These days you can’t take a step in the world of marketing and marketing research without hearing how the unconscious mind — AKA System 1 — is all you need to understand and influence consumer behavior. Indeed, those murky depths where our emotions are thought to have their hands on the wheel is a fascinating and helpful place to explore. And it’s good to live in a world where there are now techniques giving us a flashlight into what was previously dark. But that view alone is not the answer and can lead to wrong conclusions that can have disastrous effects for brands.
If our emotions were completely responsible for decision making, I would be driving a Maserati and not a Mazda. Our emotions are not so all-powerful that they can cause us to lay down our credit card and open up a financial vein. There is a far more important conversation on emotions and their power that needs to be had — the conversation about the connection of meaning to emotion that people have understood since their first urge to share experiences. And that is the role of story. It is when emotions and story truly intersect that the full power of branded communications is unleashed.
Robert McKee, the world-renowned author of “Story,” has famously quipped, “Stories are equipment for living.” It is story we turn to and learn from throughout our lives. Stories offer a conceptual framework of the world, and when well-told they offer the conscious mind — AKA System 2 — the scaffolding of understanding our minds are constantly searching for to keep us safe and happy.
We constantly draw on memory to live our lives. It’s the “remembered self,” as Daniel Kahneman points out in the book that introduced the masses to Systems 1 and 2, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” that drives choice.
In that book, he talks about the experiencer self and the remembered self. The experiencer self lives in the moment and is all about what is currently happening and how one feels right now. The remembered self-thinks back to what has happened, how it felt, and the result. As Kahneman says, “The remembered self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score…and it is the one that makes decisions.”
Over these many years consulting on branded communications we have seen countless examples of ‘emotional advertising’ that lacked a coherent narrative and caused confusion. That confusion, where the System 2 mind cannot get a conceptual hold on what was happening, dissipates even the most profound emotional moments, turning them into an entertaining vapor that never attaches to the brand. When the opposite occurs, and a well-told story contains relevant emotions, that emotional power is released and attaches to the brand. That is the very definition of great branded communications.
So, no, System 1 is not the answer, any more than System 2 was the answer. It is the collaboration of a total mind found in great emotional storytelling that creates powerful and positive branded memories. And it’s those memories brands should care about, the ones the remembered self draws upon to truly make decisions.
by Emily Higgins, VP of Client Services at Ameritest (emily@ameritest.com)
Emily oversees client relationships, ensuring clients receive the highest level of service.
For more information on how your brand can tell its most impactful stories, please visit www.ameritest.com.
