3BrainMarketing

Box office receipts would suggest that animated movies (Shrek, Toy Story, Ice Age) have found the elusive recipe for mega-success. Be it for their amazing graphics, funny situations or lovable characters; one of the things I’ve been most impressed by in many cases, is their writing.

This weekend I was watching Ratatouille (incidentally, I’ve spent the last 72 hours training a rat to cook… (with little luck). Yes, I have rats! And if this stubborn S.O.B. would just pay attention, you probably wouldn’t judge me so harshly!)… In any event, we have (along with many others in recent years) been proclaiming the virtues of Neuromarketing and the need to better understand the unconscious and emotional factors that influence your customers. The scene above (if you’ve not watched it yet, you should do so now) offers one of the best examples of marketing and showcases Neuromarketing at its finest.

When faced with the dilemma of selecting a dish for the grim, humorless, conceited critic Anton Ego, Remy (rodent cook and future iron chef) went not with a fanciful ‘bonne merci’, ‘très sais pas’ nor ‘voici bonjour’ (I just made those up by the way…) – the daring chef went with ‘Ratatouille’ – a peasant dish, a dish that Mr. Ego scoffed at. So what was his ensuing review? Well you’ll just have to rent the movie, or you can just click the ad on the left and subsidize this blog :) – wait, damn it! I have to give it away for the sake of this article… Mr. Ego was sold. It was one of his best reviews ever!

You see, he wasn’t won over by the taste of the Ratatouille; it was instead Chef Remy’s ability to successfully activate his imprint for Ratatouille.

imprint: the meaning we unconsciously create for ‘something’ based on the culture in which we are raised. Once an imprint occurs it strongly influences our thoughts and actions.

In reality taste is subjective. While sugar might always be sweet and lemons might always be sour, how food ‘tastes’ is totally an individual experience. What tastes good to me, might not to you. The country and the culture from which I come will have a significant and lasting impact on my opinion. Remy understood this.

For each of you reading this, there’s one (may be many) special dish that takes you to a happy place even upon hearing its name. As you saw in the clip, upon sampling the meal, grim adult Anton Ego was immediately transported back in time to sad young Anton Ego where upon sitting at the table a sullen faced boy is comforted by this very Ratatouille.

We often associate food with love, with being held, comforted, cuddled and loved by our mothers. Branding isn’t just the shape of your logo and the colors you associate your brand with; it’s also the feelings your product evokes and the emotions your customer experiences.

Good branding should target all the senses. It’s what Folgers Coffee attempted to do with its “best part of waking up” commercial in the 80’s; it’s what Nestle did to introduce coffee to the Japanese (tea drinking) market (they created coffee flavored chocolate to develop the imprint early on); it’s what McDonald’s is able to do. Have you stopped to notice your child’s reaction to “we’re going to McDonald’s” – really?!?!?! It’s food that really doesn’t ‘taste’ all that good, its the imprint they’ve been able to establish in your child’s mind.

It’s what YOU need to do! Understand your customer. Understand the culture from which your product and your customer comes and in which it resides. Seek to identify its emotional placeholders in the society and incorporate into your marketing campaign… DAMNIT! I’ve gotta run, Francòis (my rat) just burnt the Bouillabaisse…


If you’ve enjoyed this article, you might enjoy the following book: The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do

This article was written by Marc Narine.
Marc works with companies to elevate marketing performance and profitability by going beyond the traditional feature/benefit approach to instead assessing the emotional and cultural imprints and subconscious attachments to a product. He is the author of 3Brain Marketing.