The amygdala is part of the brain that stores our most profound emotional experiences of pain and pleasure. But it's manipulated and assaulted on a daily basis in the service of profit...without any thought of what it does to us to have this promise that our needs can be met, this illusion of meeting them, and the ultimate letdown of it all being part of a big scam to get our money.
I knew this, but it's sort of disgusting to read an instruction manual on the fine art of emotional-manipulative brain surgery, viz., this horrifying article, Recognizing the Moments of Truth for Your Hotel Guests. Truth, anxiety, safety, desire for human connection—all analyzed and subverted to serve the goal of Branding.
Some excerpts:
The beauty and curse of the amygdala is that logic will not penetrate its walls. Emotion created through human connection and dynamic aesthetics is the only means to get through. To shift your status [in the guest's mind and make them like you] begins here....
"Welcome" is never just "Welcome", but an invitation for your guest to enter your brand’s story, in all its color and glory...[Y]ou want the guest to know that they are Captains on this trip. The fastest way to the brain’s brand central is to have it feel like it’s in control....
....the key is responding to the guest’s essential emotional and aspirational benefit needs, rather than only the functional....
...this is a Moment of Truth. Here the guest makes an instantaneous evaluation of all that has come before. It is rife with pure emotion, the kind that goes to the amygdala and has a party. I would venture to say that if consumers were wired up so their chemical brain activity was recorded, this Moment of Truth would rank high on the Richter Scale....
...Here, the brand story gains closure and the brain’s pleasure center recalibrates its feeling toward your brand....
There's a reason "branding" is named after a process that involves searing living flesh.
Wouldn't it be cool if all this knowledge of human needs, pain and pleasure, was used in the service of actually creating socieites, cities, institutions that were less painful and more human?
Yeah. Dream on.
4 comments:
Good God, that was gross. Eeewh. I understand wanting to run a profitable business, but jeezus people. Can't being good for its own sake be adequate?!
That's it. I am putting a firewall around my amygd...armyg...ami...that thing. Right now.
i want off the raving fandom ladder!
I take it all back, there is a product that can fill the gaping empty hole in my soul: this.
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