Priming consumers for your brand

Have you ever found yourself walking down memory lane and wondered how? Maybe something primed you, made you think about those old times, it could have been a book, a song or a photograph anything in fact that you could create a subconscious link to those old memories. Priming is defined as “an increased sensitivity to certain stimuli due to prior exposure”. Which perhaps hides that it relates to some interesting quirks of the brain.   If you show someone a green coloured card and then time how long it takes them to recognise the word apple as a word it will be shorter than if you didn’t show them the green card. The person is associating the colour green with apples and so their brain has been “primed” to react quicker when they see the word apple

So what, you may ask? How about if you ask a group of people to complete a word search where the answers are words relating to old people, nothing would happen right? Not quite, if you then time how long it takes for them to walk down a corridor and compare to a control group who do a similar word search but with neutral answers, the ones who had to find “old people” words will take longer than the control group. Who would have thought that searching for words like granddad, fossil and ancient would make you move slower?

How about if you show a group of people fast food logos so fast that they couldn’t say what logo they had seen? They get jittery and more interested in saving time. The study, conducted by organisational behaviourists at Toronto University, found that after being shown the logos participants were more likely to prefer three-in-one skincare treatments rather than the separate versions compared to the control group.

As we start to understand more and more how the brain, and more importantly our memory, is accessed the implications for brands are clear. Be careful who you sit next to, be it on the shelf or in your media buys because the associations consumers have with the most unconnected of products and images can change how they think about you.

Still not convinced of priming and its effects, try this exercise from Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. Count how many passes the team in white make and just so you know, one gender is better at this than another - I bet you can't guess which?