Consumers Respond to Strong Brands

An interesting new medical study has uncovered how strong brands activate certain areas of the brain, reports MediaPost. The effort, conducted by a team of international medical researchers, is reportedly the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand how the brain responds to brand messages.

In the study, 20 men and women were exposed to three-second visual stimuli of well-known and lesser-known brand logos along with a question to help evaluate brand perception. The fMRI captured images of the brain during the exposure.

The results indicated that “strong brands activated a network of cortical areas and areas involved in positive emotional processing” as well as those associated with self-identification and rewards, according to the article. In addition, the brain exerted less effort when processing strong brands. In contrast, the lesser-known brands showed higher activation in the areas of working memory and negative emotional response.

The so-called “brain branding” is a step forward for the advertising industry as it strives to better understand how and why consumers form opinions on brands.