On Saturday, I was interviewed by Don Lemon on CNN about whether or not Super Bowl commercials are worth the $4 million brands spend to run each spot. In a wide-ranging interview that spanned a commercial break, Don and I discussed several topics, one of which included an amazingly simple trick that the Fortune 500 use to get people to buy their products.

Research into neuro-marketing has shown that when a marketing message creates an emotion in the mind of the consumer, the neural pathways in the brain create a memory. When emotion is used to create the memory, consumers often develop a preference for the brand that triggered that memory. This works when you laugh at a Coca-Cola Polar Bears spot or when you cry at a Christian Children’s Fund spot.

The secret is that the marketing message has to make you either laugh or cry. If you don’t do one or the other, it’s more difficult for the brand to create a long term memory. And when there’s no long term memory, there’s no impulse to buy when you’re walking down the grocery store aisle.

We covered a lot of ground in my interview with Don, so if you’re interested in learning more about how the Fortune 500 use this and other marketing techniques to grow their sales, check out the video below (or on our YouTube channel).

Sunday, February 3rd, 2013, 6:08 pm   |   General Marketing  |  RSS feed Pinging is disabled. But you can skip to the end and leave a response.