Conversation #8 - Breakthroughs in brain science will test marketers’ little grey cells

It’s official - our decisions are not entirely rational! Advances in neuroscience mean there is ever-increasing understanding of how the brain works. And this has led to a much greater understanding of how decisions, including the purchase decisions marketers need to influence, are made.

The evidence that it’s the older more primitive part of our brain (responsible for emotions such as fear and love) that powers decision making, leaving our ‘thinking’ brain to post-rationalise, has big implications for businesses and marketers.

Driving positive emotional connections with employees internally and customers externally is not a soft and ‘nice to do’ goal, but critical to strong business performance.

1. Lead your (probably highly rational) organisation to acknowledge and act on this by having a good command of the evidence and showing the connection between customers' emotions and business results.

2. Re-appraise approaches to research, insight development, innovation and brand building, to see where this thinking can help.

3. Consider the implications of this thinking for the way decisions get made internally, and for how marketing needs to engage differently with other business functions.

Let us know what you think. Submit your response here and we’ll post asap.