If reaching the consumer's mind has been the goal and object of multiple researches around high impact marketing, touching the innermost fibers, those connected with emotion, is still a challenge for every brand if it seeks to know more in depth how to create strategies of persuasion and influence in their purchase. l Diana Segovia (*)

(*) Creative Marketing Consultant of Vestiga Consutores.

Joy, disgust, anger, fear, surprise, sadness... emotions, without stopping the scientific debate around them, are internal responses in which thought, sensation, physiology and behavior (all of them subjective and diverse) converge. Emotional competencies connect the human being with the environment, allow him to communicate and lead him to make decisions.

In his article, "Culture and Emotion", published by the Grupo Estudios en Microeconomía Aplicada y Regulación, Luis Alejandro Palacio Garcia describes that "emotions are closely linked to some aspects of culture".

The author is based on three statements:

1. Emotions are the mainstay of social norms.
2. Not all cultures recognize or conceptualize the same emotions; even if the emotions themselves were universal, this does not mean that they are universally recognized.
3. When an emotion is integrated into the conceptual repertoire of a culture, it can also become the target of imperative or prohibitive social norms, which leads to the emotion being produced more or less frequently than would otherwise have been the case.

This means that emotions, although universal, have a cultural-social component. "It seems that in all human groups, there are social norms and the emotions of contempt and shame that sustain these norms'.

On the other hand, the actions prescribed or prohibited by the rules can vary greatly from group to group. What this shows is not that the same emotions are subject to cultural variations, but that some emotions maintain rules that in turn support variations in behavior," Palacio Garcia abounds.

Why is this important for neuromarketing? Because the norms, non-instrumental demands to act or abstain from acting, are sustained by the emotions they generate in the environment. "Cognition is the cause of complex human emotions. Emotion can be a cognitive product. Cognition can be the effect of emotion. It could be that, in many important cases, the three relationships occur simultaneously and interact with each other".

Recently, Havas Group presented its "Meaningful Brands 2019" study, which aims to link brand performance to people's quality of life and well-being. The findings are directly related to the topic we are addressing:

• In Mexico, 84% of consumers expect brands to actively participate in solving social and environmental problems.
• Google, YouTube, and WhatsApp lead the Meaningful Brands 2019 ranking in Mexico.
• Mexican brands such as Bimbo, Cloralex, Lala, Cinépolis, Aeroméxico, Gamesa and La Costeña are positioned among the first 30 in the list in our country.
• Mexican consumers wouldn't care if 77% of the brands disappeared.
• In Mexico, 46% of the content offered by brands is not meaningful to consumers.
• 89% of the country's respondents think that brands should honestly communicate their commitments.
• Only 39% of Mexicans believe that companies actually do so.

Significance and power of the brand

The emotions that make a brand significant, and which can be useful for neuromarketing, are increasingly related to social and environmental issues (let's talk, feel, sell emotions of empathy and ecological awareness), while 65% consider that brands really have a more important role to play in creating a better future.

In this year's edition, the study (created by Havas Group from a base of 1,800 brands in 31 countries) indicates that significant brands considered to make the world a better place reap greater financial benefits by outperforming the stock market by 134% and increasing their share of wallet nine points more than other companies.

In this regard, Maria Garrido, Chief Insights & Analytics at Havas Group and SVP Brand Marketing at Vivendi, is confident: "Brand activism (in relation to sustainability issues, health, among others), will become a crucial part of the companies' strategy, so there is no doubt that a significant brand is good for business".

Patricia Molina, CEO of Havas Group Mexico, explains, "This type of study helps us to measure the importance of what we do as brands and the effects it has on society and the world".

In relation to those who occupy the top positions in the ranking in Mexico, Alejandro Torres, Head Of Strategy at Havas Group Mexico, states, "brands have to be relevant to survive, that is, they have to go beyond the product by exploring how brands tangibly improve people's lives in three aspects: functional, personal and collective benefits".

"Of all the content launched by brands, almost half is not relevant to consumers in Mexico and it is just the content that has the best correlation with consumers' perception of personal benefits“.

In terms of the most significant industries for consumers in the Mexican Republic, the following stand out in the first three places: home care; travel and tourism, and food.

"The brands still have important challenges to face, because it is in the issue of content where there is an area of opportunity, although they comply with the functional benefits despite the fact that it is in the collective and personal benefits where the most meaningful brands manage to stand out", emphasizes Alejandro Torres.

According to the report's results, 94% of consumers in Mexico expect brands to provide entertainment through experiences that touch their emotions: events, or that help them get informed, be entertained or solve some aspect of their lives. However, they also show that 46% of content in Mexico is not meaningful to people.

Culture on the move

Linked to culture in an immanent way, it is the subcultures, signs and meanings that allow the cultural insertion of a brand in the market.

Mariana Carreon, BigFoot Cultural Intelligence Lead, consultant in consumer culture and brand strategy, states that all the work of individuals, including thoughts, beliefs, and creations, is vigorously understood by the culture in which they develop, that defined by society, time, territory and what happens and manifests itself: from beliefs and meanings to codes, symbols, emotions and actions derived from these social and temporal factors.

"In this context, within these socio-temporal spaces a dominant culture manifests itself, that is, a massive culture in which we are all immersed," considers Carreón.

"Subcultures are small cells within the great organism that is mass culture and they are shaped and distinguished from each other by having beliefs and actions that go in another direction of the status quo. Subcultures inject new meanings into the mass, moving it, transforming it and allowing new identities to form. They are signs and meanings that allow the cultural insertion of a brand in the market".

In the specialist’s opinion, constantly studying a subculture allows to identify its morphology, the meanings that define it, and the signs and codes that manifest and evidence it. "A brand can dialogue with subcultures, culture the signs and codes of a subculture, and be a subculture.

What neuromarketing proposes is the consideration of these subcultures, because they are living organisms in constant transformation. "With the deep understanding we have of them, helping brands to insert themselves in the emotion or better yet lead, endowing them with fresh and relevant meanings in the Zeitgeist (spirit of times) in order to stay in force through the codes and languages of what is interesting for the mass culture of the subcultures", analyzed Carreón.

Basic Principles

Neuromarketing is not a technique to sell more or to manipulate the consumer's brain. It consists of the application of techniques belonging to the neurosciences to the field of marketing, through biometric measurements of brain activity, which allow a better understanding of how consumers react to advertising stimuli.

Dr. Javier Cervantes, from the Faculty of Accounting and Administration at the UNAM, states that "marketing is amoral; it can be used for good, to say, for example, 'put your trash in its place or get emptied'; or used for a purely commercial purpose which is to try to sell you a product. This is not wrong, as long as you do it ethically“.

"The knowledge provided by neuromarketing will help marketers create better designed products and services, and marketing campaigns will be more focused on the brain response“.

For the academic, the real benefit of the application of neurosciences to marketing is to obtain knowledge of the brain’s reactions to various stimuli derived from marketing, such as the presentation of new products to find out their tastes, as well as the type of packaging and advertising that most attract their attention:

• Understanding the relationship between people, products and brands.
• How the tangible and intangible benefits of a brand impact the consumer.
• Knowing why they choose a certain brand.
• Identify how people create neural connections, allowing them to recognize and become familiar with a particular company.