Graham Page
If the vast majority of brand decision-making is unconscious, marketers should be focusing almost exclusively on subconscious processes to truly understand consumers and influence buying decisions. They’re not, because they shouldn’t.
One of the most often used metaphors in research is an iceberg. This denotes the idea that what people tell us, or themselves, about brands and ads is just the beginning – and it’s the rich, deep associations below that level of awareness that are the ‘real’ influences on consumer choices.
This is used a lot in current discussions of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ thinking – with the implication that ‘fast’ thinking always wins, and therefore simply asking questions is a fool’s errand. The story is a bit more complicated than that, and if we are to guide marketing decisions effectively we need to be clear on what we should be measuring.
While it’s indisputable that a huge amount of the brain’s energy is consumed by processes below the level of awareness, many of these have to do with biological regulation and low-level sensory processing, not decision-making. There seem to be no scientific papers that substantiate the ‘95% of decision-making is subconscious’ factoid
The iceberg metaphor is also at odds with evidence from Millward Brown’s studies of brands. When we apply research tools that tap into consumers’ automatic, non-conscious processes, we don’t find a bubbling mass of secret associations and responses. What they show us is that few brands are able to evoke many ideas or responses without much effort.
For instance, when we use the Harvard Implicit Association Test to measure instinctive emotional responses to brands, they tend to be very modest – and, in fact, either neutral or mildly positive – compared to the strong positive responses elicited by happy pictures of family and children, and powerfully negative responses to unpleasant images.
These findings are in fact entirely consistent with the actual science on ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ thinking. This shows that both processes contribute to decision-making, with fast processes such as instinctive emotional reactions framing and influencing the slower processes. Where possible we will use our fast processes for decision-making, such as selecting a brand. But if and when our instinctive responses are vague, muted, or absent, or if we are motivated to think more carefully, slower processing takes over.
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