In a market saturated with messages, products and promises, the brands that really stand out are not the ones that make the most noise, but those that best connect emotionally with their previously defined and known audience. This is where concepts such as neuromarketing and emotional branding cease to be mere fads and become key strategic tools for brands and their strategies.
They are not important just because, but because understanding how the consumer’s brain works is no longer an option: it is a competitive advantage that can influence a potential customer’s decision between one product or another, one brand or another, one campaign or another. So much so that it can also make them last longer, forming part of the top of mind.
What is neuromarketing and why does it matter?
Neuromarketing combines neuroscience, psychology and marketing to analyse how people make decisions, often unconsciously. Some studies show that more than 90% of purchasing decisions are not rational, but emotional, automatic and quick. This could be associated with a subliminal condition, in which factors that influence decision-making, such as the aroma, colour and lighting of a shop, for example, translate into a good shopping experience.
Neuromarketing enables us to answer questions such as:
- What stimuli really grab attention?
- Why do we remember some brands and forget others?
- What emotions influence purchasing decisions?
It is not about manipulation, but rather about better understanding consumers in order to design brand experiences that are more human, relevant and, above all, memorable.
The role of emotional branding in brand decisions
The human brain processes information at different levels. Two of the most relevant for marketing are:
- Limbic system: responsible for emotions, memory, and motivation.
- Rational cortex: responsible for logical analysis and subsequent justification.
Most brands communicate only with the rational side: price, features, functional benefits. However, decisions are made first in the emotional system and then justified with rational arguments.
This is where emotional branding comes into play, a strategy that seeks to create emotional bonds between the brand and people. It is not based solely on what is sold, but on how it makes people feel, on the emotion it arouses in the customer.
Brands with strong emotional branding generate trust, increase loyalty, are more easily remembered (top of mind) and are defended by their customers because they reach a point where they identify with them. That is when, instead of competing solely on price or product, they compete on meaning.
Neuromarketing applied to emotional branding
Neuromarketing provides scientific data and principles that help build emotionally powerful brands. Some of the most relevant are:
1. Emotions before information. The brain remembers things that provoke emotion better. A brand that excites activates more areas of the brain and is more firmly fixed in the memory.
2. Storytelling that activates the brain. Stories activate areas of the brain associated with empathy and identification. Good storytelling makes consumers see themselves reflected in the brand. If you tell coherent stories, you generate more connection than if you just list benefits.
3. Coherencia sensorial. Colours, fonts, sounds, tone of voice and physical experiences must be aligned. The brain seeks consistency; when it finds it, it increases the perception of trust. Branding is not just visual, it is multisensory.
4. Cognitive simplicity. The brain prefers simplicity. Clear messages, clean identities and easy-to-understand proposals reduce mental effort and improve purchasing decisions. If it is difficult to understand, it is difficult to choose.
Brands that understand the brain, brands that endure
The most successful brands do not sell products, but rather feelings, belonging and purpose. They have understood that emotion builds memory, preference and business.
From start-ups to large corporations, neuromarketing and emotional branding enable the design of brands that are more empathetic, human and relevant to people’s lives.
The most important decisions are not always apparent at first glance. Emotions, cognitive biases and unconscious stimuli influence how we understand a brand more than we realise.
Applying neuromarketing to branding is not just a passing trend. It is also a natural evolution of marketing that invites us to raise the bar, moving from talking to consumers to truly understanding them.
