Unconscious Branding

You think you decide consciously, but most of your choices are made before your conscious mind catches up. In his work, Douglas Van Praet blends neuroscience, psychology, and marketing to reveal that human behavior is largely driven by unconscious processes. He invites you to look beneath the visible tip of the iceberg—the rational narratives you tell yourself—and explore the deep mental machinery that actually governs choice.

Two Minds, One Decision

You live with two minds: System 1—fast, emotional, automatic—and System 2—slow, deliberate, rational. Neuroscientists like John-Dylan Haynes and Daniel Kahneman have shown that your brain makes many decisions seconds before 'you' are aware of them. This has major implications for persuasion, because people often act first, then explain later. You aren’t lying when you justify a purchase; you’re translating impulses into language.

Marketing that starts with logic assumes people are rational actors. But real influence begins deeper: in memory, emotion, and instinct. As Gerald Zaltman famously noted, about 95 percent of consumer thought happens unconsciously. Van Praet’s book argues that effective communication must speak this silent language of the brain.

The Brain as Prediction Machine

Your brain constantly predicts what comes next. When those predictions are right, you coast in autopilot; when they fail, attention spikes. This predictive pattern explains why surprise captures attention and novelty triggers dopamine bursts. Studies by Düzel and Bunzeck show that novelty activates hippocampal and reward regions, enhancing learning and motivation. The same circuitry fuels curiosity, risk-taking, and the instinct to explore.

Rather than simply “communicating,” great brands strategically violate expectations—then resolve the tension in satisfying ways. This neurological dance between surprise and comfort becomes the starting rhythm for persuasion.

Emotion, Memory, and Meaning

Read Montague’s Pepsi Challenge fMRI study demonstrated how expectations rewire sensory experience. When participants knew they were drinking Coke, brain regions associated with emotion and memory lit up differently, influencing taste preference. The brand rode on dopamine-driven anticipation, not flavor. This proves that brands live not just in the marketplace but inside neural circuits.

Such responses highlight Antonio Damasio’s concept of somatic markers: bodily sensations—racing pulse, warmth, excitement—that guide choices before thought intervenes. Brand cues such as colors, sounds, and textures attach themselves to these bodily markers over time, forming emotional shortcuts that drive behavior.

The Evolved Consumer

Beneath modern habits lies an ancient brain. Evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby describe our minds as a collection of adaptive programs built for survival in small tribes. That’s why status, reciprocity, and belonging still dominate social and commercial behavior. Free samples activate reciprocity circuits; exclusive access gratifies status needs; and communities around brands (Apple, Harley-Davidson) mirror ancestral tribes. Even online, we remain Stone Age minds navigating digital environments.

Recognizing these instincts reframes marketing as anthropology. You’re not persuading abstract “consumers”—you’re interacting with humans whose ancient motivations persist beneath modern veneers.

Research, Not Guesswork

Traditional market research often misleads because it measures verbalized opinion, not unconscious truth. People report personas, not impulses. Focus groups can identify rationalizations but miss emotional triggers. Neuromarketing tools—EEG, fMRI, galvanic skin response—help expose these hidden reactions, but Van Praet cautions they are tools, not rules. Data must serve intuition and creativity, not replace them.

When you combine neuroscience, ethnography, and observation, you build empathy for real decision processes. Instead of asking people what they think, watch what their bodies, eyes, and habits reveal. Those are the true signals of behavior.

The Book’s Core Framework

Van Praet structures change as a sequential journey—from interrupting attention to creating comfort, leading imagination, shifting feeling, satisfying logic, changing associations, and finally driving action. Each step maps to a stage of cognitive and emotional processing in the brain. Together, they explain how ideas become habits.

Key premise

Change doesn’t begin with argument—it begins with feeling. To move people, start where their mind already works: unconsciously, emotionally, and bodily.

By weaving together cognitive science and practical case studies—from Volkswagen’s “The Force” to Dove’s Real Beauty and Red Bull’s experiential events—Van Praet builds a model where marketing becomes psychology in action. You learn not just to sell, but to understand human decision-making at its core: what moves people is what feels right long before it makes sense.

Van Praet reframes brands as the brain’s efficiency tools—emotional, embodied shortcuts that compress complex associations into a feeling of trust or desire. When you choose a brand, your body recalls emotional memories: the Coke label triggers comfort, the Intel jingle signals safety, and the Harley logo evokes freedom. These are not surface symbols—they are neural links.

How Brands Live in the Brain

Repeated exposure engraves brand cues into neural patterns. The Pepsi Challenge studies illustrated how brand labels shape sensory experience. Coca-Cola, through history and cultural storytelling, now activates the hippocampus and prefrontal regions associated with identity and pleasure. Your preference is literally wired.

Colors, sounds, and textures serve as somatic triggers. When you see Apple’s minimal packaging or hear Intel’s chime, those cues reawaken stored emotions tied to reliability or excitement. Over time, this becomes habitual—what Van Praet calls “embodied branding.”

The Dopamine of Anticipation

You don’t chase pleasure; you chase the anticipation of it. Dopamine controls wanting rather than liking. Seeing your favorite brand logo can spike this neurotransmitter, priming you to buy before logic intervenes. That’s why expectations shape experience—Bordeaux tasters once described a white wine as “red” when tinted, and Crystal Pepsi failed because removing its traditional brown color disrupted taste associations.

Practical Brand Building

Van Praet shows how sensory alignment builds brand inevitability. Intel mastered sound; Dove built emotional truth; Silk Cut used purple imagery to communicate identity when words were banned. Each tactic rooted in one question: “What feeling do we want to trigger?” When you deliver that feeling reliably, you build trust faster than arguments can.

In your own work, design brands as sensory and emotional systems. Consistency wires familiarity; familiarity breeds trust; trust drives automatic preference. A brand that feels right wins long before anyone can say why.

Attention is the gateway to persuasion. Van Praet’s first tactical steps are to interrupt habitual patterns and then create comfort. Novelty captures the mind’s spotlight; familiarity opens it for influence.

Why Surprise Works

The anterior cingulate cortex acts as your internal “error detector.” When something violates prediction, it triggers an “Oh no!” alert that re-engages focus. Volkswagen’s “The Force” leveraged this perfectly—using a child’s Darth Vader fantasy to deliver surprise and warmth. Similarly, the Energizer Bunny disrupted categories by showing up unexpectedly. But misuse—like Outpost.com’s gerbil stunt—shows that attention without positive association damages trust.

Creating Comfort and Trust

After attention, you must lower defenses. Familiarity and empathy release oxytocin, the brain’s bonding chemical. Paul Zak’s studies found that even small gestures of kindness doubled willingness to trust. Van Praet’s examples—from Southwest’s warmth to Amazon’s reliability—prove that consistent, caring behavior turns corporations into companions.

Authentic admission of fault, like GM’s post-bankruptcy transparency or Domino’s on-camera apology, rebuilds credibility. Comfort is not blandness; it’s psychological safety. Once people feel safe, you can guide them anywhere.

In practical terms: surprise first, soothe next. A bold creative twist grabs the midbrain; kindness and honesty keep the frontal lobes engaged long enough to learn. Without both, even brilliant ideas die in skepticism.

Once comfort opens the gate, imagination and emotion drive movement. Van Praet shows that imagination rehearses reality: the same neural circuits fire when you vividly imagine an act as when you perform it. If you can get audiences to picture themselves in a new behavior, you’re halfway to making it real.

Guiding the Inner Movie

Minimal, evocative prompts spark the brain to co-create meaning. “Just do it” lets each person fill in the blank, turning Nike’s statement into a personal script. Clairol’s “Does she…or doesn’t she?” invoked private imagination, breaking a taboo quietly. The Porsche driveway campaign (“It’s closer than you think”) used imagery and subtle suggestion to let prospects visualize ownership—producing a remarkable 32% response rate.

In each, imagination wasn’t decoration—it was participation. When people complete the message in their minds, the idea becomes theirs.

Shifting from Thought to Feeling

Once imagination opens emotion, you must amplify feeling. Inspired by religious ritual and multisensory design, Van Praet highlights how authority, coherent doctrine, and sensory overload create belief. Disney’s parks, Apple’s unboxing, and Costco’s treasure-hunt layout all transform routine acts into rituals rich with emotional meaning.

Physical sensations—touch, smell, sound—make beliefs bodily. Antonio Damasio distinguishes between emotion (the hidden neural program) and feeling (your conscious perception of it). Marketing must therefore trigger emotions people can feel. Engage senses, orchestrate empathy, and people will internalize your brand as experience, not message.

When imagination and feeling align, you bypass the skeptic. A sensory peak plus emotional truth locks behavior faster than any rational argument could.

After emotion ignites desire, reason provides permission. Humans crave coherence—once our heart says yes, our head wants simple justification. Van Praet calls this step satisfying the critical mind. The key is not flooding people with facts, but giving a concise, meaningful proof that aligns with the story they already believe.

Logic as Emotional Support

Behavioral neuroscience confirms that reason and emotion are intertwined. The anterior cingulate cortex integrates them into one decision signal. Daniel Kahneman’s research shows that people rely on mental ease: fluency breeds trust. Thus, a few coherent reasons outperform many scattered ones. Trident used one claim—dentists recommend it—to legitimize desire. Dyson’s transparent canister made performance visible, dissolving skepticism instantly.

By giving one or two crisp proofs, you let the conscious mind justify what emotion already decided.

Story and Symbol as Cognitive Glue

Stories and symbols organize emotion into culture. A good story provides causal logic; a great symbol condenses it into identity. Think of Harley-Davidson’s winged logo or the Marlboro Man—compressed myths people can wear. Jung noted that symbols bridge conscious and unconscious meaning, which is why they anchor loyalty longer than slogans.

In your communication, make one narrative easy to retell and one symbol easy to display. That’s how products become cultural shorthand for belonging and belief.

To sustain behavior, you must rewire associations and shape habits. Human brains link ideas through repetition—neurons that fire together wire together. A brand lives in these connections, not in rational arguments. The task is to attach your message to pleasurable contexts and actionable rituals so it becomes automatic.

Wiring New Meanings

You can’t erase associations, but you can override them by reframing. The National Pork Board’s “The other white meat” shifted perceptions through a simple parallel. Intel made an invisible part visible with “Intel Inside,” creating a cue that symbolized quality. Consistency across cues—visual, auditory, experiential—cements new pathways faster.

Priming matters: repeated exposure in positive contexts turns preference into habit. But beware forced exposure—annoying ads pair your brand with irritation. Neural plasticity has no moral filter; it simply learns what is repeated.

From Action to Identity

Behavior precedes belief. Milton Erickson’s snow-path metaphor captures this: make an easy path, and others follow. Red Bull’s events and Starbucks’ rituals made buying an expression of identity. Once acted upon repeatedly, behaviors self-justify via memory and consistency. Kahneman’s peak-end rule shows that people remember highlights and endings—so design each experience to finish with delight.

Ultimately, you design environments, not just messages. Reduce friction, add human warmth, and create rewarding rituals. When action becomes easy and meaningful, attitudes catch up—habit becomes identity.