The Brain Science of Branding
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If you’re a regular listener, you will know that we love exploring brain science. And I am so excited to be exploring that in the context of branding. While I’ve been diving deeper into my own study of neuroscience, I haven't seen it applied to branding ever before.
In today’s episode, Chloé Nwangwu, Brand Scientist, Digital Diplomacy Consultant, and Conflict Mediator, shares with us the brain science behind brands and how you can leverage that to connect more with your audience and create more impact with your small nonprofit.
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Myths that Chloe wants us to walk away from:
You can’t fundraise without rebranding. Before rebranding, think about how it contributes to the memorability of your brand and how it impacts your mission or the work that you do because if it doesn't, it's best not to do it.
Branding is about your personal preference. Knowing the preferences of your organization's most important stakeholders is essential when developing a brand for your nonprofit. If you're familiar with these patterns and trends in your industry, you'll have a better idea of how to stand out from the crowd.
Chloe’s thoughts around brain science branding
Brand vs Branding. A brand is simply a system of ideas that influences the behaviour of others. Branding is brand assets that are memorable. So the job that your branding is meant to do is meant to capture attention because that's how the memory process starts. And then it's meant to be stored within the right part of your memories, your memory network.
Brain Science of Branding. The definition of brand building from a scientific perspective is creating memories for people to recall or remember. If you want your brand and your branding to be effective to do the job that you need them to do, if you are looking to have the kind of impact in the world that shapes the future, repetition is required.
Behavioural Design. We figure out the steps that our stakeholders usually take between where they are now and the kind of behaviour that we would like to see from them. We can create an effective branding strategy once we know what the uncomfortably specific behaviour is and once we understand where they currently are.
Favorite Quotes from Today’s Episode
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“A brand's branding is really anything that can serve as a memory anchor for that brand. That just brings us back to the idea of memorability and attentional capture. If it captures attention, it stands a chance of getting past the brain's filters, which means it stands a chance of getting sorted into the right part of the memory network. Once it does that, it can serve as a memory anchor so that when people are making decisions about who to vote for, who to donate to, who to support, who to buy from, you stand a chance of being on that short list of people that they're considering are their considerations.”
“So we figure out, what are the steps that this kind of stakeholder usually takes between where they are now and the kind of behavior that we would like to see from them? And then we look at all of those steps and we say, okay, what are the cognitive biases that are in the way, what's the friction? ”
Resources from this Episode
