In the previous post, we covered a super high level understanding of memory studies and ended that post with the fact that we can take advantage of memory categories so much that we can manipulate our memories to memorize obscure sequences of information (e.g. decks of shuffled cards).
So, now that we have covered that, we can move on to why this is important to marketing!
To very briefly recap from that last post, our minds like to categorize stuff into things of like nature. Being the middle of September, we are now segueing into the season of autumn. When you think of autumn, you might immediately have some feelings and items that pop into your head. When I think of autumn, I think of the following things:
- Cool weather
- Warm hoodies
- Changing color of leaves on trees
- Dust from harvested corn fields
- Fun times at the pumpkin patch with friends
- Pumpkin spice lattes (because I'm basic)
- And way more!
I would categorize that list of things above in a positive light, so it's not a stretch at all to say I like all things that are associated with autumn.
This is crucial to understand with marketing because marketers need to establish their product or service within another category of positivity within the everybody's minds.
And if you think about it, the biggest brands out there today do this on a regular basis. Coca-Cola commercials want you associate Coca-Cola to good times with friends on a hot summer day. Charmin wants you to associate their toilet paper with ideas of softness and cuddliness, hence the friendly bears. Even Mountain Dew with their crazy Puppy Monkey Baby commercial wants you to associate them with crazy, off the wall things.
This sort of marketing concept extends beyond even trying to sell a product or service. It falls right in line with marketing ourselves in our workplaces. If we want to sell our leaders on the idea that we're good for a role bigger than the one we have today, then we have craft our behavior in a way that aligns with what a leader expects out of that role.
Back to marketing products and services, there is another thing we need to keep in mind. The general public's mind and attitude toward things changes over time.
Car advertisements are the biggest reflection of this. In the later half of the 20th century, car advertisements focused on the utility and function of their advertised vehicle. In modern times, society as a whole is much more focused on being in tune with our feelings, and modern car advertisements are a reflection of this. Instead of placing an emphasis on utility and function, car ads focus more on how cool or fun or comfortable it is to drive a certain vehicle.
So the next time you think about marketing your product, don't focus on the nitty gritty details. Like Steve Jobs with the original iPod, nobody cares about MP3 formats or this many gigabytes. They are care about 1,000 songs in your pocket. These ideas are much more likely to stick than the ones lining out all the details.
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