The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind

Chapter 5. The Five Senses and the Buying Brain

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

• How each of the five senses "works"

• How to construct messages, products, experiences, and ideas that reach the brain through the five senses

• How the five senses interact with each other to construct our reality, day by day

• Relevant, new information about each of the five senses

What a gorgeous, vivid, delicious, melodic, aromatic, sensual world we live in! The human brain is beautifully evolved to make the most of the sensory input available on the Blue Planet. It's true that other animals have better senses. Your eyes can't compare with a peregrine falcon's "eagle eye" for sense of sight, nor is your nose a match for your dog's exquisitely finely tuned sense of smell. Dolphins hear more than you ever will, and so do the felines and rodents in your house or neighborhood.

So why sing the praises of the five senses of the human brain? First, our sensory intake is remarkable because we have access to all of our senses. Many animals with expert sensory perception in one area developed that extreme sensitivity to counterbalance the absence of other senses. A mole, for example, has six times the touch receptors that we have, but he can't see. The falcon doesn't "touch" with anything other than his beak and claw, and our cats have no idea of the range of tastes we're able to discern.

So if the first cause for sense celebration is that we are generalists, the second is that ...