Pioneer Brand Strategist Megan Kent Reinvents Brand Strategy Through Brain Science

Brands That Learn to Speak the Language of the Subconscious Mind Will Create the Most Powerful Connection Possible with Their Customers

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Megan Kent

Mar 21, 2014, 08:30 ET

NEW YORK, March 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Brand strategy pioneer Megan Kent is blazing the branding trail once again by marrying the latest findings in neuro and behavioral science with marketing to create a new model of brand strategy that forms the strongest emotional connections possible between brands and their customers. According to Kent, it turns out there's a whole new way to think about brand strategy in the marketplace today – and it's by appealing to the FEELING, not the THINKING, brain.

Kent is launching her new company, Megan Kent Branding Group, to make actionable the exciting principles she has uncovered. Her company's own branding line is "Creating brands that appeal, instinctively."

By combining her real-world experience with a distillation of the most important findings in science, she has developed a revolutionary new branding model called PrimalCode Branding™. This approach is designed to help C-Level decision makers and senior brand managers give their brands a competitive edge by helping them speak directly to their customers' feeling vs. thinking brains.

"Today is an extremely exciting time to be in marketing; we know so much more about how the brain processes information than we did when I started in this business," says Kent. "Marketers haven't been using all the tools available to them by assuming that consumers make decisions rationally. While the rational, or 'thinking' part of the brain does play a role, it's most often there to simply validate, or put into words a decision that our subconscious mind has already made for us."

She goes on to explain, "In order to reach the neo-cortex, i.e. the 'thinking' brain, our marketing messages need to first pass muster with the older parts of our brain, the parts that are far more primal and emotionally oriented."

Kent adds, "Science now tells us that the data stored in our subconscious minds (our feelings, memories, emotions) are the primary drivers in 90% of the decisions that we make. So it turns out that 'going with our gut' isn't just a once-in-a while phenomenon. The truth is we actually 'go with our gut' almost all of the time. As Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman puts it, 'we think much less than we think we think.'"

"Therefore," she says, "by aiming marketing and sales efforts at their customer's feeling brain (the 90%), brands can significantly improve their chance of success. Marketers that continue to target the thinking brain with traditional marketing strategies aren't making the best use of their precious time and resources."

Kent cites her work on America's first-ever international tourism campaign, Brand USA, as an example. "We knew that if we used a rational approach to selling the USA, we'd come up against foreigner cynicism, especially regarding current U.S. foreign policy and immigration restrictions. But by using a completely non-verbal, emotional approach, the campaign has surpassed target goals and reached a 47:01 ROI."

"Building brands in sync with the hard-wired tendencies our emotionally driven brains use to make decisions enables brands to attract customers more easily and retain them for a lifetime." Kent has identified seven PrimalCode behaviors that can be used to engage consumers at an instinctual, "feeling brain" level: tapping your authenticity, selling visually, ensuring consistency, engaging the senses, creating belonging rituals, showing novelty, and giving proof points.

She has developed an expertise in this area and has been invited to speak on this topic to next generation marketers at both New York University and the Darden Business School at the University of Virginia, as well as local and national marketing organizations.

Her 27-years in the advertising business includes leadership positions at some of the most esteemed and forward thinking agencies in the country, from Chiat/Day (where she broke ground as a brand strategist) to Foote, Cone & Belding; Hal Riney & Partners; Fallon McElligott; and JWT.

Kent has created and executed brand strategies for iconic brands such as BMW, Coca-Cola, Nikon, The New York Times, Microsoft, and was most recently the architect behind Brand USA, America's first-ever, highly successful international tourism campaign.

For more information on Megan Kent Branding Group or PrimalCode Branding™, visit megankentbrandinggroup.com.