Getting to grips with brand realities
Neil Douglas on why marketers should be aware that perception is reality when it comes to brands

What makes things real to you? How do you know when something is authentic or fake? How can you tell between hype and the real deal? We all seem to have a sixth sense about reality. We just seem to know it when we see it. We can spot the weird and deluded on X Factor almost before they open their mouths to sing. We relate to a mum whose kids sound like an American sitcom: “Oh my God, it was like sooo random!”

But what actually makes up that sense we all have? Is it the things that we can touch, hear, see and taste? Is it experiences, memories, thoughts and emotions? Is it a personal view, or is it more about ‘common sense' and what other people say and do? It is hard to pin down. If you ask people to define reality, you quickly end up talking about empirical evidence rather than impulses and feelings. We say we rely on facts, evidence and science to prove what is real, but actually our sense of reality is quite different.

At B&A, we often claim that perception is reality when it comes to brands. For instance, we tend to think of Budweiser as an American beer with all the values that years of advertising conjures up relating to the Mid-West, the great outdoors, Clydesdale horses and a wry sense of humour. At the back of our minds, we know that the Budweiser we drink in Ireland is brewed in Ireland, but we still think of Bud as an American beer.

Many brands have similar contradictory properties. They are important brand equity and need to be handled with care, reinforced, strengthened and developed over time. But brain science research has shown that the link between perception and reality is much closer than we thought and is not exclusive to the world of brand planning. In his book, Phantoms in the Brain, neuroscientist VS Ramachandran points to the astonishingly close relationship between the mind and the body in how we experience the world.

A startling example from his work with amputees is worth mentioning. The story starts with an intractable problem which faced medical science for years. Many amputees experience painful ‘phantom limbs'. It is a well-known phenomenon where amputees experience excruciating pain often in an area of their body which no longer exists. They can describe in great detail the precise orientation of the phantom limb (sometimes curled into a fist-like shape, or digging into the flesh in an intense spasm).

The fact that the amputee is perfectly aware that the phantom is not real makes no difference to their experience of pain and the perception that the limb exists. While the pain is unreal on some level, it only serves to make the problem more difficult to resolve. For years physicians and patients have faced fairly extreme procedures to attempt to solve the problem with long term treatment with painkillers and further physical procedures.

YANKY IMAGE Budweiser is quintessentially American and even though it is brewed in Ireland we still think of American footballers, Clydesdales and blokes making Wassup gestures.

Ramachandran did something different by dealing directly with amputees' perceptions and modeling their interaction with their phantom limb directly. He developed a box with a mirror which he used with amputees for perception therapy. Patients positioned the mirror box to reflect their good arm. Patients were aware of the simple device being used. No hypnosis or auto suggestion was used and patients were simply looking at the reflection of their good arm, sitting in the place of the one that had been amputated.

Patients were then asked to flex their good arm viewed in the reflection box. In the manner of dutiful but sceptical patients the amputees followed their instructions. To their amazement, they regularly reported the physical sensation of their phantom limb flexing and relaxing. Within days of developing this simple perception treatment, amputees relieved the pain they had for years and over more time completely resolve their problem.

The research presents valuable information about how the brain works and how we frame our own body image. It points to the tangible link between perceptions and experienced reality. In marketing, we often observe how perceptions impact on consumer behaviour. Much of what we do in qualitative research is probing and exploring virtual perception.

We are faced with what seem like intractable consumer perceptions about brands which are trying to change. It can be with deep frustration that a brand manager listens to consumer perceptions that are out of step with their new positioning. People seem to ‘dig in' and resist a new idea as it does not fit with their internalized sense of the brand.

But there can be a much deeper and more profound relationship between how we experience the world and our composite of belief systems about ourselves and brands. In trying to rejuvenate a brand perhaps we need to recognize that a ‘phantom brand' persists in consumers' minds long after its communications and packaging have changed.

Neil Douglas (neil@banda.ie) is a director of Behaviour & Attitudes