Brain-Friendly AdvertisingUnlocking The Power of Alpha, Beta, & Reticular Activator
by Rich Harshaw If you want to know why customers buy what they buy, you need to see the world through their eyes. If you want to know what they see, you first must understand how the brain works--and how we make decisions. To understand that, you need to learn three major concepts that will make all the difference in the effectiveness and profitability of your marketing: Alpha Mode, Beta Mode, and Reticular Activator. Alpha brain
waves produce a hypnotic state. It runs automatic patterns that
allow your brain to habitually perform tasks without conscious
thought. If you stare at a candle long enough, you find yourself in
the trance-like alpha mode. Have you ever driven to work only to
realize when you got there that you hadn't noticed a thing
along the way? You were in alpha mode. Since driving to work
is a habitual pattern, you don't have to think about it. On a
conscious level, you can talk on the cell phone, listen to the
radio, shave, or put on make-up while your brain drives you to work
with no conscious thought. Think of alpha as mental sleep-walking.
I doubt I am the only person who has put the cereal in the fridge
and the milk back in the pantry after eating
breakfast!
Here's what
alpha mode means in marketing terms: People see and hear ads with
their eyes and ears but don't notice them on a conscious level. If
you open a newspaper, you may look at 70% ads and only 30% news
articles. You only see the ads on an alpha level; 9.9 times out of
10 you won't even notice them at all. All you'll see is the news.
That's what you picked up the paper for in the first
place.
In addition to
alpha brain waves, you also have beta brain waves. Beta is the
brain's state of alertness and active engagement. It's like driving
to work in a thunderstorm. Your hands are firmly gripped at 10
and 2 o'clock and your pupils are as big as dimes. You're sensitive
to everything. You're in beta mode when you're watching a movie and
the music builds to a crescendo in anticipation of something scary
happening. Your heart starts thumping. You can think of beta as
"alert mode."
In marketing
terms, beta mode is when a person consciously notices your ad or
marketing piece and becomes open to suggestions and solutions.
Something captures their attention and compels them to keep paying
attention.
The key is to
get the prospect out of alpha mode and into beta mode. You want to
shake your prospects out of their subconscious haze that never sees
your ad or marketing piece and into alert mode where they are fully
conscious and aware of what you're trying to communicate. Knowing
how to do this--and then doing it--is the beginning of your making
a fortune in marketing.
Knowing how to
move a prospect from alpha to beta mode requires you to learn the
third major concept about how the human brain works--the Reticular
Activator. This part of your brain is on the lookout 24/7--even
when you're asleep--for things that fall into any of these three
categories: 1) things that are familiar or connected to you in some
way; 2) things that are unusual, abnormal, shocking or strange; and
3) things that are dangerous, threatening or
problematic.
Whenever your
brain detects things that are familiar, unusual or problematic, it
sends a message to the conscious side of the brain and says, "Hey,
wake up! There's something you need to pay attention to here." We
call those familiar, unusual or problematic things "activators."
Your brain acts like radar on a subconscious level, constantly
looking for activators. It's searching for things that are
familiar, unusual, or problematic--things that require a conscious
response. Whenever it finds one, it snaps your brain out of alpha
sleep and into beta alert.
Have you ever
met somebody for the first time, and two seconds later, you realize
that you've forgotten their name? It can be embarrassing; I do it
all the time. Usually people brush that off and say they're not
good with names, or that they have a bad memory. But here's the
real problem. When you meet somebody and hear their name, that's an
alpha activity. Meeting a guy named Fred Jones, Steve Johnson, or
Rich Harshaw, for that matter, is not unusual--nothing pokes your
brain and says "Huh?" So you never really hear the name in the
first place.
Here's my
point: Trying to remember Fred Jones' name two seconds after being
introduced is like trying to recall the company's ads on the
newspaper page that you turned two seconds ago or the billboard
that you just passed at 75 miles per hour. You can't remember it
because you never consciously noticed. But what if you meet
somebody whose name is Hubert Hinklemier, Elmo Fudrucker, or
Cornelius Oglethorpe? Or what if you meet a person named Michael
Jordan, George Bush, or Connie Chung? You'll most likely take
notice and remember. The reticular activator is always looking for
things that are familiar, unusual, threatening, or
problematic.
What does all
this have to do with marketing? Everything! Understanding the
reticular activator is what's going to get us past interrupt and on
to engage. And if we can engage the prospect, we've just increased
our chance of selling something by 1,000 times. This is going to
solve the problem every other marketer hasn't figured out--how to
get the prospect not just interrupted but also engaged. Not just
finding any activator, but finding the right activator. Marketing's
first job is to interrupt the prospect--to get them to "snap" out
of alpha into beta--by finding out the things that resonate in the
prospects' reticular activators. This snaps them into beta
mode.
Actually, this
is easy to do. That's why the creative folks on Madison Avenue use
animals in advertising--animals are familiar and likable. These
animals have "interrupt value" based on their familiarity. That's
also the main reason why big advertisers use celebrities. For
example, Buick knows that as soon as your reticular activator
detects the presence of Tiger Woods, it'll poke you in the brain
and say, "Hey, wake up! Tiger's on the tube!" Then you see the
Rendezvous. Now Buick is in a position to sell--if they can now
move you from being interrupted to becoming engaged (which they
don't).
What about
activators based on unusual things? Creativity's main purpose in
advertising is to dream up something so weird, strange, shocking,
or unusual that it will snap you out of alpha mode and into beta
mode, otherwise known as interrupt. That's why advertisers will
take something familiar like a frog and make it do something
unusual like talk. Now they're doing a reticular activator double
whammy: giving your brain something that's familiar and unusual at
the same time. It's the creative director's panacea. And what about
sex? You've probably heard that sex sells. Right? Actually, it's
not true. Sex interrupts. If something sexy is put in an
advertisement where you weren't expecting it, then you're
interrupted, but not necessarily engaged.
If you hope to
interrupt and engage your prospects, make sure your advertising is
brain friendly.
© 2005
Rich Harshaw ∙ May Not Be Used Without Permission
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