Hearts or Minds?

Do your communications connect on a conscious

and subconscious level?

Viv Farr, Managing Director (London) & Avanti Ananthram (NY) Narrative Health

System 1

Fast

Intuitive

Automatic

Subconscious /

implicit

Low effort

Large capacity

System 2

Slow

Deliberate

Considered

Conscious /

explicit

High effort

Low capacity

FEEL

THINK ACT FEEL

ACT THINK

More

Accessible

Less

Obtrusive

Lower Cost More

Experience

John Wanamaker

Famous

Industrialist

Half my

advertising

is wasted –

but which half?

EXPLICIT MEASURES

Self reported verbal or visual rating

IMPLICIT MEASURES

RED BLUE GREEN PURPLE BLACK

RED BLUE GREEN PURPLE BLACK

Implicit association test (IAT)

Eye Tracking

Courtesy of SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI), www.smivision.com”

Electrodermal activity (EDA)

BaselineBaseline Advert

EEG

Courtesy of Mindlabs

Facial action coding (FACs)

EXPERIMENT

Do we get different results between

explicit emotional (visual & verbal) and

implicit evaluation of 2 concepts?

Experiment: 2 award winning concepts evaluated

Focus on

empathy for situation(n=50)

Focus on

benefits of therapy(n=50)

Explicit & implicit disconnect evident!

JoyMotivating

Rejuvenati

ngHopeful

JoyMotivating

Rejuvenati

ngHopeful

TastelessSad

ProvokedConcern

TastelessSad

ProvokedConcern

Explicit & implicit disconnect evident!

SadWorried

Uneasy

SadWorried

Uneasy

Explicit & implicit disconnect evident!

LiberatingUplifting

MotivatingJoy

LiberatingUplifting

MotivatingJoy

Explicit & implicit disconnect evident!

FINAL THOUGHTS

1.

Empirical evidence has shown the importance of

subconscious processing in decision making &

communication effectiveness…

2. 3.

Why do we

score

communication

rationally

when we want

them to tap

into

customers’

subconscious?

Do we risk just

ending up with

safe adverts

that don’t

challenge –

merely selecting

the winner of a

beauty parade?

We can better

assess whether

communications

are really

connecting to

avoid

misallocation

of resources.