How the Brain Sees Advertising - Ep. 41

Foreign. Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of CPG Insiders. This is Justin Gerard and with me as always is the late, the great Mark Young. So today we're going to be starting a new series of shows. Mark has written a fantastic book that everyone is going to be able to read coming here. What say about four or five weeks from now?

Pretty soon.

Pretty soon. So the book is titled Hypnotizing. So it's a book all about understanding advertising creative and how the mind interprets it and how to, how to increase your effectiveness. Is that about right? Is that sum it up?

Yeah, it really is. I mean when you look at the title of the book, as you said is Hypnotizing. But it's really hypnotizing. T I S I N G was really hypnosis and advertising put together and purpose of the book is how to take the things of neuro, linguistics, programming, neuroscience, hypnotic language patterns and incorporate science into copywriting and ad creation. Because it's not random. Now you know, doing a 30 second radio spot doesn't mean just yell at me about what you're selling. The idea is how do I use words, how do I use cadences of words, how do I use tonality, how do I use different phrases and positions and metaphors to create a much higher response in people than they otherwise would normally have?

Right. Well, and as we've, we've, we've had a few shows in the past, we've talked about, about creative and different approaches to it and this is a practice that we implement every day here at our agency. And as you said Mark, it's really about understanding that at the foundation people buy products and people are programmed in a certain way. Our minds are all programmed in a very similar way to function in a similar way. So as soon as you understand the programming, then you're able to effectively communicate. And we've talked about this before that we can't make people buy products they do not want or need.

Correct.

So what these practices are here for is to help people and to get them past their fears and the barriers from making those good decisions in their lives.

Yeah. And that's the idea behind good advertising. Good advertising doesn't sell ice cubes to Eskimos.

Right.

Good advertising presents products and services to individuals where these products and services can enhance their life. Now enhance their life could be medication enhancer life could be through prestige of ownership, it could be through comfort, it could be through flavor. There's a number of ways that we can enhance somebody's life. But the Key here is people. Normally, people have built in fears and built in defenses against buying something because we don't want people to think we're foolish, and we don't want to think we're foolish. So let me give you an example. Think about how people behave when they buy a new car. People will go buy a new car. Let's say somebody buys a new car and it has a sticker on it that says $45,000. There's a sticker in the window says $45,000, and you drive the car to work, and your work friends come out and they see your new car. What's the first thing that most people will do? They won't tell them I paid sticker price for the car. They'll start bragging about what kind of deal they got. Well, it says 45,000, but I only paid 36,000. I beat him up. I got free paint. Paint, ceramic coating. I got extended warranty. Whatever the case is, they don't want people to think they're foolish and pay too much for it. So we have these fears of how we're perceived, and we also don't want to be taken advantage of. Now, the other thing we have to look at is, why do people buy things? So they don't just buy things because, I mean, yes, they buy things because they need something, but it's not the only motivator. If people only bought things for utilitarian purposes, then everybody would be driving around in a little smart car because a $20,000 little tiny car will get you from home to work in relatively the same time as a Rolls Royce will do it, Right?

The average American who maybe drives 30 minutes to work and back home and maybe stops at the store, that would all be accomplished with that car, could.

All do it with that car, right? So why isn't everybody in a little tiny smart car? Well, for some people, it's prestige. I don't want to see people see me running around in a roller skate. I want people to see me in a Rolls Royce or a Cadillac, whatever the case is. For some people, it would be safety. Those little things look like death traps to me. I want to have a, you know, I'm going to go buy a Volvo because I know you can crash them into a wall and walk away. For other people, it might be, well, I want more legroom, I want more headroom. I want comfort. There's all these different motivators, and most of these motivators are not conscious motivators. They're unconscious motivators.

So I want you to stop right there. I want you to stop right there because I think we're really diving into something. So let's back up for a minute. So at the foundation, where we started, as we talked about, people buy products, right? So we're talking about them making this type of decision. So let's just start at the foundation because obviously all of that starts with what starts with the brain. The brain is where all of this begins, where all your decisions are made and is where all these conflicts, conversations happen. So let's just talk from the foundation. How is the brain constructed? From a very, let's start, big picture here.

So let's say how the brain functions rather than how it's constructed.

We'll go with that because we're going.

To get into construction. We would start talking about the amygdala, right? And different actual lobes and parts of the brain.

Let's talk about functionality, let's talk about how it operates.

On the surface. You have a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. And when you think of the conscious mind, think about seeing an iceberg and you see how much of the ice you see out of the water, the unconscious mind is below the water a lot more iceberg. A representation that we often use. And this goes all the way back to 1956 to a researcher by the name of Miller. And what he figured out was that the conscious brain and the unconscious brain have massive discrepancies in their ability. So think of your conscious mind as being a grape. Now, that grape is sitting on top of a beach ball. Huge difference in size. And between the grape and the beach ball lies a dime laying flat. So a grape sitting on the flat side of a dime sitting on a beach ball. The grape represents your conscious awareness, the beach ball represents your unconscious awareness. The dime represents critical faculty. Now, what Miller discovered was that the conscious brain of the average human can process seven bits of information per second, plus or minus two. So you might go up to nine and you might also be a five. This is the reason telephone numbers are seven digits. And in fact, there was a time in history where France tried to move to an eight digit phone number. And the people of France revolted over this eight digit phone number problem. And the reason was because seven digits is what people can remember. And humans create algorithms, they create cadences for how they remember phone numbers. So you tend to remember phone numbers in groups of threes and fours or in groups of threes and twos. That's how you tend to remember phone numbers. So you'll remember 9, 3, 7 and 11. 11.

Right. Okay, makes sense.

And you tend to remember, and area codes don't really trip people up because area codes are constants. You know your area code and you know all the area codes around you. So we have the seven bits of information. Now the unconscious mind, the beach ball, it can process thousands of bits of information per second. So an example of the beach ball would be you're driving to work. You get in the car. Now when you get in your car, do you stare at the key and think, okay, now where does this go? Okay. Okay, I'm going to insert this into this slot on the steering column. And then what do I do? So I'm going to turn it clockwise and then I'm going to hear some kind of spinning sound. Now how long should I hear the spinning sound before the car starts? Okay, seems to be running. Now there's this shift thing over here. Should I move that somehow? And what does the D stand for? Oh, that's drive. Maybe I'll put it in that. And then maybe I should press on this pedal over here.

Exhausted by the time you start to pull out of the driveway. Right.

Your brain, that, that unconscious part of your brain, which is the big part.

Of your brain, the beach ball.

This is the beach ball. It's a pattern recognition machine. So it's. When it comes to driving a car, the pattern recognition machine has been developing that pattern since you were a tiny child driving with your parents. Because since you were a kid, you watched your parents put the key in the car and you watched them put the drive and the shifter in and you saw them press the gas pedal and you know, they turned the steering wheel and this is why a little kid can sit on your lap and steer the car. Because the unconscious brain has already developed the patterns. So you get in your car and you drive to work. Now, on your drive to work, what are you doing? Well, as a tendency for most people, their brain is already at the location that they're headed to. So the brain's already at work when I get there. I've got a meeting at 9 o'. Clock. I've got some people I need to call at 9:30. I got a paper, I got to get out by noon. Your brain is plotting out the day. Meanwhile, you're hurling a 4,000 pound hunk of iron at 80 miles an hour down a freeway and not paying any attention to it. How is that even possible? Because your unconscious mind is driving the car. You get off the freeway, you pull into the parking lot and Guess what? You remember nothing about that trip to work today? Nothing. Why? Because you've done it a thousand times? No. Novelty. It's the same thing I do over and over. The only way that you remember that ride to work today is if something out of the norm happened.

So that would be the novelty.

That's the novelty. So if all of a sudden you saw an accident, or somebody swerved into your lane, or you saw some fabulous car that you really like that you don't normally see, you're not going to remember the trip. You did it unconsciously.

So then novelty is a foundational piece of memory.

Correct. Okay, now think about you're driving. And again, back to this unconscious mind. You're driving to work and you're driving down the freeway and I've got to do this meeting at 9 o' clock and I've got a phone call, 9:30, and I've got to do a paper by noon. And all of a sudden somebody comes whipping onto the freeway from an on ramp, flies into your lane. You instantly look in your side view mirror, is anybody next to me? You dive into the next lane, you blow your horn, you get around this person, and then your conscious brain, the seven bits of information brain, it says, what the hell was that person doing? What are they thinking? But that is after your conscious brain already took all the evasive actions necessary. Now think about this. What if that car came swerving into your lane and your little conscious brain, your seven bits of information brain, had to say, this guy's going to hit us. What should we do? And your conscious brain might say, well, we don't know if there's anybody next to us. Maybe we should change lanes. But what if there's a car there? I know, let's look in the side view mirror and see if anybody's there. Nope, it looks okay. What do we do now? Grab the round thing in front of you and turn it.

By that time you're already, you've already.

Been hit because this little seven bits of information brain can't process all that data fast enough to avoid the crash.

So then what is the conscious brain for then? If you had to assign a function, if you will, to these two things, and I also, I know we mentioned critical faculty as well, so that's something else we need to touch on.

So the critical faculty is how you process the information.

So what do you mean by how.

What are you going to do with the data? So information is coming in through, usually through that conscious brain.

Okay.

And a conscious part of your brain here's the part of it when it comes to advertising, it acts as a spam filter. So I see an ad on TV that says the Burger King Whopper and they show me and the ketchup's dripping and the tomatoes are looking beautiful and wouldn't you like to have one of those right now? And my conscious brain says that stuff, yeah, that's what it looks like on tv. But it never looks like that when I go to the restaurant and they're just trying to sell me another, you know, trying to sell me junk food or whatever the case is. That's the spam filter. The unconscious brain is having memories of all the times that you had a Whopper and it was a good experience and it's thinking, yeah, I really want to go have Whopper. I'm going to go do that. What we have to do as advertisers is we have to get past the spam filter. So ideally what we want to do is shut the spam filter off and just talk to the unconscious mind.

Where does critical faculty play in that role? Because it sounds like it goes to the conscious mind and the goal is to get to the unconscious mind.

Right? So the critical faculty is what did the conscious mind think? What will we do with that information? Is the critical faculty, what are we going to do with this data? And does the data stop there? Do we process the data? Does the data go into the unconscious mind? Now there's also another piece of work on this which is done by Daniel Kanahan, which is a Nobel prize winning doctor. He and his partner came up with something which we call System one and System two Thinking. System one thinking is quick, intuitive. So think of System one as the first impression. I walk in the room, I meet you for the first time. System one says, yeah, this guy, he seems like a nice guy. He's polite and seems cheerful and yeah, I might like to know him more. First impression, brain. System two is the working brain. That's the brain that uses calories. That's the brain that burns up energy. That's the brain that does tough calculations. So let me give you a quick example. If I was to say to you right now, two plus two equals the answer is what?

Four.

That's system one. Now if I was to say one, what's 531 divided by five times 15? System one can't answer that because system one is fast intuitive, memory based, program based. It's tapping both conscious and unconscious mind, but it's tapping into all the heuristics and all the biases that have been built up over our entire life and it's responding fast. System two kicks in when it's time to start thinking. Now, as humans, we avoid using system two.

Well, it's tough. As you said, it burns calories.

System two burns calories. It burns a lot of energy. And think about it. If I say, you know, what's 543 divided by 5 times 17? Your brain immediately goes, oh, good lord, I can, I can figure it out. But it's, it's going to be work.

Yeah, it's going to be work. Well, and on top of that, if you know, of course, correct me if I'm wrong, but if we go back all the way back in history, when at least as far back as we've been able to see where this programming really began, the decisions that had to be made by humans were really life and death and they need to be made quickly. So if a saber toothed tiger was running at you, you weren't going to use System 2 to take the time to analyze the entire environment. You were just going to do what you had to do.

So you responded with system one.

Right.

So system one tends to take charge in this environment. In the beach ball and grape scenario, these are both valid. And the grape on the beach ball, the beach ball tends to have all the power. And that's consistent, that's very consistent with how the brain works. System one is intuitive, it's quick taps into the beach ball. System two is calculating and mathematical and really leans more into the conscious brain because now I have to sit down and do the math because remember, yes, it's seven bits of information, but it's.

Seven bits of information per second at a time.

Right. So it's going to take me a minute to figure this out. And yes, I can do that. So almost they're kind of crossed.

Interesting.

So when we're buying something, we're buying things in the unconscious brain. That's where the buying decisions are coming from. But as humans, we think we're buying with the conscious mind or we think we're buying with system two, but really doing everything with system one and doing everything on an unconscious level.

So would you think that that kind of comes back around to your original example of the car? It's more of a biases that you want to feel more in control as humans, that we want to feel that we are again, for lack of better term, conscious in every one of our decisions, when actually we're not.

So here's an example. Example I Use is buying a Corvette.

Okay.

So you walk into a Chevy dealer and you decided to go to a Chevy dealer and buy a Chevy Malibu or whatever they have right now. I don't even know what they even make anymore. But let's say it's a Chevy Malibu and let's say that Malibu is $35,000 four door car, good for the family, good gas mileage, nice car, functional benefits that you need.

Yep.

And when you walk in, here's, here's a Chevy Malibu sitting on the floor and it's sitting right next to a beautiful new Corvette. And you look at the Corvette and you're like, wow, look at that. The line, all these sexy lines. It's fast and it's a convertible and it's bright red, whatever the color is. And you walk around it and you examine it. The salesman comes up and says, yeah, isn't that a beautiful car? Are you interested Corvette? No, I really came in to buy Malibu. Oh, okay. We've got many Malibu's in stock that I can show you. Did you want to sit in the Corvette before we go over to the Malibu? You mean you're welcome to sit in there if you want to just sit and try it? Well, sure. It's not going to hurt to sit in it.

No.

So what the heck, let's see what it sits like. Now you're behind the wheel, which, what is every car salesman taught to do? Get the customer behind the wheel. So you get behind a wheel and you're holding the steering wheel and you're feeling that fine hand tooled leather steering wheel and those Recaro type race seats that wrap around you and you're like, wow, this is really amazing in here. And then the salesman says, if you want to take it for a test drive, I can just grab a demo plate and we'll go out and don't worry about it. You don't have to buy it. Still take care of Malibu. But if you want to take it out and drive it, what the heck, right?

It means an opportunity. Drive a Corvette.

I've got some time. I block some time out, what the heck it's not, and indulge myself. Why not go drive this thing around the block, see what a Corvette feels like. So we get in the Corvette, we pull out onto the street. The salesman goes, don't be afraid to hit it. Just go ahead and punch the gas. You step on the gas and you just feel all this torque, how visceral this car feels. And you hear the engine just roar to life. And the top's down and your hair's blowing the wind. You're like, oh, my God, this is amazing. This really is cool. So you get back to the dealership, and the salesman says, well, what color Malibu were you looking for? I was looking for a blue one. Whatever the case is. Okay, we've got a few of those in stock. I just wanted to tell you something about the Chevy Corvette for a minute. I don't know if you know this or not, but Chevy Corvettes hold their value more than any other car built in America. And in fact, if you bought a Chevy Corvette today, you will lose less money on that car two years from today if you decide to get rid of it than you will on this Malibu. Because the Malibu will drop in price dramatically when you drive it out of here. But the Corvette won't. And with our 0 down and 0% financing we have going on, that Corvette will only cost you $200 a month more than that Malibu. And two or three years from now, when you go to sell it, you'll probably get that money back. So now, what does your conscious brain do now? By the way, everything he's doing is pitching your unconscious mind.

I mean, he's talking through emotion.

He's playing on your prestige, your emotion. I deserve this. I work hard.

Right?

You know, wouldn't it be nice? What will my neighbors think when they see me pull up in this Corvette?

Well, the test drive, like you mentioned, the. Right. And that's a. From what all emotion we talked about earlier. That's novelty for this. He's just creating a new memory for him that he wants to hold on.

To, and it's all emotion. There's no rational thinking here. However, as humans, we want to trick ourselves into thinking we have rational thinking because we don't want to say, I am just a frivolous human being and I buy silly, frivolous cars because I enjoy them. Now, by the way, I do buy frivolous, silly cars, but I actually just admit that I buy frivolous, silly cars. True, but at any rate, I want to convince people this is a. I want to go home and tell my wife why this was a good idea. So I'm going to go home and tell her, honey, we bought a new Corvette. What? We were supposed to get a Malibu, right?

You need to have the pitch ready.

No, but you need to understand something, dear. Corvettes hold their value when a Malibu will drop like a rock.

When?

Three years from now, when we go to sell this Corvette, we're going to get so much more Money back. It'll be like driving a car for free because it's worth more when we go to sell it. So this becomes the rationalization. This is how we rationalize a purchase that is made for purely emotional reason. That's why everybody doesn't drive a smart car. But we will rationalize to ourselves why we should drive a Rolls Royce or a Cadillac or a Corvette.

So with that example, and I think it's an example that a lot of people are familiar with, my wife almost bought a Camaro through that exact journey. So I'm very familiar with it. I was the one saying, well, think about it, but walk me through now. So we talked of what you. What you went through as far as top level. What happens is information comes in, and correct me if I'm wrong, information comes in through the conscious mind, that spam filter. Then that information, however the conscious mind interprets it, gets sent to critical faculty, and the critical faculty decides what to do with that. Whether the unconscious mind gets a hold of it or whatever the case may be, or how the unconscious mind gets a hold of it. Correct.

Yeah. There's actually part of the. There's another part of the brain. There's many parts of the brain. But one of the parts of brain that's involved with this is actually called the reticular activating system. Okay, what? The reticular activating. This is located in the base of your brain. The reticular activating system is the part of your brain that filters out what's necessary and what is unnecessary. Without a reticular activating system, you would be paying attention to the air conditioning running right now and the squeak of the chair. And our engineer over here maybe typing something. Your head would be spinning around saying, oh, my God, I can't take all this.

Too many signals. Yeah.

The reticular activating system helps our brains prioritize what's important and what's not. This is part of where critical faculty comes into place. Because now what is the data that the conscious mind is receiving that's valuable and important? And how much of this data should I just leave on the floor, let it fall off the table and be done with it?

In your example, as we talked about that unconscious mind, that's the main goal for advertisers. And part of this experience, the main goal is you got to get to that unconscious mind.

Correct. Which is exactly what we do in the world of hypnotherapy. So, as you know, I'm a doctor in neuroscience. Part of what I'm certified to do is hypnotherapy. In hypnotherapy, what we do is we place the patient into a hypnotic state. When we place the subject or patient or hypnotic state, we're essentially shutting the grape off. We're shutting the conscious mind down. And now the hypnotherapist can communicate directly to the unconscious mind, which is where all the action is. So if you have a phobia, let's say you have a fear of flying. If you have a fear of flying, it's not your conscious brain that has the fear. Because I can sit with you and say, justin, let me show you how planes work. And on a wing, there's a thing called a camber. And the camber makes more air go below than on top of the wing. And that's what keeps playing in the air. And do you know that wings are cantilevered? And you can actually take the wings on a 747 and they bend them all the way up till they touch each other. That's how much flexibility there is in the wings on a 747. And you know statistically that you're safer in an airplane than you are walking across the street today. I can tell you all that. It will mean nothing to you because your little grape can't overpower the beach ball. Now, another great way to describe this is think of a rider and an elephant. So you're riding an elephant. So you're on top of the elephant. You got kind of an elephant saddle. You got some reins on your elephant. And guess what? Are you in charge or is the elephant in charge?

I'm pretty sure the elephant's in charge right now.

If the elephant's been trained, you might be able to give him some coaching. Tap his left ear with the rein and maybe he'll turn left. But if he changes his mind, there's.

Not much you can do about it.

You're going wherever the elephant takes you. That's what happens with your brain. That beach ball, the elephant, and that grape, the rider, the elephant's in charge.

And so that's why not to get into another subject. But that's why people experience fear and stress in some extreme ways and situations that aren't actually life threatening, like getting into a meeting that you may weren't prepared for. And all of a sudden you're clenching up. Then your heart rate's really fast and you're going, well, you're not actually in any type of danger, but the brain.

Interprets it as, so we'll wander off there for a second.

Okay.

There's part of the brain which is called the amygdala. The amygdala is sometimes referred to as the reptilian brain. So as we look over the human condition and the evolution of humans, we realize that that was the first part of the brain that really formed in human. And the amygdala's job is to keep you alive. It's the part of your brain that can tell the difference between a snake and a stick on the path in front of you. And its job is to respond. Now, because priority is keeping us alive. And how does the amygdala respond? The amygdala responds that when it sees danger, it dumps in the chemical adrenaline, which increases your heart rate, tightens vaso, restricts all your circulation, narrows your vision, cuts your peripheral vision down, like I said, pumps your heart rate up, and it prepares you to fight, flight, or freeze. So it's really. There's three, not fight or flight. It's fight, flight or freeze. So it prepares you to take action. Now, the problem is the amygdala was made to protect us from, as you said earlier, the saber toothed tiger. But today, my boss can be the saber tooth tiger because he can control, not literally life and death, but he.

Can control my life, my future, my dreams, right?

But this idiot can crush my life on a whim today because I, you know, if I lose my job and blah, blah, blah, my whole life's going to go upside down. So the amygdala identifies that employer, that boss, and not all bosses, but it can identify that boss as a threat, right? Now, here's another thing the amygdala does, and this is, and we leverage this in advertising, the amygdala cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. So you go to the movies and you're, you're watching Freddy Krueger 15. And Freddy's hiding under the stairs, and he's got all of his, you know, his razor blade fingers out. And this girl's walking down the stairs, and Freddie's under the stairs. And you're thinking, don't go down there. Why do you go down there? Why? Every time in these movies, this girl always goes down on the stairs. And you need to look under the stairs. Look under the stairs. You're not going to do this. All of a sudden, Freddy whips out his hand, slashes her Achilles tendon, and she falls down the stairs. And what do people in the movie theaters do? They jump. They'll jump. They'll be shocked. They'll toss some popcorn that's in their hands, and they have this visceral physical reaction. Now, why are you jumping? Why are you tossing your cookies or your popcorn? Because it's fantasy. Your grape knows it's fake, right? Your conscious mind knows it's a movie. Your unconscious mind, that amygdala part of your brain, it can't tell the difference between what's on a movie screen and what's really happening in front of you. So the amygdala responds. As that young woman traverses down the stairs, what happens? Your body's dumping adrenaline in. Your galvanic response on your skin is changing. The moisture in your skin is changing. Your body temperature is changing. Your heart rate is increasing. All these things are happening. Slash, boom. You jump as if you were there. This can be used to our benefit. Now, we don't want to misuse this, of course, but it can be used to our benefit. I'm going to give you an example of an advertiser that did an awesome job of using this several years ago. It was an ad for Volkswagen and Volkswagen, they had two people driving in a car, and they're driving along, and you're seeing the driver through the passenger's eyes. And you know there's a passenger because the driver's looking at you talking. So you realize you're in the passenger's head just as she's talking, a car slams into the driver's door. I mean, it just crushes this car. Now what happens? Well, what happens is one, your brain is freaked out because they did this great job of making it look very real. So you're like, oh, my God, that was so violent. That was so horrible. Okay? And think about how fast that happens. Now, the speed that that happens. Create something in the brain, which is called a PGO spike. That PGO spike is when something happens that makes no sense. PGO Spike, as an example would be if you were up on a ladder screwing in a light bulb, and you fell off the ladder, and all of a sudden, you just. Suspended in air. That's PGO Spike. Because your brain goes, this doesn't happen. Well, that's what your brain does. When it saw that car crash, your brain goes, what happened? And immediately Volkswagen cuts from that commercial and they talk about how their car has 11 airbags and how those 11 airbags save that driver. So all of a sudden it's like, wow, that could really happen. And that's what it would look like, because I've never been in that. So, oh, my God. That's how violent that looks.

Or you have been in that.

Or I have been in it. Which now brings up a memory. And now if I bought a Volkswagen with its 11 airbags, I'd survive that. So that moment that they went from the PGO spike to Volkswagen with its 11 airbags can save your life. That is referred to as a preferential moment. It's this slight little sliver of time between when I surprised you, when I enlisted your amygdala, when I enlisted your unconscious brain and this little privileged moment. What happens in that privileged moment? The conscious brain went offline. It's the spam filters gone crash. Oh my God. Volkswagens have 11 specific airbags that would save you in this crash. That privileged moment goes right into the unconscious brain and embeds that, wow, Volkswagen's safe.

So now Volkswagen was able to create a brand memory of safety, anchor of safety in that consumer's mind.

Right now I decide to go out and buy a car. Six months from now I go out and buy a car and I'm talking to my wife, what kind of car should we get? I don't even know why I say this other than I say, you know, Volkswagens are really safe.

Well, especially if, and to bring you back around to where we started some of this conversation, if one of your main objectives and goals in your mind is safety. Because to your point, if he was looking for prestige, probably not buying a Volkswagen, but it's safe.

But I buy an Audi because they have an upper brand and I'm going to look and say, well, Audi is just like Volkswagen, so it's got everything Volkswagen does, plus it'll address my prestige needs. But they were able to get past my spam filter and implant a memory and implant a thought in my unconscious brain that Volkswagen builds safe cars. And they were able to do that, by the way, in the time span of about 5 seconds. I'm talking violent explosion with Volkswagens 11 safety airbags. You'll never be a victim of this kind of crash. Whatever their verbiage was instant memory.

Interesting.

There's other ways to shut that spam filter off also. We can shut that spam filter off by cadence of words, by presupposing and post supposing phrases, by using metaphors, selling through metaphors. Think about McDonald's. McDonald's are masters of neuro linguistics programming and they have been for years. Think about one of their slogans, which was, you deserve a break today. Very short phrase. Think about how amazing that comment is. You deserve. They're talking Directly to me. And they're honoring me. They're telling me that you're important, you've done things of value. You deserve something. And what is it I deserve? I deserve a break. They're right, By God, I do deserve a break. Look how hard I work, man. I've been working here and I pick the kids up after school and I go home and I mow the grass. You know what? I do deserve a break. And what's the last comment today? You deserve a break today. Why? Urgency command. You deserve that break now. So what's the motivation? Go to McDonald's now. Because you deserve a break today. Now, if I was to tell you you should eat some greasy sticks of starch and some fatty meat today.

Which.

Would be more accurate, Right? So if I was to tell you, order our greasy sticks of starch and our factory raised meat and all this stuff and come on over and have a break on this stuff and watch your arteries harden, you'd probably not be that excited. But when I say, Justin, you deserve a break today, you do, don't you?

I do.

Right?

I do.

It's brilliant. McDonald's does another thing, like as an example, open up a package with a Big Mac, the carton. And they'll put phrases, they'll put printing on the inside. So as an example, they'll have printing that says, can you just imagine how the first bite will taste? What are they doing? They're tapping into your memory. You're already getting your mouth to salivate before you've even picked it up. But even better, they're pre positioning you to enjoy this product even more than you probably really are saying, can you just imagine how the first bite will taste? So now what does that do? It causes your brain to imagine what the first bite will taste like. And the reason it does that is because you cannot not see something. If I tell you I want you to not think about a purple elephant, you have to visualize a purple elephant before you can not think of it.

Think of it.

You can't just not think of it. When I tell you, can you imagine what the first bite will taste like? You have to imagine what the first bite will taste like. Even if you're angry, they're asking you that, you still have to imagine it. And guess what else? Your imagination is much better than the reality.

Always.

Because what's one of the things we do in advertising? We sell the dream.

Oh, we romanticize, right?

We sell the dream, we sell the outcome.

Right.

I mean, think about when we do food commercials how we hire food stylists. Oh, yeah, right. You couldn't eat anything that we shoot because we've plasticized half of it. We show the steam rising off of the food. It's a bowl of dry ice behind the food that's faking, making it look like it's hot and steamy. Because we're selling the dream, right? We're selling the fantasy.

So to bring it back around to where we started in answering the question of how the brain sees advertising. So from this discussion so far, how the brain sees advertising is the information gets sent in through into the conscious mind. Then you have the reticular activation system and the critical faculty start to analyze, Great. This information I need, I don't need.

Or should this go, let this stuff hit the floor, whatever this might be helpful.

And then some gets to go to that unconscious mind. Some gets to go to that unconscious mind. Right.

But in good advertising, we're going to skip all of it.

So that's what's going to get to. So but the goal. And a good advertiser can basically skip the first three steps and get straight to the end goal.

Let's get right in that unconscious mind. And here's the other thing. In hypnotherapy, let's say you came to me and you. Let's go back to the fear of flying. You came to me and you said, geez, would you work with me and get rid of this fear of flying? Your fear of flying, I want you to think of as a corrupt app on your phone. You got an app on your phone. When you open it, it does crazy stuff. Well, let's say that app has 5,000 lines of code in it. And in that 5,000 lines of code, one or two letters got corrupted and it's making the app run wrong. Do you go and crack the app Open and read 5,000 lines of code and look for the letter that's off?

No.

Or do you delete the app and reload the app? That's what you do. In hypnotherapy, the hypnotherapist is going to put you into a state. Now the hypnotherapist is going to just delete the app and load the app back.

How?

It would be normal. Normal would be you're not afraid of lying. We can do this in our advertising. We have that same ability to be able to reach into that deep unconscious mind and be able to have those kind of conversations.

I think we're going to get into the how we do that a Little deeper in further episodes. Am I correct?

Yes, I think we will. I mean, right now we're talking about, we're looking at the very 50,000 foot view of everything, of how things operate. But the bottom line is, for the sake of this conversation, how does, how do humans view advertising? Let me give you this thought. One, they don't view. Consumers do not view advertising how you do. When you are watching your new TV commercial that you just produced for your product. You're watching every frame of it. You're poring over details. Are the, is the tomato red enough? Wait a minute. I think there was a hair out of place.

You're watching On Our Town with that system too. Is you're paying attention with that system two brain.

Yep, you're digging deep. The consumer doesn't do that. The consumer is completely on system one saying, oh, it's TV commercial. It's kind of an interruption to my program. But I guess that's the cost of me getting free television entertainment. So I'll wait for this to happen. And the consumer's not riveted to your message. So the first thing is we have to think about, okay, stop worrying about the finite details necessarily and let's worry about what's the gross impression, what's the thought we want that consumer to come away with and let's focus on making it one thought. Let's not try to teach people an encyclopedia full of details about our product. Let's reach into their unconscious mind and give them that single most important, most visceral, most emotional reason that we have to buy my product.

Using your hypnotherapy example, it's as advertisers, like a hypnotherapist, for example, you wouldn't do a session and try to tackle seven different cleaners. It would only do one, you only do one.

So I'm going to leave you with this too. And that is all humans are in hypnotic states. So we go from state to state.

All day long in a trance.

Correct. We go from different forms of trances. When we watch tv, we are in a TV trance. We go to the movies, we're in a movie trance. We drive the car on autopilot, we're in a driving trance. When we're at work and we're staring at a computer screen and we're pounding out emails or we're writing a proposal, we're in a state. The idea that people can't be hypnotized is wrong. They're all being hypnotized all day long. As Advertisers, we need to lean into that state. How do we take advantage of the state they're in? How do we get past the spam filter? How do we talk to the unconscious mind? Remember, the unconscious mind is literal, not figuratively speaking. So on the conscious person, if I say, you know your name, you'll say yes, Justin.

Right.

If you were hypnotized, I would say, do you know your name? And you would say yes.

Because I literally answered the question.

Because you literally answered the question. So when we're as advertisers, when we're trying to talk to the unconscious mind, we need to be clean, we need to be literal. Think about how many ethereal looking ads or TV commercials that you've seen where you watch this stupid thing and it's 30 seconds of two people running on the beach and their hair is flying in the wind and they may have it in black and white and the only thing in color is her lips. You're trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. In the last three seconds they tell you it is for Chanel. Yeah, Chanel number five.

You literally just took my last question, so I'm going to ask it anyway. From our conversation today, what do you think is the most common mistake marketers make when either reviewing or executing their advertising? Now, reviewing, it sounds like the issue is they're looking at it with that system two brain and they need to stop. They need to try to look at it from a consumer's eyes.

I agree.

Okay.

And if I had to pick one, I actually couldn't pick one because there's a group of them.

Hey, you take it where you want.

It's first off, do you want to talk to your unconscious mind? You need to talk literal. Tell it what you want. Tell me to go to Walgreens now. Think about McDonald's. You deserve a break today. McDonald's. Is there any, Do I need to say anything else here?

No. Their ads used to have pull into a drive thru today as well. I mean, they went that literal for a very long time. Time.

Right, Burger King, have it your way. Right, So I need to be literal. I need to tell you what I want you to do. I need to avoid escape language.

Escape language.

Try our new salad dressing today. Okay, now as soon as I said try our new salad dressing. Try is an unconscious word that tells your brain it doesn't need to do something.

So like when my friends call me and ask me to help them move and I say, well, I'll try to make it Right.

You have no intentions on doing it, but you tell them, I'll try, because that's your escape word. So when we tell somebody try, we're really telling them, well, you might do it, you might not do it. So you never tell somebody. Try our new salad dressing. You're going to love it. No, we're going to say, find this salad dressing at Walmart. Now, we're going to give that unconscious brain a direct command. We're going to tell it what we want it to go do now and not give it ways to escape. And this is just one technique. We'd also be looking at things like because statements and if X, then Y statements. There's all these different tricks that we have that we go through, going through, feel, felt, found. I mean, every ad isn't the same, but every ad needs to have the same outcome, which is action. Right. If you're spending money on an ad and it is not eliciting an immediate response or a soon to be response, then it's not an advertisement, it's an entertainment piece.

Right?

Because the only difference between a TV commercial and a TV show is the TV shows there to entertain you. The commercial is there to get you to buy something. If the commercial isn't getting you to buy something, it's more entertainment.

It's entertainment.

Where was a campaign years ago for Nissan and Nissan came up, it was the most clever campaign. And they animated Barbie, Ken and GI Joe.

I remember this.

So you saw Barbie and Ken.

I didn't remember his Nissan, by the way, but I do remember the AI Correct.

Think about that.

Yes.

So here's Barbie driving in a Nissan, a toy Nissan Z. Or really, here's GI Joe driving in the Nissan Z and whips up next to Barbie. Barbie jumps in the Nissan and leaves Ken standing there crying because let's face it, GI Joe's a badass and Ken kind of looks like a bum. So she runs off with GI Joe and leaves Ken standing in the dust. Now, people raved about this ad campaign. It was so clever. It was when this type of animation just came out, it was this photorealistic animation that we take for granted today. And it looked real. It's like, wow, that was amazing. Now then you ask people what car company was it from and nobody knew because the entertainment was so amazing that they didn't bother to sell the product. Now, by the way, what happened in that case? What happened in that case was the vice president of marketing, months into the campaign, actually held a press conference where he said he was stepping down because he wanted to spend more time with his family. Okay. Which is the same thing you do if you, you know, if you're a congressman and you just got caught, you know, in a gay porn theater with a bunch of people, what are you going to. I'm going to step down and spend some time with my family, which really means, yeah, I'm busted, and I don't want to address this, so I'm out of here.

You got me?

So, at any rate, he stepped down so he could spend more time with his family. The following week, Nissan started a new ad campaign. The new ad campaign was the Nissan Altima comes with this, this, and this. And you can lease it for as little as $199 a month. Now, they lost $100 million on the Barbie and GI Joe campaign, and sales declined during the entire campaign. When they just showed a freaking picture of the car and get it for $199 a month, sales changed. Well, that's amazing. What happened? They actually asked me to buy the car, and then they gave me a reason to buy it. Wow. The Nissan Altima, it comes with this, this, this, this, and this, and it's a buck 99. That's a deal. I'm going to go look into that. That looks like a lot of car for $199. And it is a nice car, right? And it looks like a lot of car for $199 a month. That's worth driving down to the dealership and looking at. All that time with Barbie and Ken and GI Joe entertained me like crazy. Never gave me one iota of the idea of going to a dealership to look at a car. Because I'm not Barbie, I'm not Ken, and I'm not GI Joe. And that was very entertaining, but it means nothing to me. And people do that with ads all the time. The other thing that people do with their ads, way too much to answer your question. What mistakes do they do? And that is to try to tell. I'm going to tell you everything in my ad that's important to me, not what's important to you, except I don't care about you. I only care about me. So telling me what you like about your product means nothing. What's in it for me? And don't try to tell me what's in it for me. With 15 different items, QVC was really good at this. And when QVC does something called guest training. So when you go to guest training on qvc, when you're going to be the guest they bring you into a room for a day and they have a teacher, there's a. And they hand you some forms and they give you a piece of paper and they say, please write down every attribute about your product that you're going to show on QVC and don't leave anything out. And people will sit there and they'll do their homework and they're doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. Then the average person will come up with 12 to 15 items of features of their product. Now the instructor will say, draw a circle around number one, number two and number three. And he's draw a circle around number one, number two, number three. Now scribble lines through the rest of them and forget they exist because we're never going to. And this is not a commercial, this is an eight to ten minute segment, right? We're never going to let you talk about more than three attributes in 10 minutes.

No one will remember and no one's.

Going to care because no one's going to remember it. So for the next 10 minutes we're just going to talk about these three items. That's the mistake people make. You, you are on these calls. You taught clients. Oh, yeah. Well, who do you think buys your client or who do you think buys your shampoo?

Everyone. Everyone buys it.

No. Everybody doesn't buy it. No. Well, what's the most important feature? Oh, it does this, it does this, it does this, it does this, it does that, it does this, it does that. No, it doesn't. And if it did, I don't believe you.

Right. I can't believe that. I can't believe a product on a shelf for that price is going to do all of these things.

Right. Because now it's a Swiss army knife.

Exactly.

And no one buys a Swiss army knife because it's good at anything. You buy it because it's novelty.

Right.

And maybe it'll be handy if I ever get trapped in a mountain while I'm hiking and you know, and I can't escape and I'm snowed in. Maybe I can use the spoon on it to dig out or, you know, that little pop out toothpick might just be the thing I need today. But you don't buy it because it's good at anything. Nobody wants a Swiss army knife. Get to the point. Don't talk to me in ethereal terms. Tell me what you want me to do in your communication and tell me why it's important to me and don't try to sell it to everybody. Sell it to A niche group of people where you can be passionately desired. If name recognition was the key to success, Sears and Kmart would be doing wonderful business. Because who hasn't heard of Sears and Kmart? The problem is, I've heard of them. They mean nothing. When I think of Kmart, I think of old, outdated popcorn and Blue Light specials. And when I think of Sears, I might think of Craftsman tools and car batteries.

That was about it.

But neither of them are relevant to me. What's the difference between Kmart and Target? Target's cool, right? No difference. Target just made cheap chic. So what did they do? They focused on their niche. Cheap chic is what we do. What does Walmart do? Edl, edlp, Everyday low prices. That's the niche. We all have it, too. What's your product's niche? Keep your focus there.

So to wrap everything up here, if we're going to say top three takeaways for our listeners, and I'll just list them off here. 1. Brain has three major components for functionality. That's the conscious mind, critical faculty, unconscious mind. And the unconscious mind is driving the bus. That's what we need to do.

That's the elephant.

That is it. That's the elephant. That's what's driving the bus. That's the main goal.

But the little man sitting on the elephant thinks he's driving.

He thinks he's in control, and he can get in the way.

Until the elephant decides to go his own way.

Exactly. You got it. Okay. And when we're thinking about our advertising. So as a marketer, as an advertiser, do not overanalyze the ad. Understand what the true goal is. What are you trying to sell? Who are you trying to sell to? And ensure that the ad is accomplishing those two things. Do not look at it as a marketer. Look at it as a consumer. And number three, as far as markers go and advertisers, when you're making your executions, remember the goal is to get to that unconscious mind. And the way to get to that unconscious mind is speak literally. Because that's how it thinks. That's how it functions.

Tell me what you want me to do.

Tell me what you want me to do. Tell me what you do and what's next. But be literal, don't be ethereal, because I don't understand that. And keep it simple.

You know, Chanel. Chanel. Chanel. Bye, Chanel. It's like, what. What are they?

What.

What's it going to do for me now? If you have enough money, by the way, where you can just spend a hundred million dollars a year, you can flood the airwaves and keep pounding this into my head, but most advertisers don't. So get to the damn point.

Get to the point. Again, we're not Nike. You don't have LeBron James who walks around with a shoe and just smiles and does this and kids want to buy it, right? It's not a thing.

But even, even that, still getting to the thing, right? You want to be like LeBron, buy the shoe.

Buy the shoe. That's still literal, very literal. Because what 13 year old basketball enthusiast doesn't want to be like LeBron, right?

Want to be like LeBron. You need this shoe.

Need the shoe done. All right. Any other takeaways from the show you want to leave our listeners with today?

Other than this is a complicated subject. We're going to keep drilling deeper into it. The book will be out shortly. You need to take this stuff to heart. You need to take this stuff seriously. Because think about this for a second. Let's say you're going to spend a million dollars on that campaign. What will that million dollars do for you? If you can make Those communications work 2, 3, 4, 5 times better for every ad you run, how will that change your business? That will have exponential impact on your business by really learning how to communicate with the unconscious mind.

So as always, if you want to. Now again, as Mark said, we're going to be doing a series of shows, so we're going to be continuing to dig a lot deeper into the book in the subject matter. So we just covered the foundational pieces. We're going to cover new techniques, different functions of the mind and you're going to learn a lot more about this topic so you can get better. Now, again, if you don't want to become a hypnotist like Mark Young, that's fine. Reach out to us. We can, we're always happy to communicate. Email us. You can reach out to us through our website, through the CBG Insider show website. Find us at our website, jnhlabs.com, and we'd be happy to help you or even just answer your questions. And again, look out for the book. It's coming out in the next few weeks.

And as always, if you like the podcast, go to wherever you get podcasts. Leave us 5 star reviews so we can get these messages out to more and more people. And other than that, we'll see you on the next episode. If you're looking to greatly increase sales on your CPG product, don't hesitate to contact us at Jekyll and Hyde Advertising and Market, by the way, the only advertising agency with a guaranteed result. Just go to jekyllheidagency.com or feel free to give us a call at 800-500-4210.