Has this happened to you? You are shopping in a store and walk down a particular aisle. You have an item you are seeking out and when you come to the area where the many brands of this product are on display, you seek out one particular brand, put it into your shopping cart and move on. What happens in that brief interaction where you make a choice between one brand and another? There is plenty that happens in that moment. Your brain is quickly making decisions for or against one brand over another, but much of it may be locked away in your unconscious thought patterns.

The idea that we can influence the unconscious thought patterns of a consumer has been the topic of much speculation over the years. You have undoubtedly heard of the infamous subliminal marketing message "Hungry? Eat Popcorn” and "Drink Coca-cola” that flashed across a movie theater screen at an imperceptible 1/3000^th of a second in a New Jersey theater in 1957. The unconscious mind of the viewers supposedly turned their thoughts toward the concessions area where Coke and popcorn sales soared. The problem is, James Vicary, the man responsible for this marketing experiment, later confessed he falsified those results after replications of his experiment failed to increase concession sales.

Just because Vicary was exposed as a fraud, does it mean there is nothing to subconscious thought when we are making choices for the items we purchase? If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that there is something to be made of our preferences for one brand over another and we may not be able to answer why we would do so.

Try this experiment. Take a quick look at the lists I have below. Try not to spend much time. Quickly arrange these items into one category or the other based on the criteria.

Good _______________________ Bad

Yum!                                               Yuck!

                     Watermelon

                      Chocolate Cake

                      Brussels Sprouts

                      Milkshake

                      Hamburger

                      Cauliflower

Now try the same list with a slightly different criteria.

Good_______________________ Bad

Healthy                                           Unhealthy

                      Watermelon

                      Chocolate Cake

                      Brussels Sprouts

                      Milkshake

                      Hamburger

                      Cauliflower

Did any of your items change columns? For instance, did Chocolate Cake and Brussels Sprouts switch Good and Bad columns in the second list? The terms Good and Bad are completely modified in our unconscious mind when we couple them with terms such as Yum, Yuck, Healthy and Unhealthy. The first list appealed to your particular tastes. The second list appealed to your sense of quality of life – namely your health. In a split second you made a decision based on completely different criteria.

In his book, Blink, the Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell takes aim at our subconscious decision making. He claims we make decisions about everything around us based on criteria tucked away deep in our brains, be it the brand of toothpaste we buy or the people moving in next door. Snap decisions are being made all of the time even when we try to override our thought processes. That may be shaped by the things we are most familiar with  (you purchase a certain brand of ketchup because it is the brand your mother purchased) or societal influences (you wear Hanes underwear because Michael Jordan is their pitchman and you want to be like Mike.) Did you think that Brussels sprouts were bad tasting, yet good for your health? Where did that thought come from? In my case, it came from my mother. You see, my mother forced my brother and me to eat Brussels sprouts as children because they were supposed to be good for you. My memory of eating them was they tasted horrible! That thought is engrained in my psyche. I have not purchased them ever in my life. You could say I have a bias towards them as something I would not enjoy eating. But I think highly of them as a source of healthy eating. My bias is based on what my mother told me and my experience in trying to swallow them. We all have our biases that are part of our unconscious mind that guide our purchasing process.

What that means in terms of marketing is your brand really matters. If someone has categorized you as the cheaply made, it is a hard sell to get them to think of you as the best quality. That comes by consistently and frequently sending them a marketing message of quality. Over time, the unconscious message can be re-wired, but it takes a simple message and a lot of patience. Currently, Domino's Pizza is in the midst of re-branding themselves – away from cheap and tasteless pizza that is delivered quickly, to pizza that is made at a normal pace and tastes great. Their current marketing efforts are geared towards people giving them a second chance.

The other thing to realize is, if you are smart about your branding, you can position your product, service, or business to end up in the left side of the column regardless of the modifier. Where did you place watermelon in both lists? If you like the taste of watermelon, my guess is you put it in both the Good Yum and the Good Healthy columns. Watermelon can make both claims, which makes the subconscious choice of watermelon a very easy one.

Make sure your branding message is easy to remember and puts you in the left column. Simple, consistent and persistent is the recipe for making an impact on the unconscious memory by which your customers are making a purchase.

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Subliminal Advertising, http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp