NeuroFact 1: The Brand Engram

Giep Franzen and Margot Bouwman (8) call the representation of the brand in the brain a brand engram. We can think of it as a mind map with hundreds of different associations - or shards of information - connected together in associative networks. But the brain is elastic and changes constantly as connections die or are made stronger through repetition.

This has implications for how we think and talk about brands and for how static we see them being. Rather than being concrete things like neat pyramids or onions with layers as traditional marketers would have them, neuromarketers say that brands are more like dynamic metaphors. That is, they are constantly changing as different connections 'fire' in the brain and, because they are part of an almost infinite network of associations, rely on individual unique experience and interpretation.

This gives us an alternative - more dynamic and flexible - way to think about and describe the nature of brands as experienced and to connect them to other parts of consumers' lives.
 

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