Your brain as a marketing domain

Question: What is the similarity between the arrows on the floor at IKEA, a Tesla and Netflix? Answer: They are all examples of behavioural design in your own environment. Marketers use this method to consciously and unconsciously influence your choices and behavior. In this blog, we'll tell you how it works and where you'll find it.

Behavioural design in plain language

Every person makes a number of balanced, rational choices in his or her life. Choices about courses, jobs, partners and places to live are choices that we usually put under our pillow for a night. At the same time, around 95% of all choices we make are intuitive choices, which we significantly faster and often unnoticed take.

Your brain has a clear preference for the latter category. The better a choice is for you, your happiness, your health, or your wallet, the less complicated it is for your brain to make an intuitive choice for you quickly. After all, your brain has your best interests at heart.

No-brainers for marketers

A marketer who understands how it works can use this knowledge shape desired behavior. With strategic messages for your brain that lead to unnoticed intuitive choices.

This conscious design of desired behavior is called behavioral design. Perhaps the best-known example is a method called nudging. A nudge is a small feature in the environment that consciously or unconsciously influences our behavior. An example:

Hey, come on an IKEA safari!

IKEA is where your sense of time and orientation go to be completely confused. From Breda to Groningen, there is deliberately no window in all IKEA locations. To ever get out of here again, you have to follow those handy big arrows on the floor. At least, that's what your disoriented brain tells you to the best of your conscience. With those arrows, however, Swedish marketers are consciously steering you towards the furniture and accessories they want to promote. How old were you when you discovered this?

Måsså is kåsså

Those who only had a Billy on their list and did not pack a Knut and Helga plus twenty packs of batteries into a cart along the way are in an absolute minority. Satisfied, we massively push our increasingly full cart from one nudge to the next, towards the cash registers. The brief disappointment with the final amount is met with a €1 hot dog at the exit. This way, the idea that it is not expensive here is instilled when you leave.

Nice? Then you'll like this too.

At Spotify and Netflix, they also understand how it works. That your brain is not suitable for choosing one song, movie or series from their total catalog, for example. By filtering their huge range of smart algorithms for your taste and previous choices, they stimulate quick, intuitive choices. While you're watching James Bond, Jason Bourne is already warming up. And before Adele is sung, Beyoncé is already counting down. The less you have to think about seeing and hearing what suits you, the calmer and happier your brain becomes. And the calmer and happier you are with their brand and product. And the more you use their app.

Behavioural design as a business model

Both Spotify and Netflix can be canceled every month. The growing number of users of both services shows how effective behavioral design can be. We love having Spotify and Netflix close to us, whether at home or on the go. For many of us, they make life more fun, richer and less complicated. Cancelling is a conscious choice for the opposite, and therefore (almost) not an option.

Behavioural design is everywhere

These are just a few examples of how brands guide us through many intuitive choices every day. Sometimes conspicuous, sometimes deliberately unnoticed. Tesla understands that most of us don't put an electric car in our driveway until we have a good story to tell our neighbor and friends in terms of appearance and user experience. Supermarkets understand that a few people will buy more if they give away football tickets for your (grand) children. And that's not to mention the many choices you make every day when it comes to politics, charities and health.

At McDonald's, for example, they understand that they get uncomfortable questions when they suddenly shout out loud that everything there is healthy. So they gradually replaced the familiar red in their corporate identity with the color green. As you know, green is associated by our brain with healthy food, or a choice for the good. Honestly: who noticed that transformation?

The strategists and concepters at ZUID are also behavioral designers. They come up with brand strategies and campaigns that trigger something. Want to know more? Come in.

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