How the instinctive mind drives brand choice and growth

Executive overview

Most marketing targets the conscious mind — which controls only 5% of decisions. The other 95% are made instinctively, driven by a brand connectome: a physical network of neural pathways holding memories, associations, and feelings attached to a brand.

To grow faster, stop persuading and start building a larger, more positive, more distinctive connectome in your growth target's mind.

Familiarity beats uniqueness; distinctiveness beats both.

The brand connectome

• Every brand has a connectome: a central node with neural pathways holding associations and memories
• Size matters — more connections means more instinctive pull, like winning Monopoly real estate
• Three rules: large footprint, some distinctive elements, high ratio of positive to negative associations
• Negative associations act as implicit barriers; advertising over them deepens the damage
• Brands are not emotions or purposes — they are physical memory structures in the mind

Conscious vs instinctive mind

• Conscious mind: resistant to persuasion, sees it coming, makes ~5% of decisions
• Instinctive mind: malleable, faster to change, makes ~95% of decisions
• Traditional marketing wastes 100% of effort on 5% of decisions
• Simon Sinek's "Start With Why" is one component, not the whole brand strategy
• Purpose-led marketing fails when treated as the entire story

Familiarity vs uniqueness vs distinctiveness

• Uniqueness = foreign to the mind; humans are hardwired to reject the unfamiliar
• Familiarity = rides existing neural pathways; feels safe, especially under threat
• Distinctiveness = takes something familiar, adds a creative twist, makes it ownable
• Formula: anchor to the familiar, then twist — not replace
• During the pandemic, consumers grabbed legacy brands; unknown products stayed on shelves

Finding and using triggers

• A trigger is a visual, verbal, or sensory cue that unlocks a cluster of positive associations
• Triggers work because they carry pre-loaded meaning from culture, memory, and context
• Visual cues stick faster and longer than words in memory
• Build several triggers: one for process, one for expertise, one for the outcome you deliver
• Triggers should be packed with meaning, not just decorative

Case study: Johnson's Baby — the father trigger

• Brand was losing share; advertising showed only blonde mothers in Madonna-and-child poses
• Adding the first father in a shampoo ad became the highest-scoring commercial in J&J history
• The image triggered: progressive values, dads supporting moms, contrast of strength and fragility
• Key move: creative twist on a familiar template (parent and child), not a radical departure
• Insight came from observing behaviour, not from existing research

Case study: Aquafina — distinctive brand asset

• Snow-capped mountain is "generic" but carries associations: pure, cold, pristine, glacier-sourced
• Aquafina rendered it as an abstract design with a primary peak, secondary peak, orange sunrise
• Outcome: distinctive brand asset that co-opts all existing positive associations with mountains
• Labels and colours alone have too little meaning; brand assets must carry a message

Case study: McDonald's — displacing negative associations

• Viral videos (25–50M views each) claimed pink slime in nuggets, horse parts in beef
• McDonald's responded by denying the claims — reinforcing and amplifying the negative associations
• Right strategy: replace negatives with positives; never argue against the negative
• Used real food triggers: fresh-cracked egg, family farms, 100% USDA beef, sustainable sourcing
• Fresh-cracked egg signalled that McDonald's actually cooks — countering the "assembly line of fake food" perception
• Negative associations are not permanent; positive displacement works if the claims are true

Case study: Snickers — category expansion via hunger satisfaction

• Candy bars compete on taste; undifferentiated and limited by health concern
• Snickers repositioned around hunger satisfaction, a benefit from the snacking category
• Elevated the brand above taste-only competitors; made it more permissible and purposeful
• Insight: when hungry, you're not yourself — dramatised as transformation into Betty White
• Humor worked because it served the benefit, not as decoration
• Rule: emotion and humor must be in service of the message, or they are forgotten

Targeting growth — the core customer trap

• Most companies target existing customers; limited upside (you can only sell them so much)
• Growth target: the largest possible pool of non-customers — competitive users or non-category users
• Competitive users convert faster (already in the category)
• Core customers reveal very few negative associations — they're already sold
• Growth target holds the implicit negatives blocking your expansion; only they can reveal what's wrong
• One dollar against a larger target returns more volume than one dollar against a narrow niche
• Cast the widest net among people you don't have yet

Building your brand without a big budget

• Start with visual cues: they stick faster and longer than words
• Identify multiple triggers: process, expertise, transformation, outcome
• Works for B2B as well as B2C — all humans make decisions on instinct
• RFP processes feel rational; the instinctive connectome still determines the winner