Some Marketing Isn't Rocket Science

And I bet you thought advertising should inform consumers about what benefits a product has.

Apparently just pounding them with the name is better than anything else. Recent research shows that when we are presented with two choices, one known and one unknown, we will pick the known one-- even if we know nothing about it. For companies trying to revive dead or dormant brands, it means they aren’t always swimming upstream. Focus groups pick Ovaltine because they’ve heard of it and figure it must be good. There is even a fancy two-dollar term for this: the recognition heuristic.

A new book entitled Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious follows studies that had people tasting the same, identical peanut butter from three jars and overwhelmingly (75%) choosing the one with the brand name. Children given French fries in McDonald’s packaging insisted those fries (identical to the others) tasted better. The alarming conclusion from all this is that, as a species, we’re not very bright, since even subjects in a marketing experiment who were asked to choose between different airlines invariably picked the one they knew best, even when presented with figures about that airline’s crashes and safety shortcomings.

Apparently we’re hard-wired to choose what we know, since brain scans show choice is a two-step process: the first component of a decision is the subconscious decision whether to rely on the recognition principle, or not. Maybe we buy based on what advertisers are telling us to? You will now do as I say….

(Due to the Labor Day Holiday, there will be no post on Monday, September 7th; regular posts will resume Tuesday, September 8th at 8 AM GMT)

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