Jonathan Salem Baskin BRANDING ONLY WORKS ON CATTLE: On Branding & Reading Minds

Jonathan Salem Baskin BRANDING ONLY WORKS ON CATTLE: On Branding & Reading Minds: "There's been a lot of chatter recently about using exotic brain scanning devices to discover the secrets of thought and, more specifically, to uncover how branding influences memory, preference, and behavior. If there's proof that the esoteric premises of brands attach to neurological mechanisms and triggers buried in human consciousness, then companies should do

1. more branding, and
   
2. more attaching.

However, there's another perspective that goes something like this: Why bother?

It's intriguing to ponder the complexity of thought and emotions. That's why the Greeks wrote plays about it a long time ago.

But if we're thinking about business, why would we bother boring deeper into the realm of potential and what-if in hopes of finding hints of future behaviors...when we can observe, map, and deliver real behaviors in real-time?

Instead of working harder to uncover the possible relevance of brands as ideas, why not focus on the actions, reactions, and causality of behaviors? It might be a lot more productive to find brand as the output of what consumers, employees, and third parties do:

More desired behaviors = better brand, and better brand = better sales.

So skip Freud, and do more Skinner.

What do fMRI and EEG gizmos reveal, anyway?"


Helge: I'll read this later. Need to rush for a weekend visit. This is interesting and I'll be commenting on a KK-Net posting.