Just to be clear, this article will not show you how to hypnotise your customers into doing what you want! We know hypnosis has a lot of negative connotations with fake gurus or people clucking like chickens coming to mind.
The basis of hypnosis is simple, put someone in a trance like state that makes them ‘highly susceptible to suggestions’ then make suggestions for positive change.
Rather than the trance itself, I wanted to explore one hypnotic technique that is really useful for marketing and brand awareness. It’s called anchoring.
Imagine you smell a perfume someone you know wears. You will think of that person immediately, and all the emotions associated with them. It is like a reflex and there is not much you can do to stop it. Almost everyone recalls these memories or associations instantly when they are triggered by some kind of sensory input, for example touch, smell, sounds or sight. In other words, we link one thing to the feeling of another. The smell of a perfume to the feeling we have for the person who wears it.
A lot of marketing is based around the process of anchoring: brand awareness campaigns, commercials etc. You simply evoke an emotion with sounds, images or story then throw in a brand identity to link the two together. So, in future when people see your logo, they have the same feeling they did when watching the commercial
Anything can be an anchor; presenters sometimes use specific areas of a stage to stand on when they want something to land with the audience. Comedy catch phrases become funny without needing any actual jokes. Music is a powerful anchor, in a horror film the music evokes the emotion of fear without needing anything ‘scary’ to happen.
For therapeutic gain, hypnotherapists can remove the anchors or associations that trigger unwanted behaviour by linking them to another emotion. For example, changing the anchor that seeing someone smoking causes the desire to smoke to perhaps one of disgust or revulsion.
In your marketing or brand awareness campaigns you should associate your brand or logo with positive feelings. Be warned, things like bad customer service can haunt you because of anchoring. Long after the actual incident has been forgotten the association may linger. Scary stuff right?
So, start creating content that makes people feel great or teaches them something and add your logo to create those anchors.
I think it’s such a shame when I see great content on social media without any brand identity. Remember anchoring is unconscious behaviour. Simply adding your logo to your content will start that anchoring process.
An anchor can be your logo, a music sting, or a tag line.
Think about the Go Compare commercials, even the very mention of that brand will cause many people to think of that song!
Another important thing to mention about anchoring is that it can take time to build these subconscious connections, which is why you need to post regular content featuring your brand. It should not all be sales material either, any content that entertains or informs will have a positive impact on your brand. Social media has meant anyone can post content cheaply and easily and can create these anchors. It’s no longer just for large brands who can afford expensive TV campaigns.
I mentioned it takes time to build an anchor however there is an exception. Emotionally charged content has the ability to create that anchor much quicker. Think of the Twin Towers in New York. Just a few seconds of video of the first plane hitting the tower will live with all of us forever, and the Twin Towers will always be associated with that image.
With brands, highly emotionally charged content and interactions can have both positive and negative effects, and brand custodians have a duty to protect their brands from the negative effects of anchoring and maximise the positive.
