The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind

Chapter 3. Your Customer's Brain Is 100,000 Years Old

At the end of this chapter, you'll know and be able to use the following:

• Key ways to engage the primal part of the human brain

• Core mechanisms the brain uses to determine whether to pay attention to your message

• The three ways in which the brain can be frustrated, and how to avoid them in your marketing

• The four triggers the brain loves and how to use them in marketing

Caveman in a Wired World

The neuroscience of the human brain builds from the understanding that it is a freshly evolved miracle. Travel back with me 100,000 years or so, when newer, larger prefrontal cortexes in early man first previewed the modern brain we all share today.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Competition for food is fierce. Predators are fast and omnipresent. To survive, the relatively slow and weak humans develop a secret weapon: fine hand movements allow them to refine tools and weapons to become extremely efficient at both hunting and defending against others who hunt. At around the same time, the human trachea descends into the throat to make vocalizations more distinct and communications suddenly very effective. Communication is honed and increases in importance with the evolving social system and the need for cooperation. The ability to determine friend from foe is crucial in this nascent society, as is the ability to predict what someone will do (lie or tell truth, cooperate or attack).

This is all good news for the hominids, bad news for their ...