Marketing & Sales to Baby Boomer & Older Consumers - Part 12
by James J. Gilmartin BIO AND CONTACT INFO
It's only in the last decade that most of the literature has been written on how the brain functions and how we process communications. In this continuing series, we'll share recent findings of brain research having relevance to marketing and sales to baby boomer and older consumers. Author David B. Wolfe, a noted expert on Developmental Relationship Marketing contributed much to the findings discussed.
12. Initial determination of information relevance occurs unconsciously.
When a person sees an ad, the right brain initially determines if the ad has personal relevance. The sequential reasoning processes of the left-brain only go to work on the ad after it has reached consciousness. The right brain conducts a process called information triage to reduce information flow to levels the conscious mind, with limited working memory (RAM) can handle. The primary criterion is relevance to a person's interests.
MARKETING IMPLICATION: Imagine having a conversation in your office or at a social gathering when you hear your name come up in another conversation not far from you. Your brain was hearing the other conversation all along, but only when your name was mentioned did it see fit to alert your conscious mind to the other conversation. That's what information triage is about. Creating product messages that survive information triage is the biggest challenge in marketing. It has become fashionable to complain about advertising clutter. However, the clutter problem is in the brain, not on a television screen or in a magazine. When a message has relevance to a person's interest, the right brain will take note. When we talk about having a "double take," we acknowledge the right brain's ability to pick up in a nanosecond something that has relevance to our interests.
Don't Muddle the Message
Bank marketing and sales professionals often pay little attention to how the consumer thinks and processes information. Research has shown that the right hemisphere of the brain processes emotional information and the left processes logical information such as product demonstrations. This knowledge can help to avoid blunders that might turn interest into disinterest.
Communications that evoke emotional responses typically produce a high level of processing activity in the right hemisphere. Unfortunately, many communications that draw the viewer, listener or reader into an emotional scene, abruptly or quickly cut to product information. Deep inside the brain, this action causes trouble. The right hemisphere is still highly active making it difficult for the brain to process words (the brain only processes images). In short, the timing can muddle the message.
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