3: How Brands Live in Our Memory
The chapter begins with a shrug: "Memory works in mysterious ways, most of which are unavailable to conscious introspection." In the broadest sense, memory is the storage of information and the connections among pieces of information - but it's not clear why certain things and connections end up in our memories.
It's also noted that memories are based on perception, which means they can also be based on misperception - we do not remember things as they actually were any more than we presently perceive things as they actually are. In fact, memory tends to become more distorted for lack of a sensory panorama against which to test it. Moreover, the processor "remembering" is more accurately described as "reconstructing" - as we are creating a mental replica of an event based on what we recall, and filling in the missing gaps with imaginings that seem plausible.
In neurology, the activities of sensation and memory both use neural networks, and it can be observed that the pattern of activity in the brain when remembering something is similar but not a perfect replica of the pattern that existed when it was experienced. We are generally better at remembering visual and audio details that tactile, olfactory, or flavor - which is why we can remember the look of something we've eaten but not recall the taste (and have to imagine it) or recall an incident in which we were injured but not relive the physical sensation of pain.
In theory, our memory includes our entire life's experience. Recognizing the word "horse" causes us to remember every sensory impression of a horse, along with everything he have ever heard, read, or thought about horses - which is far too much for the mind to handle, so instead our memory deals with loose amalgamations of past data to create a construction of the concept. That is, we have the mental image of a horse, not memories of every horse we have ever seen, that is called upon when we recognize the word. And the same is said of brands.
Going back to the notion of an imperfect reconstructing, the author mentions various experiments with and anecdotes about eye-witness testimony and the way in which a question is phrased can influence how the mind constructs the memory. One study (Loftus) showed individuals a recording of a car accident and noticed differences in the way people recalled the recording when questioned - specifically, one set was asked about what happened when the vehicles "hit" one another and the second was asked about what happened when they "smashed into" one another. The group who was primed with "smashed" reported the cars moving at a higher rate of speed, and even recalls seeing broken glass when no glass was seen being broken in the accident. Other studies not that the more often we are asked to remember something, the more the mind revises the memory. Each time it is recalled, various details are altered and the alterations of previous recollections are underscored by repetition.
So conscious memory is imperfect and entirely fallible - but this should not lead us to accept the opposite extreme, that it is so flawed that it is useful for nothing. Human memory is sufficiently accurate for practical purposes and one does not need to have a photographic memory in everyday life. There are in fact very few occasions in which perfection is necessary or even desirable - and even then "good enough" is sufficiently accurate to accomplish a given objective.
Memory is important to brand because brand exists in the memories of the market. If people were unable to remember what they heard about a brand or what they experienced with a brand in the past, it would be pointless. But we don't need them to have a photographic memory that recalls every detail with perfect fidelity. We simply need them to have an overall positive impression of the brand that is sufficient to get them to purchase it, use it, and recommend it to others. A vague sense that the brand "is good" is sufficient.
There's a bit more consideration of explicit/implicit memory. There are very few occasions (outside of school) where we attempt to force things into our memory or make a point of trying to remembers something (a person's name, where we parked the car, etc.) The majority of things that we remember are received implicitly - we receive sense-data in the normal course of events, notice things without concentrating on them, and they become part of memory even though we had no intent to memorize them. These implicit memories can be more reliable and more permanent than explicit ones - which is the reason we can often remember a person's face, the clothing they wear, or some odd phrase that they said but cannot, even with effort, recall their name.
The implication for branding is that we make the strongest impression without trying to make one - and the moments when we are trying very hard to get a prospect to remember our name and the qualities we wish them to associate to our brand are less valuable to recollection than the incidental experiences people have with the brand.
He then mentions the associative nature of memory: we remember things better when they are connected to other things in our mind - so the strongest brands are connected to many things. Consider the approach to advertising that places an image of a product against a white backdrop - this certainly enables the viewer to focus on the product without any distractions, but it also gives them nothing to connect to the brand. It's better to give the user a familiar object to associate the product. For example, dogs are very popular in commercials because it enables people to connect the product to an animal that they are likely to see very often - and every time they see a dog, they remember the brand. There can be some argument as to whether it's best to have one strong association or many weaker ones (although many strong is definitely better than few weak).
There's a brief consideration of the topic of priming: the way that people are influenced to think because of something they recently encountered. There is the experiment in which people were asked to write a two-digit number on a piece of paper before participating in a mock auction and those who wrote a higher number routinely made higher bids than those who wrote a lower number. In everyday life, we know not to approach someone who is having a bad day because they are primed to be in a negative and non-cooperative mood. In commercials, special attention is given to the events that occur before the brand is introduced so the user is primed to make a positive association.
Memory has also been described as a network of semantic associations based on the relationship of concepts. A common trick question is to ask someone what cows drink - and many people respond "milk" immediately, without pausing to consider that cows give milk, but drink water. This is because the concept of milk is associated to cows and associated to drinks - so it's a simple equation that cow and drink have milk in common. (EN: I've seen a bit more on this example, and it was found that asking someone what cows eat does not cause people to respond "beef," which does not disprove the theorem, only underscores that it's a "sometimes" rather than "always.")
Mnemonic associations are also different from one person to another. While we attempt to create a common language, each person has different experiences and is exposed to different information through the course of their lives. People generally have the same idea when they talk about concrete things such as water or the color blue because these constructs are based on common sense-data, but abstract concepts such as "love" and "satisfaction" are difficult to define and the notion of a "good government" is something that has been hotly debated for millennia.
When it comes to brands, advertisers attempt to create associations in the mind of the market, but suffer from the same problems. People generally agree on things that sense data can validate (Pepsi is brown), but more abstract concepts are difficult (Pepsi tastes good) and emotional associations (drinking Pepsi makes me feel good) depend more on personal experience than the information that marketers attempt to communicate to the market.
So in the case of existing products, it would be more accurate to suggest that marketers attempt to guide to the brand fantasy but do not control or create it. On the other hand, if a brand is unknown, the person has no exposure to it, and marketers have greater power to create associations without being contradicted by experience (because there is no experience).