Understanding How Retail Brands Influence Consumers

Retailers spend more than $450 billion each year to influence consumers. They wouldn't spend that kind of money unless they knew something that consumers don't. In working with and studying more than 500 brands, I learned a few of their secrets.

Brands aren't trying to influence a person; they're trying to influence the mind. They take the time to study how the mind functions, makes decisions and how it can be most predictably influenced. Brands aren't trying to meet peoples’ needs. Rather, they're trying to meet their wants. You must understand consumers’ wants in order to influence them to your way of thinking.

You may know what a person wants, but that isn't enough to get them to change their mind. Marketers identify tactics of change that work in sync with how our brains learn and seek to satisfy our wants. They identify what consumers want to feel. Here I break down each emotion and how that feeling connects to particular brand secrets.

* Safe and secure. This want is reinforced through the physical structure of the brain as well as your physical environment, making it one of the strongest motivating forces. The amygdala is an area of the brain that's primary purpose is to protect us; think of it as a built-in survival mechanism. Whenever we sense fear or danger, or that things aren't safe or secure, it fires up. Brand examples include Volvo, OnStar, Allstate, ADT, Johnson & Johnson, and Geico.

* Comfortable. All consumers want to feel comfortable. They want to feel good, relaxed — they want it to be easy. They're attracted to what makes them feel good, and this is often what's most comfortable and easy. Brand examples include Cracker Barrel restaurants, Godiva and Rockport.

* Cared for and connected to others. Feeling cared for is valuable to all consumers. Humans are genetically predisposed to want to be together; it's one of our evolutionary traits. Brand examples include Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Eclipse, Pizza Hut, Budweiser and Olive Garden.

* Affectionately desired by others. Some believe that all human motivation comes down to wanting to be affectionately desired by another. Sigmund Freud popularized this concept pitting the id against the superego and ego. Brand examples include Michelob Ultra, Viagra, Axe, Cadillac, Old Spice and Victoria's Secret.

* Free to do what you want. The desire to be free has been a guiding principle of human kind for the past 200,000 years. Societies have banded together to ensure the ability to remain free, and the desire to be free is such a dominant human want that, time after time, we have given our very lives to satisfy it. Brand examples include MasterCard, Southwest, Nutrisystem, Harley-Davidson, Fidelity and Citi.

* To grow and become more. From birth our brain is trained to learn and grow. Think of everything that we learn, often from our parents, with respect to feeding, crawling, walking, talking and hand-eye coordination. We don't come programmed with these skills. Yet within the span of five years, we're able to perform without assistance many of the skills we'll use throughout our lifetimes. Our minds are constantly growing and striving to become more. Brand examples include Monster, Kindle, Sony PlayStation, Microsoft and Phoenix University.

* To serve others and give back. Sixty-one million people performed 8.1 billion hours of service last year. Why? Our first teachers, those who initially trained our minds, were our parents. Those early memories of our mothers serving our every need, unselfishly giving to their children to protect, care and nurture are deeply ingrained in our minds and cause us to want to serve others and give back. Brand examples include Prius, LIVESTRONG, Timberland, Newman's Own, Make-A-Wish and Susan G. Komen.

* Surprised and excited. The amount of stimuli that our senses can process throughout the course of a day is remarkable. While the vast majority of these stimuli are filtered by our perceptual registers, what almost always gets through is what surprises and excites us. Strong emotions that could either cause potential ecstasy or anxiety are the first things that get our attention. Brand examples include Red Bull, Las Vegas tourism, Disney and De Beers.

* That there's a higher purpose. As with all members of the human race, we have two very significant things in common: One, we were bore by a woman, and two, we will all die. We deeply want to believe that there's a higher purpose, that there's something beyond us, beyond our lives. Brand examples include the United States Marine Corps, Purpose Driven Life, Bessemer Trust and Joel Osteen.

* That I matter. This is human kind's greatest want. It's our evolutionary trait, our point of difference. If we didn't matter, we wouldn't survive. This is our point of difference when compared to any other living creature. There isn't another species whose survival so depends on a caregiver as long as ours. Brand examples include American Express, Lexus, Rolex and Starbucks.

Retailers have clearly mastered how to truly understand the consumer psyche from the basic levels of wants and needs. These brand secrets arm marketers with the tools they need to target exactly what consumers want.

Brian Martin is CEO of Brand Connections, a New York City-based advertising agency. Brian can be reached at bmartin@brandconnections.com.