Does Tiger Woods Really Drive A Buick Rendezvous?

In a recent article, Brain-Friendly Advertising, we talked about the importance of "interrupting" your prospects by breaking them out of alpha "sleep" mode and into beta "alert" mode, and how the reticular activator is the conduit from one to the other. If you're not up to speed on those concepts, please go back and read that article. What happens in the 2.3 nano-seconds after your prospect has been interrupted will determine whether or not you'll actually have a chance to SELL SOMETHING (the whole point, remember!). During those critical 2.3 nano-seconds, the brain immediately and subconsciously searches for additional clarifying information looking for an answer to the question, "What's this all about? How does this affect me? Do I need to do anything about this?" On a subconscious level, the brain goes on a fact-finding mission. The bottom line is this: the brain wants to know "How is this RELEVANT and important to me? Should I allocate any conscious bandwidth to this? So it searches for additional facts. If it finds them, it will become engaged; if not, it will quickly revert to alpha mode. These important and relevant issues are called HOT-BUTTONS.

If you're in a room with a TV on and you're a golf fan and your reticular activator detects that Tiger Woods is on the television, it notices that on a conscious level because Tiger Woods is familiar. He's an activator. Then your brain immediately asks, "Hey, what the heck is Tiger Woods doing driving that goofy looking car? Is there anything there that's relevant or important to me?"  Or in other words, what your brain is looking for is a "Hot Button". But what typically happens is your brain determines that the Buick Rendezvous is not relevant or important to you...it doesn't do anything to solve any of your problems.  So, in other words, it's not a hot button and your brain reverts immediately back into Alpha Mode.

On the other hand, if a problematic situation that's familiar to your prospects is presented, and if it is relevant or important, if it is a "Hot Button," then, if additional clarifying information is present, then the prospects brain automatically becomes engaged.  Let's be very clear here for a minute. An activator is something that snaps a person from alpha to beta mode... and it's based on something that's familiar, unusual, or problematic. But an activator can only also be classified as a hot button if,and only if, it's based on something that's important or relevant to someone. I just mentioned that Madison Avenue likes to use activators based on things that are familiar and unusual. My advice to you is to focus on things that are problematic to your target market and use those as your activators.

Let me give you an example. Let's say you own a chain of camera stores and you're trying to promote digital cameras in your advertising. Let's say it's a print ad that's to appear in the newspaper. What would you do? What would you say in the ad? Well, you could find a picture of a monkey or a snake or a wildebeast or something holding a camera. There would be some interrupt value there based on either the familiarity or unusual nature of the animal you choose. The animal would be the activator. Or you could hire a celebrity to hold a camera. Or a scantily clad woman. All of these techniques might work to varying degrees, but they don't address the main issue when it comes to digital cameras? See, if you use an activator that's not based on a problem, chances are you'll create what we call a "false beta" and the prospect won't become engaged. We'll discuss "false betas" here in just a minute.

But for digital cameras, what are the main problems the typical prospect has? What are the main issues, what are the HOT BUTTONS? Well, for starters, the vast majority of people who are going to buy a digital camera don't have the foggiest clue about digital cameras. They know practically zero about megapixels, zoom lenses, flash memory, and all that technical mumbo-jumbo. Yeah, I know that maybe you know about all that stuff, but, trust me, most people don't. Typically you're going to see menu-board-style advertising for products like digital cameras. They'll show you a bunch of different pictures of different cameras, and each picture will have a little bullet list of all the features of that model, how many megapixels, what kind of lens, and all that stuff, along with... that's right... the price. The pictures of the cameras will work as an activator all by themselves for people with an interest in them, but then, when the brain automatically and subconsciously scans for more information, it finds stuff that might as well be in a foreign language.

So to properly address the main issue, the issue that's important and relevant or, in other words, the hot-button, which in this case is UNCERTAINTY, most people haven't the foggiest clue about what to buy... how about a headline that might read something like this: "If you're thinking about buying a digital camera, but haven't got the foggiest clue what to look for or how to compare, then call for our free camera buyer's guide.... And learn everything you need to know about megapixels, zoom lenses, and flash memory." Maybe a sub-headline that says something like, "Learn the seven most important features of any camera to make sure you only pay for what you need." See how that headline has the activator based on the hot-button of "uncertainty and unfamiliarity?" I know for a fact that the headline would work, and it would reap an increase over the usual menu-board-style ad by anywhere from 2 to 100 times. Admit it, if you've even thought about buying a digital camera, don't you wish you could get that camera buyer's guide?

Your best bet to successfully interrupt and engage your target market is to identify what problems, frustrations, and annoyances your prospects have and then address them in your marketing. Find out where their PAIN is, identify that pain, and describe situations and scenarios that exemplify that PAIN, put that stuff in your marketing in the form of headlines and sub-headlines, and then let the prospect's reticular activator take over from there. The results are inevitable. Their pain, for all practical purposes are the "HOT BUTTONS". See, we're tapping into problems they already have...we're not trying to manufacture them. We are merely poking those problems or pointing out those problems so their reticular activator notices and brings them up on the active radar screen.  This is in essence a reticular activator double-whammy because you're hitting their problematic button at the same time you're hitting their familiar button.  After all, everybody's familiar with whatever it is that's painful and problematic to them! Let me repeat that one more time so it really sinks in: when you key in on problems, you're hitting the problematic button at the same time you're hitting their familiar button... which is a reticular activator double-whammy because everyone's familiar with their own problems.

In the next article, we'll talk about what happens when interrupt goes wrong... the phenomenon known as a FALSE BETA.