Endorphins

Being a great believer in the value of high production values, I usually make noise when I see a visual that has been put together in Photoshop as opposed to having been well executed as a photo shoot. In this particular case however, I am willing to make allowances.

I am not a neurologist, and I am too old (ish) and lack the inclination (and ability?) to spend the next ten years becoming one, but I would like to talk a bit today about brain chemistry, and specifically about endorphins.

Your brain obviously does many things for you, but one of the key things that it does for you in terms of your experience of life is that it regulates your moods – it determines how you feel. The process by which your brain makes you feel good or bad, happy or sad, is a chemical process, and one of the key chemicals involved in this process is a group of hormones known collectively as endorphins.

Endorphins can be described as the brains self-reward mechanism. They can also be called the pleasure hormones. Endorphins are what the brain releases in to itself when it wants to make itself (i.e. you) feel good.

The way it generally works (as per my rather patchy understanding of the science) is that if you do or experience something pleasurable, the brain reacts by releasing a flood of endorphins which generate within you a warm fuzzy feeling of happiness/joy.

Chocolate, for example, triggers a release of endorphins in the brain, as does exercise, good music, fine food, intimacy, dancing, laughing, seeing your team score a goal and watching your baby girl smile. The point is that a pleasant external experience (input) is ‘experienced’ internally as a chemical reaction (output), which brings us back conveniently enough to the subject of this ad.

It is not by accident that humor and song are two of the most common creative techniques applied in the game of advertising. There is an old adage amongst copywriters that states (something along the lines of) “if you don’t know what to say, sing it…” From the world of the theater comes the similar “make em laugh or make em cry”. In both cases the point is the same: “make em release endorphins!”

There is a lot of advertising, a lot of products and services and brands, that succeed and thrive over time largely on the basis of charm i.e. the ability to generate pleasurable feelings amongst other human beings. This ad is a very charming ad. It brings a smile to the face (being the external manifestation of internal pleasure). There is a rule or principle to be identified here, and it is to do with the re-enforcement of associations.

Back to the brain. The brain works on the basis of neural networks – it is all to do with inter-connected links. Different ideas and concepts and feelings live in different parts of the brain. The whole basis of brand-building is that you can strengthen the links between the idea or concept of your brand and a series of (ideally pre-determined) positive thoughts and feelings.

We have already identified endorphins as being the fuel of ‘positive feelings’, it therefore follows that the ability to strengthen the link between your brand and an endorphin rush is one of the most powerful ways to win a consumers' long-lasting loyalty.

The Pavlov’s dog experiment explains this process very well. Where with the dogs ‘bell’ triggers ‘saliva’, what you want to achieve with your brand is a situation where ‘visual or aural brand cue’ (the importance of a consistent brand identity) triggers ‘endorphin rush’ (expressed verbally by consumer as ‘I love XYZ brand').

The only way to build this neural link of Thika Super-Highway proportions is one step at a time, or as we say in the brand world, one ‘touch point’ at a time. That is why the strongest brands are so very careful to ensure that everything they do generates some endorphins i.e. is pleasurable, be that pleasure visual or aural or tactile – every experience must be designed to build and re-enforce the link.

This is why a boring or bad advert is such a sign of incompetence, because what such an ad is actually doing is destroying the link between the brand and positive feelings and replacing it with a new link between the brand and negative feelings, a road which leads to only one place, which is not to Thika…

So that’s why I like this ad, because it gives me an endorphin rush, and I link that endorphin rush to Kenya as a tourist destination (the latter part of this sentence being the reason why clients will so often ask for a bigger logo). The challenge now of course for KTB is to re-enforce that link with multiple future endorphin rushes until such time as the only possible pleasurable holiday destination I can imagine is right here at home. I wish them all the best with this.

N.B. A note on logic. A logical ad is not the same thing as a boring ad. Logic is a higher mental function that operates separate from the emotional plane. However, the two are not divorced. Logic is the process of working out something rationally. The end product of this process is a correct answer. The brains self-reward mechanism for achieving a correct answer is endorphins. That’s why sometimes a ‘clever’ ad can be a good ad, and sometimes an ad that people need to ‘figure out’ can be a good ad…

Advertising is a hard-nosed, commercially-driven, systematic, analytic, high-pressure and results-dependent game, but that doesn’t change the fact that, at the end of the day, it’s all about the feeling…