Alistair Welch speaks to Vicky Bullen of Coley Porter Bell and learns how the agency is using neuroscience to inform its work.
Firstly some theory. Daniel Kahneman posited in his Nobel Prize winning bookThinking, Fast and Slow that we have two modes of thought: System One and System Two. System One is the ‘rapid response’ element of our brains that makes intuitive, instinctive decisions. System Two, meanwhile, is the more reflective, more logical part of the brain that rationalizes decisions.
Designers at strategic brand consultancy Coley Porter Bell (CPB) wondered how such an understanding of neuroscience might be applied in the brand arena. How might designers ensure they are appealing as much to System One as System Two? Or, as the agency’s snappy mantra puts it, create brand propositions that ‘convince the conscious and seduce the subconscious’.
Vicky Bullen, CPB CEO, explains that the agency has been using ‘visual planning’ as part of its process for a number of years. This technique involves moving beyond the words of a brief to think, instead, in images. A brief, for example, might contain the word ‘security’ – this might bring to mind an image of a baby in a mother’s arms or a padlocked safe; two rather different ideas. Visual thinking can thus help to translate briefs with more clarity and direction. To build on this extensive visual experience, Bullen and her team at CPB were interested in whether neuroscience might provide a formal framework for the agency’s thinking in this area.
“When you start to understand the System One and System Two brain you are able to put the science behind what many agencies and marketeers have known for a long time,” says Bullen. “We know that purely rational advertising is not enough – it needs to work both rationally and emotionally.”
There are a number of scenarios (a mixture of the anecdotal and scientific) that demonstrate the power of the System One (the instinctive brain). If, for example, you give a consumer a vanilla pudding with brown colouring they will likely tell you, before tasting, that it is chocolate. Interestingly, the System One response is so strong that even after testing many consumers will remain adamant that it is a chocolate pudding: System One is effectively overriding System Two.
Bullen shares another example from a consumer trial of face cream in the USA: “The organisers could not understand why the results in one state were so much better than in all the other states,” she says. “They looked into what they had actually given people and in one state they had run out of tall tubes so had given people a small pot. Because people associate a small pot with high-end cream they felt that the cream worked better.”
According to Bullen, creative agencies are inherently biased towards System Two as, by its nature, strategy is associated with clever thinking. It is almost left to chance that the designer is able to encode System One cues successfully into the finished product.
The fundamental question is whether agencies like Coley Porter Bell might leverage neuroscience to more deliberately design for different modes of thinking. “There are some rules of thumb for creating brand design that will seduce the subconscious and convince the conscious,” continues Bullen. “You can think about those rules as you evaluate and create brand design in order to be sure that you end up with something that will appeal to System One and System Two.”
Rule: Brands have to work as a signpost and an invitation
Case study: Morrisons own brand
Morrisons before
CPB worked with Morrisons to overhaul the supermarket’s own brand offering – a huge design task over thousands of individual touchpoints.
Whilst the existing Morrisons ‘Value’ range was working well as a signpost with its bright yellow packaging presenting a strong identity, it was not so successful in inviting customers in. Indeed, in some cases it was doing the opposite as consumers were somewhat embarrassed to have the range in their shopping basket.
“Value grocery shopping is the most rational category in the world,” explains Bullen. “Nevertheless, it is not enough to just appeal rationally, packaging has to invite people in and has to connect with System One.”
Morrisons after
The CPB redesign saw the bright yellow packaging replaced with colourful hand-drawn illustrations (unique to each product) against a white background. The name of the range was changed from ‘Value’ to ‘M-Savers’. “We helped consumers to understand that every single item in this range had been carefully thought about,” adds Bullen. “The range still works as a signpost, it is still incredibly clear that this is the value range, but we are inviting consumers in too.”