From the blog post: The headline rather stark, but is just an opinion piece with no quantitative research behind it. There are examples, but how you decide to judge their plausibility is up to...
From the blog post:
Let's call this alternate mechanism cultural imprinting, for reasons that I hope will become clear. It's closely related to, but importantly distinct from, emotional inception. And my thesis today is that the effect of cultural imprinting is far larger than the effect of emotional inception (if such a thing even exists at all).
Cultural imprinting is the mechanism whereby an ad, rather than trying to change our minds individually, instead changes the landscape of cultural meanings — which in turn changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product. Whether you drink Corona or Heineken or Budweiser "says" something about you. But you aren't in control of that message; it just sits there, out in the world, having been imprinted on the broader culture by an ad campaign. It's then up to you to decide whether you want to align yourself with it. Do you want to be seen as a "chill" person? Then bring Corona to a party. Or maybe "chill" doesn't work for you, based on your individual social niche — and if so, your winning (EV-maximizing) move is to look for some other beer. But that's ok, because a successful ad campaign doesn't need to work on everybody. It just needs to work on net — by turning "Product X" into a more winning option, for a broader demographic, than it was before the campaign.
The headline rather stark, but is just an opinion piece with no quantitative research behind it. There are examples, but how you decide to judge their plausibility is up to you. I wonder what evidence there is for or against?
I found the cultural imprinting idea really interesting, though I was less convinced by the arguments in opposition of ‘emotional inception.’ The main argument seems to be that axiomatically,...
I found the cultural imprinting idea really interesting, though I was less convinced by the arguments in opposition of ‘emotional inception.’ The main argument seems to be that axiomatically, ‘homo economicus’ cannot have malleable desires, preferences, goals. That humans proper cannot have malleable desires, preferences, or goals simply sounds untrue to me. The author even states that there is no true instance of this species. ‘Self interested utility maxing’ seems to me a poor model of human behaviour. ‘Cultural imprinting’ as defined also requires a kind of ‘shallow’ emotional imprinting, something they say doesn’t exist. So which is it?
I think both effects are in common play, and not at all mutually exclusive. I do think we maybe have a tendency to attribute too much ‘power’ to the idea of emotional inception, sometimes. Most often these are inceptive devices to encourage associative memory formation (beach, corona) in the aid of ‘raising awareness’, more than directly trying to manipulate desires and emotions (beach, relaxation, corona), but this is surely a secondary effect. Cultural imprinting can even be considered a mechanism of action for emotional inception - e.g. this is (part of) why associating corona with relaxation works to change people’s preferences. And this even fits into the author’s model, where building the emotional association starts this process of alignment.
The only thing really at argument, then, seems to be the question of whether humans desires, preferences, goals, can change based on input, to which I think the answer is (at least to some extent) yes.
I think the author shows a clear lack of understanding of the advertising space. What the author calls emotional inception is part of brand awareness. Some companies achieve brand awareness with...
I think the author shows a clear lack of understanding of the advertising space.
What the author calls emotional inception is part of brand awareness.
Some companies achieve brand awareness with zero advertising (Tesla, Costco, Trader Joes, In N Out burger.)
Some companies use alternate branding awareness campaigns (Facebook used social networks, fashion brands use influencers, red bull uses sponsorships, consumer brands spend money on product placement and packaging.)
One of my favorite books, "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind" by Al Ries and Jack Trout, has had a profound impact on advertising since the Mad Men days. The book argues that being first in a category will drive brand awareness which drives product sales. Ford, Coke and Levi's aren't most popular because they are best, but because they were first, and they remain the first brand Americans think of when they think of cars, soda or jeans. People are naturally lazy, and will on average buy twice of much of the first thing they think of than the second thing (coke has 45% market share vs pepsi's 25%).
Advertising lets brands that are first, retain that position in peoples minds. Brands that aren't first will try to create a new market segment that drives sales. Apple advertised as thinking differently, and positioned PCs as uncool. Salesforce advertised itself as No Software, and positioned software as uncool. Athletic shoes is Nike. Low cost flying is Southwest. Stain remover is Tide. Electric Vehicles is Tesla. Energy drink is Redbull. Renting a house is AirBnB. (This is all US centric, sorry.)
All of these categories were attacking successful vendors. Ford is still the number one car brand, but if EVs are the future, Ford is seriously at risk. Siebel invented CRM, but it was unthroned by Salesforce, because Salesforce was first with SaaS. Siebel even created their own SaaS offering called CRM OnDemand, but it could never compete, because it wasn't first in peoples mind when people wanted to try this new SaaS thing. Even in enterprise sales (Salesforce.com are selling to sales executives, presumably the most sophisticated audience to sell too,) brand awareness is key.
The distinction between inception (creating associations between a product and positive emotions) and cultural imprinting seems minor to me. As the author notes, the beach corona ad does work by...
The distinction between inception (creating associations between a product and positive emotions) and cultural imprinting seems minor to me. As the author notes, the beach corona ad does work by inception, at least partially. The idea that cultural imprinting is inception + common knowledge is definitely an interesting framing, but I would frame it differently—it's all the inception model, and part of that inception is a brand identity that you will assume everyone else has picked up on as well.
Brand identity seems to be a common goal in advertising. Corona is a beach relaxing beer, Nike is a top-performing athlete shoe. I do think there is a distinction between emotional inception and brand identity, but the distinction seems like splitting hairs, because regardless, the ads work by forming associations between products and positive feelings (except those positive feelings include an identity). IMO, this is not functionally any different from the common story about how ads work.
From the blog post:
The headline rather stark, but is just an opinion piece with no quantitative research behind it. There are examples, but how you decide to judge their plausibility is up to you. I wonder what evidence there is for or against?
I found the cultural imprinting idea really interesting, though I was less convinced by the arguments in opposition of ‘emotional inception.’ The main argument seems to be that axiomatically, ‘homo economicus’ cannot have malleable desires, preferences, goals. That humans proper cannot have malleable desires, preferences, or goals simply sounds untrue to me. The author even states that there is no true instance of this species. ‘Self interested utility maxing’ seems to me a poor model of human behaviour. ‘Cultural imprinting’ as defined also requires a kind of ‘shallow’ emotional imprinting, something they say doesn’t exist. So which is it?
I think both effects are in common play, and not at all mutually exclusive. I do think we maybe have a tendency to attribute too much ‘power’ to the idea of emotional inception, sometimes. Most often these are inceptive devices to encourage associative memory formation (beach, corona) in the aid of ‘raising awareness’, more than directly trying to manipulate desires and emotions (beach, relaxation, corona), but this is surely a secondary effect. Cultural imprinting can even be considered a mechanism of action for emotional inception - e.g. this is (part of) why associating corona with relaxation works to change people’s preferences. And this even fits into the author’s model, where building the emotional association starts this process of alignment.
The only thing really at argument, then, seems to be the question of whether humans desires, preferences, goals, can change based on input, to which I think the answer is (at least to some extent) yes.
I think the author shows a clear lack of understanding of the advertising space.
What the author calls emotional inception is part of brand awareness.
Some companies achieve brand awareness with zero advertising (Tesla, Costco, Trader Joes, In N Out burger.)
Some companies use alternate branding awareness campaigns (Facebook used social networks, fashion brands use influencers, red bull uses sponsorships, consumer brands spend money on product placement and packaging.)
One of my favorite books, "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind" by Al Ries and Jack Trout, has had a profound impact on advertising since the Mad Men days. The book argues that being first in a category will drive brand awareness which drives product sales. Ford, Coke and Levi's aren't most popular because they are best, but because they were first, and they remain the first brand Americans think of when they think of cars, soda or jeans. People are naturally lazy, and will on average buy twice of much of the first thing they think of than the second thing (coke has 45% market share vs pepsi's 25%).
Advertising lets brands that are first, retain that position in peoples minds. Brands that aren't first will try to create a new market segment that drives sales. Apple advertised as thinking differently, and positioned PCs as uncool. Salesforce advertised itself as No Software, and positioned software as uncool. Athletic shoes is Nike. Low cost flying is Southwest. Stain remover is Tide. Electric Vehicles is Tesla. Energy drink is Redbull. Renting a house is AirBnB. (This is all US centric, sorry.)
All of these categories were attacking successful vendors. Ford is still the number one car brand, but if EVs are the future, Ford is seriously at risk. Siebel invented CRM, but it was unthroned by Salesforce, because Salesforce was first with SaaS. Siebel even created their own SaaS offering called CRM OnDemand, but it could never compete, because it wasn't first in peoples mind when people wanted to try this new SaaS thing. Even in enterprise sales (Salesforce.com are selling to sales executives, presumably the most sophisticated audience to sell too,) brand awareness is key.
The distinction between inception (creating associations between a product and positive emotions) and cultural imprinting seems minor to me. As the author notes, the beach corona ad does work by inception, at least partially. The idea that cultural imprinting is inception + common knowledge is definitely an interesting framing, but I would frame it differently—it's all the inception model, and part of that inception is a brand identity that you will assume everyone else has picked up on as well.
Brand identity seems to be a common goal in advertising. Corona is a beach relaxing beer, Nike is a top-performing athlete shoe. I do think there is a distinction between emotional inception and brand identity, but the distinction seems like splitting hairs, because regardless, the ads work by forming associations between products and positive feelings (except those positive feelings include an identity). IMO, this is not functionally any different from the common story about how ads work.