media, what individual customers have to say about brands reaches far more many people than it did before - and as before they have a far more credible voice than the brand itself. It is accurate to say that brands are now in the customers' hands and that what people say about a brand is more meaningful than what the brand has to say about itself.
Transferable Association
Transferrable association is the idea that a symbol associated to one thing is transferred to another.
Consider the example of racism: a person has a negative experience (or even just hears negative things) about a person of a given race, and then assumes the same qualities to be true of any person of that race.
Or consider the example of brand extensions: a person has a positive experience with a brand of mustard, and assumes the same quality of experience is true of mayonnaise that is marketed under the same brand.
Or consider brand transference: one company sells its brand to a different company, and the customer expects that the quality of the product will remain the same even though it is now produced in a different facility by a different manufacturer.
In the most basic sense of brand, association is transferred from one object to another. That is, it is expected that there will be consistency in quality among the items of the same manufacturer: one Ford automobile is just as good as another, and if you enjoyed driving a Mustang when you were sixteen, you can count on having the same experience if you buy the same brand at age sixty.
Originally, the concept of branding communicated ownership (to identify the stock of one rancher so that he could claim it when herds mixed in the open pasture). Then, it came to indicate the producer (when the bread of a given baker went to market, buyers expected it to be of a given quality given the bread he had provided in the past).
The author suggests that this transition took place in the 1800s. (EN: There is historical evidence of it being even sooner than that. The quality of "Damascus steel" is praised in ancient manuscripts.)
I Buy Therefore I Am
Brands are "socioeconomic indicators of status and social belonging."
Consider conspicuous consumerism: people not only have expectations of a brand, but they associate specific qualities to a person who consumes a given brand. We assume that a person who consumes luxury brands is successful and wealthy. We assume that a person who consumes budget brands is smart and thrifty.
These qualities are often internalized: when it is advertised that "choosy moms choose" a given brand of peanut butter, mothers are meant to feel that if they choose a different brand, that they are bad mothers to their children.
The consumption of a given brand leads to a sense of belonging to a social group of people who use the same brand, or distinction from those people who use other brands. It an be seen even among young children that there is a desire to use specific brands to "fit in" with a desirable group and distinguish oneself from the members of an undesirable group.
In the present time consumers have many more choices and far less time than ever before. Even those inclined to consider purchases carefully cannot do so for every purchase. And since we know that advertising is biased and even critics have their own agendas, we increasingly turn to other consumers as a guide - not their words, which are unreliable, but their actions: we are attentive to what they do, what they buy, what we use, as their best and most genuine endorsement.
The subconscious is mentioned: constantly bombarded by commercial messaging and exposed to thousands of brands a day, we are inundated and are no longer fully aware of all the information thrust upon us.
We often make decisions and honestly believe we have acted on our own judgment, not recognizing the degree to which we have been influenced by other sources. And of course there is rationalization: we act on impulse, emotions, and blind faith - then rationalize an irrational choice after the fact to assure ourselves we are in control.
To some degree, "what do others think of this brand?" and "what will others think of me if I purchase this brand?" influence our buying decisions. The more likely it is that we will be observed or judged for a purchase, the more that the opinion of others (or our expectations of what their opinion might be) influence a purchasing decision.
From Object Relations To Objective Relationships
Freud is mentioned briefly, with the note that "psychology has progressed" much since his whimsical theories of the unconscious mind that read more like mythology than science. However, his idea of the subconscious or unconscious mind has remained influential.
It is undeniable that the mind does not record perception flawlessly and comprehensively, and plausible that human behavior is influenced by mental phenomena that are the result of things we did not focus attention upon or deliberate, but were still perceived and somewhat haphazardly integrated into our knowledge.
It is also maintained that our fundamental relationship with the external world involves a primary evaluation of whether the things we perceive are sorted very quickly into the category of opportunity or threat, which trigger the emotion of desire or fear, which trigger the behavior of attraction or repulsion. It is not always in terms of sex or violence, though these are the more primitive urges to which things are associated.
So it can be plausibly maintained that we base our interactions with the world on our perception and interpretation of objects and our relationships to them, and this is often in a direct manner: that a given item is something that gives pleasure. But there is also a more holistic valuation of objects - whether the pleasure is desirable, whether there are costs associated to experiencing it.
There's also some consideration of the level of confidence we place in our analysis of the objects that surround us: we are very often not sure, and act in uncertainty. Or worse, we feel very certain of our evaluations and are shocked to find they are incorrect. The latter is often a traumatic incident that undermines our certainty in general and causes us to reconsider our evaluations. If we experience a string of traumatic incidents, we begin to doubt ourselves entirely.
Human behavior is often a "Quixotic quest for perfection" in which man is constantly disappointed by experiences that do not meet his expectations, and a constant attempt to refine and perfect his analytical abilities to act with greater certainty and confidence. This requires him to think outside his own subjective perception of objects, to consider other perspectives in hopes of a more objective and accurate evaluation.
(EN: There is no explicit connection to brand marketing here, though it seems clear enough that the expectations created by marketing can lead to an increased number and degree of traumatic discoveries. When marketers oversell, consumers are disappointed, and tend to lose faith in a brand. When all marketers oversell, the value of brand is universally diminished.)
Holistic Brand Design
A few random bits about the psychology of design. Just bits and pieces: Curves project emotion and belonging whereas straight lines represent balance and perfection. Circular shapes suggest femininity whereas angular shapes suggest masculinity. For motion, things that move in unison suggest that they are to be considered as a single organized unit. In sound, dominant chords provide a sense of finality and completeness.
More importantly, there is the concept of holistic design. The concept of "getalt" maintains that the mind assembles parts into a whole. We perceive eyes, nose, mouth, but these are merely parts of the face. We attribute many things to a person: their appearance, the sound of their voice, the way they dress, and so on. And we are very attentive to where the elements that compose a whole match or clash.
This is significant in brand design: it is very common for different groups to be involved in different brand contact. One group of people design a logo, another manages print advertising, a third produces a television advertisement, and so on. It is even done sometimes by intent, to customize the message to the audiences of two magazines read by entirely different demographic segments.
The problem with this is that customers don't experience brand elements in isolation, and do not receive every advertisement or brand experience with a blank canvas. Instead, the various contacts are evaluated according to a schema they have constructed - and when any single experience is discordant, the brand's identity becomes less definite, less integral, and less trustworthy.
Cultural Relativity
All symbols are relevant to a given culture, and the same thing can have very different meanings in different cultures. An excellent example of this is studies in color.
There is the theory that colors mean certain things: the notion that "red means danger" is backed by various theories that sound entirely plausible (it is a color of fire, of blood, of many poisonous plants) that suggest that there is something fundamental to the human psyche that makes red function as a warning to the entire species. But it the far east, red is a symbol of happiness and good fortune.
Simply stated, there is not interpretation of color that is universal to the entire human species - the meaning of color is learned. The notion that blue is for boys and pink is for girls seems deeply ingrained in western culture - but it actually began as a trend in the 1960s.
This is not to say that color is unimportant. One 2006 study claimed that the color of a product can create as much as a 90% different in impulse buying. Other studies have similar findings, suggesting the color of a logo, of a product, or the background against which a product is displayed, can have statistically significant effects on consumer behavior.
It's also suggested that a great deal of the nonsense about the significance of color is discovered after the fact rather than planned in advance. The designer "simply liked the color scheme" for aesthetic reasons, and the differences in customer behavior was discovered afterward.
Consistency Creates Loyalty to Brand
The author speaks of the manner in which the sensory experience of a product supports its brand. Shape, color, size, texture, scent, taste, sound, and so on are crafted in a manner that is unique to the brand - which elements are most significant largely depend on the product and brand, but their consistent use makes them part of the brand identity.
There is some consideration of the intrinsic meaning of the elements, but this tends to be meaningful only to the first-time consumer: the logo and shape of the package communicate certain ideas to a person who has never used a product in hopes of setting a positive expectation.
But more importantly, these elements create and satisfy a need for consistency on the part of the regular customer who purchases the brand regularly. They know what the package looks like and can select it from a shelf of other products with minimal thought or attention. They know what a given food product tastes like and expects the taste to be consistent with their past experience, and are highly dissatisfied if the recipe has changed.
Rebranding is an attempt to be more appealing to new customers, or those who have rejected the product in favor of a different one in the past. But it is also a betrayal of the expectations that have been set for existing customers.
The same can be said for the brand's overall message and personality. When a brand that originally stood for luxury and exclusivity panders to the general public to boost sales, it betrays the expectation of its existing customers. An excellent example of this is Mercedes-Benz, once considered a luxury brand, which then began producing cheaper automobiles to gain sales from the middle market. It immediately lost its cache with existing customers, and is unlikely ever to be considered a luxury brand again.
(EN: It's noted that MB revived the Maybach brand in an attempt to re-enter the luxury car market, realizing it was better to start over than try to restore the status of its own brand. Consumers instead consider the Maybach to be a Mercedes model - it's referred to in the press as the "Mercedes Maybach" - and it has not been able to gain much footing in the market thus far.)
Familiarity Breeds Contentment
Across all cultures, people appreciate familiar routines. There is an occasional appetite for a novel experience, but for most interactions people are most comfortable when they know what to expect and most contented when their expectations are met. Consistency provides a sense of security in the outcome and reduces effort necessary to obtain a goal.
There is also a psychological theory called the "familiarity liking effect," which suggests that people gravitate toward things that are known to them. People tend to use a brand they used before because they know what to expect in any repeat encounter. Even when the experience was not entirely satisfactory, they prefer "the devil you know." When encountering an unfamiliar brand, they express greater trust when it seems similar to a brand they already know.
Also, people learn by repetition. The more experiences they have with a given brand, the less likely they will be to switch to another brand. In that sense, consumer loyalty does not lead to repeat purchases, but results from it.
Familiar brands also get more attention and are better remembered. An example is a conference where people were asked to recall street posters that had been placed near the venue. There was greater recognition of brands they already knew - meaning they were either more likely to notice or remember familiar brands than unfamiliar ones. The author suggests that this is the value of repeated advertising: the first several exposures may not be noticed at all, but over time the repetition creates familiar and makes the advertisement more likely to get attention.
Familiarity also causes people to overlook details that are unusual in any occurrence. For example, people know what the back of a penny looks like, but only because they remember the major features. While they have seen thousands of coins, they do not pay attention to the fine details, and are often surprised when someone points them out. Likewise, a person who uses the same brand may overlook minor differences in each iteration and focus on the general qualities, unless one of the minor differences was obstructive or particularly annoying.
It's mentioned that proofreaders will often overlook blatant mistakes in text - such as the1631 "Sinner's Bible" in which there was a commandment that "Thou shalt commit adultery," missing the word "not." It is reckoned that the proofreaders had become word-blind, in the same way that drivers develop highway hypnosis and fail to notice signage after a few hours of driving. Errors are the unusual details that are overlooked in an otherwise consistent sequence of experiences.
On the other hand, the brain will create fictitious memories: a person who usually has a certain drink will assume that he was having that brand on any occasion in which he was drinking, forgetting that in a given instance his usual brand was out of stock. Brands find themselves inserted into memories of events at which they were not present - for better or for worse.
Memory in general is a construct - it is not an accurate representation of reality, but the mind's attempt to create a record based on sensory impressions. Even in the short term, things get mixed up, left out, and added to our mental accounts. The mind attempts to draw general principles from specific encounters, and is not faithful to the details.
I Was There - I Think
More is said about the inaccuracies of memory. They mention the Hirst experiments, which asked students in a in New York City school where they were on the date of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. Over time, their memories eroded -it wasn't that they forgot where they were at the time, but changed their story. They were absolutely positive that they were someplace they were not, doing something they were not, on the date of the attacks.
George Bush, president at the time, is often ridiculed for errors in his own memories of the events of that day. He had been visiting a school in Florida, was nowhere near a television set when his aide informed him of the event, but later indicated that he had seen the video. He probably had, but later that day - the events were simply sequenced in his memory.
The author suggests that our interpretation of witnessed reality is similar to the manner in which we remember and interpret dreams: the human mind attempts to make sense of things and bring order to the chaos of perception - but will often distort the truth in order to create a consistent story.