“Don’t buy that,” said my dad. “It will never work.”
He’d caught me gazing lovingly at the 17″ PowerBook G4. I’d fallen in love with it. The aluminium chassis, the beautiful screen, the unapologetically premium attitude it seemed to hold, all narrated by Jony Ive’s soft and reassuring tones.
My heart had made its decision. My head was just rationalising it.
It was all in stark contrast to the cheap, plasticky Toshiba my dad convinced me to buy instead.
On paper, Dad wasn’t wrong. I was going to university to study philosophy. I didn’t need a premium laptop. My only logical reasons for buying the PowerBook were:
- It did everything a cheap laptop would do
- It would better survive being dropped
Every other reason to buy it was emotional. An excuse I gave myself to make the purchase I wanted to. Because my heart had made its decision. My head was just rationalising it.
And this is how all of us made our decisions. Every single one.
LIMBIC LIMBO
In the 1960s, a chap called Paul D. MacLean put forward an idea called the triune brain. MacLean was certain he had explained why we do what we do by dividing the brain into three tiers.
The first tier he dubbed the reptilian complex. MacLean thought the reptilian complex handled our basic instinctive behaviours, like flight or fight responses and involuntary movements such as jerking your hand out of fire.
Tier two is the limbic system. The limbic system handles emotion and motivation. MacLean linked it to things like feeding, reproduction, and parenting; more than instinct, but still fairly fundamental elements to our functioning as a species.
The final tier is the neocortex. MacLean saw this as the home of language, the ability to plan, abstract and complex thought, and so on.
MacLean felt these tiers had evolved in stages, starting with the most primitive and finishing with the most civilised. Unfortunately, none of them had evolved the concept of teamwork; instead, each puts its arm around its homework and refused to let its neighbours take a peek. This left the reptilian complex urging us to basic, instinctive behaviour that our neocortex deplored as unsuitable for polite society. The two struggle for dominance until one of them wins out and, if you’re lucky, you don’t end up farting in the midst of the big meeting.
We are irrational creatures through and through.
Flatulence aside, the triune brain feels right, doesn’t it? After all, how often do you feel at war with yourself? Desperately trying to stick to the diet, your stomach demanding doughnuts while your sensible self urges salads. Giving in to carnal urges even though you know this person isn’t right for you. And how hard is it to think rationally when you’re feeling scared or angry or stressed?
Your rational self feels like it battles against a simpler, instinctive self.
Unfortunately, MacLean’s work was weighed, measured, and found wanting. Few scientific boffins pay it any mind (boom boom) because it just isn’t true. We aren’t rational creatures struggling to control our emotions and instincts.
We’re irrational through and through.
Irrational like a stick of rock
For starters, structures like the limbic system and the neocortex evolved alongside the more simple parts of the brain. But, more importantly, MacLean’s model sets up the neocortex as a refuge of rationality and logic when it is, in fact, nothing of the sort.
Coke vs Pepsi
Consider the war between Coke and Pepsi. Two largely identical carbonated beverages, both with ardent fans. Some clever clogs in white coats popped volunteers into MRI machines and fed them Coke and Pepsi to see what happened in their brains.
When the volunteers didn’t know which brand they were drinking, their brains reacted the same way. But when Coke fans were told they were getting Coke, their brains lit up. The hippocampus and parts of the prefrontal cortex activated. Their brains remembered the brand and then stimulated their pleasure centres so the drink would taste better.
In short, the supposedly rational part of the brain helped make them think the drink tasted better.
So Coke can convince you their drink tastes better simply by getting you to associate their brand with something positive. Holidays are coming, anyone?
Red ones heal faster
Go and look in your medicine cabinet. Specifically, look at any painkillers you have in there. What colour are they? They’re probably white, despite the fact that they would work better if they were red.
We figured this out thanks to Anton de Craen, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Amsterdam. In 1996, he conducted a systematic review of 12 studies and published his findings in the British Medical Journal: that painkillers were much more effective when they were red.
That’s it. That’s the only variable. Your brain looks at the pills before you take them and, if it sees they’re red, tells you that your pain is lessened more and faster than if they’re any other colour.
So pharmaceutical companies can fool you into thinking their ibuprofen is better simply by making it red. And thereby get you to buy their instead of anyone else’s.
Triune pricing
One more example. Clever clogs Dan Ariely asked 100 students to help him demonstrate how price relativity works. He offered them a hypothetical subscription with three options:
- Digital-only for $59
- Print-only for $125
- Print and digital for $125
No logical human being is going to pick option two when they can get more for the same price by picking option three. That’s exactly what Dan found: of the students asked, 16 picked digital-only, while 84 picked print and digital.
But what if the print and digital option is removed? Well, 84 students were happy to spend $125 and clearly valued the idea of getting their magazine in print. So logic dictates that most of them will pick the print-only option.
No. In fact, 68 pick the digital-only deal. Just 32 pick the print-only package.
This works even if the prices aren’t the same.
Put two pints of beer in front of someone. Tell them one pint is £2.99 and the other is £4.99. Statistically, the majority will pick the £2.99 beer. But as soon as you introduce a premium option, more people buy the £4.99 pint.
Pubs can make more money simply by offering a more expensive beer.
“In situations of uncertainty people assume the lowest-priced option is likely to be poor quality and that picking it might make them look a bit mean, whereas the highest-priced option is likely to be overpriced and they might look like a show-off.”
Richard Shotton, The Illusion of Choice
The triune delusion
Your rational brain makes carbonated drinks taste better. Makes pain receptors dull because the painkillers are red. Makes more money for a pub because we don’t want to seem cheap or flashy.
But even though the triune brain is a nonsense, you still feel like it’s real. Because your brain didn’t call upon logic when it chose to make Coke taste better, dull your pain receptors, or make that pub more money because you didn’t want to seem cheap or flashy. But you’ll tell yourself it did.
You’ll tell yourself that you just know the taste of Coke. You’ll tell yourself that there must be something in the red painkiller that makes it more effective. You’ll tell yourself that you know cheap beer is awful and expensive beer is a rip-off.
And you’ll tell yourself that buying an expensive Apple Mac is a much better investment than a cheap Toshiba laptop.
You didn’t make rational decisions. You made rationalised decisions.
Or, as Jonathan Haidt put it, “The conscious mind thinks it’s the Oval Office, when in reality it’s the press office.” Like an embarrassed sitcom character trying to hide a friend’s drunken behaviour, logic is left explaining the mess made by our feelings.
You might be thinking that perhaps the triune brain is the right model after all. That our emotions are the enemy. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Because, without emotions, we would struggle to make any decisions at all.
I remember reading the story of a man who visited his therapist. The man had suffered brain damage that prevented him from properly feeling emotions. He approached everything rationally and logically.
And, when presented with two dates for his next appointment, he couldn’t choose between them.
Without a clear reason to reject one date (an existing committment, away on holiday, etc.), logic left him in a decison-making gridlock.
And this poor man wasn’t a one-off. Plenty of clever clogs in white coats have shown that damage to the parts of the brain that handle emotion can impair our decision making.
“Before their brain damage, they have normal intelligence and creativity. After the damage, they develop difficulties in planning their workday and future; difficulties in choosing friends, partners, and activities”
Bechara A. The role of emotion in decision-making: evidence from neurological patients with orbitofrontal damage. Brain Cogn. 2004 Jun;55(1):30-40. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2003.04.001. PMID: 15134841.
We need emotions to move us.
And move us it does. Emotion makes Coke taste better, red painkillers work better, and middling beers sell more.
This is why Your Copy, Righter focuses on emotion. Because it’s the emotion that moves us. Emotion nudges us towards a purchase, emotion that convinces us of things that can’t be rationally true.
But emotion can only take us so far. It can treat us to that impulse-buy Mars Bar or break the logical deadlock when there’s no practical difference between two choices. But an Apple Mac isn’t an impulse buy. A new delivery supplier isn’t an impulse buy. Adopting a new SaaS platform across your international corporation isn’t an impulse buy.
In those instances, emotion needs a little help.
Feelings first, logic second
When we make an emotional decision, we need to rationalise it.
Sometimes we need to rationalise it to ourselves. Sometimes to a significant other wondering why we just spent so much money. Sometimes to a CFO who is wondering why we need a new SaaS platform when we already have one that works, doesn’t it?
So you need to appeal to your prospects’ emotions. But you also need to arm them with the arguments they need.
Ogilvy’s famous ad for Rolls-Royce is perhaps the best-known example in the marketing world. Look at that headline. It’s factual, but it’s pure emotion. It evokes the feel of a quiet, smooth ride. The copy below is filled with factual reasons why buying the car is a good idea. But it’s all in service of that emotional appeal.
When KFC ran out of chicken, they ran an ad many of us have been waiting years to see. This time, the emotion is amusement. It’s a gag many of us have made in our lives, but KFC finally made it themselves, making you smile at a time when a lot of people were a bit miffed with the brand. Underneath is a block of copy filled with reasons why you should forgive them. But the emotion has already done the heavy lifting.
And when Restore Records Management wanted to gain its prospects’ trust, it did it with a blend of emotion (amusement) and logical argument. By starting with emotion, they earn a smile from their prospect. A smile that opens the door and lets in the reasons why they should trust Restore with all their records. (Full disclosure: I wrote this one.)
In each instance, the copy speaks to your emotions first before arming you with the tools your rational self needs to support the emotional decision you’ve already made.
Feed the monkey, buff the top hat
The monkey always needs feeding.
We are ravenous emotional predators, always seeking out some form of stimulation. Joy, amusement, anger, satiation, contentment, love, righteous fury, pain and pleasure. The examples I gave above all spoke to positive emotions. Sometimes you might speak to negative emotions. And this doesn’t have to be unpleasant or fear-mongering. “No-one ever gets fired for buying IBM”, for example, speaks to fear.
So speak to whatever emotion echoes your prospects’ experience. Equally, don’t be afraid to surprise them. Do you think many archive managers expect their supplier to amuse them? But Restore Records Management is making a big splash by making their prospects smile.
And once you’ve elicited your emotional reaction, support it with logical argument. Give your prospects the tools to rationalise the purchase, to themselves or others. Because your copy must always write to your true audience: an emotional and irrational voice masquerading as a rational human being. A monkey in a top hat.
And remember this: Your Copy, Righter feeds the monkey and buffs the top hat.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, I ended up with the beautiful “sunflower” iMac G4, a computer I loved even more than the PowerBook. And how did my dad react when he saw it?
He got an Apple Mac too.
