During all of these aforementioned trials, the brain steered the behaviors unconsciously. As Schreier and Held put it, the brain switched to “autopilot.” Since this is trimmed for efficiency, it stores automated programs that are activated by certain triggers called “implicit codes” and thus control our behavior. The “pilot,” on the other hand, is our “40-bit consciousness,” which we use to actively focus on a task, such as learning a foreign name or remembering a phone number.
What influences our decisions
The autopilot “… reaches for chocolate even though we’re trying to lose weight, for a cigarette when we smell coffee, and gives shopping TV channels good sales,” according to “How Advertising Works.” The autopilot is “emotional. Anyone can observe this in themselves: People would rather reach for a well-known brand than an unknown one; smokers know this particularly well. Brain research calls the “unconscious” the “implicit.”
“Even decisions involving complex considerations are often made in the implicit system,” says neuromarketing specialist Scheier. Therefore, he says, the commercial specifically tries to address the implicit system and the emotions in the brain directly. In the case of advertising for cough medicine, this can be a mother’s concern for a sick child, or in the case of cat food, the sight of a cute little kitten – this is how advertising works particularly well.
Advertising thus unfolds its effect primarily implicitly, as people unconsciously absorb an incredible amount of information. Manfred Spitzer, head of the Ulm University Department of Psychiatry and the Transfer Center for Neuroscience and Learning, put it this way: “We may not always perceive everything, but we are unable to prevent our perceptual system from always perceiving as much as possible.”
