Scientific proof that brands excite brains

Ever wonder if all those investments in your brand are worth it? Wonder no more. Today's Wall Street Journal reports on research being presented at the Radiological Society of North America today that shows that strong brands excite parts of the brain in a significant and positive way.

They selected 20 adult men and women who had a mean age of 28 and a high level of education, and placed them one at a time inside an MRI machine that had been rigged with a small video screen. The logo of Volkswagen flashed across the screen for three seconds, followed by the logo of a lesser-known European brand called Seat (also owned by Volkswagen).

Film of their brains during that sequence found that the Volkswagen logo produced a strong pattern of activity in the part of the brain associated with positive emotions, self-identification and rewards. By contrast, the Seat logo provoked activity in the parts of the brain associated with negative emotion as well as memory -- suggesting that the brain had to work for a response.

What surprised Dr. Born is how little either logo activated the decision-making part of the brain, even though the subjects were required -- purely for purposes of ensuring concentration -- to answer a question about each image.

But the bigger surprise was that under examination by MRI, brains respond just as powerfully to strong insurance brands as to strong automotive brands, says Dr. Born. The result surprised her, she adds, because "cars are a status symbol. Insurance is an abstraction."

Branding. It's not just for orange juice or automobiles any more. Now if we could just get similar neurological data for marketing in general, a marketer's life would be so much easier.

Technorati Tags: Brain science, Branding, Marketing, Neurology