Why Brands Work (8-part series)

“Much of history revolves around this question: How does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liabilities companies?”

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

I’ve been a brand strategist for over 20 years. During that time, I’ve worked with brands of all sizes—from some of the biggest in the world to some of the smallest—on strategies for improving the performance of their businesses by strengthening their brands. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen again and again how strong brands lead to strong businesses. Not just businesses that sell more effectively, but businesses that seem to do everything more effectively.

And as I’ve written about previously , brands aren’t just commercial tools—they originated first as cultural tools. For 10,000s of years they have been fundamental to the ways in which human beings have organized ourselves and shaped our world. Brands tap into our wiring at its deepest levels. They drive us to think, feel, and act in ways that shape not only markets and economies, but who we are as individuals and societies. At some fundamental level, we humans are brand creatures.

But why is this true? How is it that brands have such a profound impact on what we think and on what we do? And what can we learn about ourselves by learning about our relationship to brands?

I set off in search of answers to these questions, looking to better understand how and why the strategies and tactics of brand building actually work. My investigation has led me to explore the latest findings from economics, behavioral science, psychology and evolutionary psychology as well as older schools of philosophy and even religion.

This investigation has led me to one conclusion: Brands work the way they do because humans work the way we do. They are a manifestation of our psychology, cognition, and social impulses. Brands are effective because they tap into and exploit patterns of thought, feeling, and action that evolved at the deepest levels of human wiring. They reflect some of the core truths of who we are and how we’ve adapted to exist in the world. By better understanding brands, we can better understand ourselves—our strengths, our weaknesses, our history, and our potential.

Homo economicus

We tend to resist the notion that our ideas or actions could be influenced by something as seemingly superficial as a brand. Our vulnerability to this kind of influence doesn’t jive with our self-image. We prefer to imagine ourselves as rational beings who make intelligent and well-considered decisions based on experience, consideration, and authentic preferences and interests.

This self-image—of independent, autonomous, and rational individuals—has its roots in the Age of Enlightenment, when much of the foundation of our modern Western worldview was set. While the philosophers of this period were varied in their perspectives and areas of focus, they were broadly united by the notion that humans’ ability to reason is our defining feature—the thing that makes us who we are, sets us apart from the rest of creation, and allows us to set our own destiny. Paraphrasing René Descartes: We think therefore we are. Our ability to make decisions, for ourselves and based on our best interests, is fundamental to our notions of free will.

Political economists like Adam Smith, Jeremey Bentham and John Stuart Mill—writing in the 18th and 19th Centuries—applied the rationalist perspective to their view of how human beings organized politically and economically. They described a world where people made rational choices in pursuit of the best possible outcomes for themselves. When presented with options, people’s desire to optimize utility in this way would lead them to make rational choices based on their desire to maximize pleasure or wealth, and minimize pain.

This idea of human beings as rational economic agents has provided the foundation for classical economics. Economists build their models around this ideal homo economicus, a creature wired to consistently balance costs against benefits in order to get what they most want. As Adam Smith, the “father of economics” memorably put it, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Economists since Smith have built sophisticated models to understand and explain how economies work, and most have relied on this notion of human decision-making based in pure, rational self-interest.

But how does this work in practice? When we’re given choices, how do we make decisions that maximize utility based on our preferences? Questions about this so-called “utility function” have occupied economists for hundreds of years. The debates that have emerged go beyond the picture painted by mathematical models and get to the core of what, how, and why human beings think, act, and believe the things that we do.

Taking ourselves by surprise

Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, a group of economists and social psychologists began developing new theories to better understand the realities of human behavior. What they found is that rather than being based in pure reason, real people are “predictably irrational”, as Daniel Ariely put it in his book of the same name.

Rather than starting with economic models, these behavioral economists started with people. In other words, they based their ideas not on economic theories but on observations of how real people confronted real decisions. How, they asked, would human psychology, cognitive biases, and culture combine to effect peoples’ decision-making?

The resulting field of behavioral economics challenges classical economics with insights into what people actually do, as opposed to how they behave in the confines of economics models and textbooks. What has emerged is a richer and more complex picture of how we see the world, weigh our options, and ultimately decide what to do with limited time and resources.

At first these findings can feel counterintuitive and dissonant—at odds with our deeply-held assumptions about ourselves as rational beings who have relied on our intelligence to shape the world around us.

The messy reality of our nature begins to make more sense when you consider the history of our evolution as a species. Human brains, societies, and cultures evolved in world very different from those of our modern world. This unfolded gradually, over hundreds of thousands of years during which our ancestors lived in small, vulnerable bands of hunter-gatherers. They struggled to survive in an environment that presented challenges very different from those of our modern world.

Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand the ways in which human nature is a product of this history. The behaviors, biases, and tics that may seem strange to us today, begin to make more sense when we see them as adaptations to common problems early humans would have faced as they sought to survive and reproduce in a harsh and unforgiving world.

Seven reasons why

Combining my readings in behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy with my professional experience as a strategist has led me to a set of conclusions as to why brands are so effective as tools of human commerce and culture.

Over the coming weeks, we will take a look at seven realities of human nature and why brands are so suited to influencing us through them. Each week we will consider one of these behavioral quirks and explore the reasons why brands are so suited to exploiting it.

It’s important to note that these seven factors don’t operate on their own as independent forces. Instead, they interrelate and reinforce each other in ways that serve to make their influence on us even stronger. When they combine in these ways the power and intensity of their influence on us can be so strong as to appear irresistible.

We are all susceptible to these biases and behavioral tics. I share them not to add to the buttons marketers can push—they need no help in that department. Instead, I do it in the hope that by considering the ways in which we are all vulnerable to having our buttons pushed we can become more aware of the ways in which our reflexive responses my not be in our self-interest.

The seven behaviors we will look at are:

Feeling before thinking

We are driven by strong emotional impulses and a desire for things that make us feel good, secure, happy, and comfortable. Brands are emotional and magnetic. We grow more attached to them the more familiar they become.

Jumping to conclusions

We are wired to make fast decisions based on previous experience and best guesses. Brands are shortcuts that satisfy our desire to find and match patterns. In a noisy world, brands give us a feeling of satisfaction, order, and ease.

Thinking by linking

We build and maintain networks of ideas and associations based on a combination of our personal and shared experiences. Brands help us to construct and maintain our picture of reality and the way that the things in the world are interrelated to each other and ourselves.

Avoiding risk at all costs

In order to avoid risk, we mistrust novelty and uncertainty. Brands protect us against risk by providing us with choices that are safe, trusted, consistent, and socially endorsed.

Judging mind never rests

We habitually categorize, evaluate, and rank most of what we see and experience. Brands are built for comparison—they ease the process of choosing by giving us contrasting and hierarchical alternatives.

Needing to belong

We’re drawn to people who share our interests, beliefs, or sense of purpose. Brands are social—they bring people together and motivate them to act in coordinated ways.

Sticking with what we know, believe, and proclaim

We prioritize continuity and consistency in our own actions and beliefs—particularly when we’ve been seen or heard by others. Brands invite and reward our loyalty and give us an opportunity to behave in ways that are consistent with what we’ve done or said in the past.

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