Marriage of Memory and Emotions: Penetrating your brand into memory using the emotional passport

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Introduction: In the intricate dance of marketing, understanding the neuroscience behind memory and emotions is the key to crafting campaigns that leave a lasting impact. Let us understand how the marriage of emotions and memory works.

The Amygdala 

The Amygdala is associated to emotions and is the gatekeeper for information that reaches the memory.

Imagine a gatekeeper evaluating a visitor. The visitor is evaluated based on the reason for visit, importance, past records and other important parameters. Amygdala works pretty much the same as a gatekeeper. Amygdala is also responsible for auditing and assigning an emotional weightage to every byte of information.

By triggering a strong emotional response, marketers can ensure their message is not just seen but etched into the memory banks.

The Hippocampus

The hippocampus is the Librarian of the brain. The way a librarian audits a book based on its genre, importance and the shelf it should be placed into, the Hippocampus audits the information to decide which memory bank it should be sent to. This also includes the analysis of accessibility to the information and memory. The more the emotional weightage as assigned by Amygdala, the more accessible the information remains. This is where the brand recall happens. This is also the most critical phase of purchase decision.

Hormones-in-law

Cortisol, which is a stress hormone is one of they key hormones dictating the emotional weightage assigned to the information. Higher the cortisol secretion, more the alertness and hence, higher the emotional value. Same goes for adrenaline too. Hence, the hormones-in-law have a major influence on the marriage of memory and emotions.

The Emotional Palette

Empathy, nostalgia, wit, melancholy and other emotions have the power of getting past the gatekeeper. Although we perceive certain emotions as negative and certain as positive, the neural system judges it as only a scalar quantity thereby taking into account the scale of emotional impact and not the experience.

As a Neuromarketer, understanding the intricate relationship between emotions and memory is your ticket to crafting campaigns that transcend the ordinary. If you can inject your brand into the long term memory, brand recall becomes far more easier along with positive purchase decisions.

Article by Anurag Salunke