1. Issue No. 13|Aug 2015
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Issue No. 13
BRAND ENGRAM:
directions for brands’ symbolic meanings
NEWS:
Nielsen buys Innerscope
oPINIoN:
big data vs. neuromarketing

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More information: Neuromarketing Science & Business Association (www.nmsba.com)
neuromarketing 13 / 201518
BRAND ENGRAM:
Directions for Brands’
Symbolic Meanings
By Natalia Hoffmann
marketing strategy
Symbolic consumption – whereby people use
products not only as a result of the products’
functional attributes, but also because of
products’ extended meanings – is a highly
entrenched and salient part of consumer cultures.
From the last century onwards, this realization
has given rise to an extensive academic and
applied inquiry into what is perceived as
intangible market forces, as well as to businesses’
aspirations to steer them and capitalize on them.
Designing and navigating symbolic meanings
associated with a brand is now considered
strategically crucial, as these immaterial
assets can create advantages and benefits for
the customer, trade and company – in time
tremendously affecting its financial performance.
However, controlling brand associations is
also famously difficult to execute, as it implies
controlling the strength of a brand’s presence in a
customer’s mind. But since the battle for market
share is in fact a battle for the mind of customers,1
it is only reasonable to turn to neuroscience to
examine the neurobiological underpinnings of
brand associations, revealing certain principles
that marketers can follow for creating strong
brands and driving decision-making processes
by entering shoppers’ awareness as a positive
candidate for purchase.
The neurobiology of brand meanings
To account for the forming of associations on the
neuronal level, Giep Franzen and Margot Bouwman, two
marketers with backgrounds in communication sciences
and social psychology, coined the term “brand engram”.
In neuroscience, engrams refer to the biophysical or
biochemical changes in the brain in response to external
stimuli that enable memory traces to be stored and
experiences (both conscious and subconscious) to be
encoded. The brand engram model is based on the
principle that brands are defined by engrams created in
customers’ brains, with each encounter a person has with
a brand reinforcing or forming new connections between
different neurons that make up the engram. In marketing
literature this is a very advanced model, for it recognizes
that mental brand equity really exists only in the memory
of the consumer.
An experiment conducted by Lionel Standing in the
1970s showed that the human brain can store and
discern up to ten thousand brands with a striking degree
of accuracy.2
Brand engrams consist of any amount of
traces of information, which are linked to them; from
specific experiences (e.g. using or physically consuming
branded products) to snatches of TV advertisements to
elements of packaging. This brand-related information is
a complex soup of meanings and associations; it drives
all our attitudes to brands from general awareness to
perceptions of quality, desirability or popularity.3
These patterns of connection have the potential to
enter into awareness at any moment, though mostly
they lie dormant. Each connection represents a synaptic
pathway to the brand engram, and when one tries to
recall information about the brand, a retrieval cue will
induce patterns of activity in the brain, stimulating
those pathways. Owing to the memory’s network
infrastructure, there can be any number of pathways that
lead to a single brand engram. It is possible to access

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19neuromarketing 13 / 2015
» Page 20
it via another product in the same market, via another
product made by the same company, via a strong need
which is linked especially to this product, by recalled
advertising or advertising elements, etc. Each time the
synaptic pathway is travelled, it becomes better defined
(via a process called consolidation) and more likely to
be activated in the future. The more frequently a piece
of information is linked to a given brand engram, the
more strongly it tends to be associated with that brand
in our mind. Finally, the richer the network of synaptic
links that form brand engram, the higher the probability
that a given brand will win the (largely unconscious and
automatic) battle for retrieving a goal-relevant memory –
e.g., a brand name or a feeling associated with the use of
a product – in turn, influencing customers’ choice process
and economic behavior.
A neuroscientific take on brand equity generates a few key
insights. Firstly, brand meanings arise at the intersection
of customer-brand interaction, whereby a brand is
created not only as an outcome of marketers’ activities
(the stimulus or “input”) but also, critically, as a result of
the public’s reading of and reaction to those activities
(the “take-out”).4
Secondly, this is an ongoing process,
constantly updated (consciously and subconsciously) in
response to experiences and encounters a person has
with a brand. And thirdly, those intangible market forces
and elusive symbolic signification actually have a physical
dimension. In other words, the perception of businesses’
offerings and communications acquire symbolic meanings
(associations), which become entrenched in customers’
brains in the form of verifiable (tangible) synaptic
networks of competing strength.
Practical applications
In the context of brand building, it is crucial to understand
how marketing and brand activities can acquire symbolic
meanings and become a force capable of influencing
thought patterns, behavior, and decision-making. Or
otherwise, how can a brand form neural pathways of
positively predisposed associations in people’s brains,
eventually transforming these neural networks into
profitable behavioral patterns. Such understanding yields
several practical insights.
1. Deliver stimulating experiences
Successful brands “must not only create strong links
between their customers’ choice criteria and the brand
and interconnections between the other elements of the
brand’s association network but also create as many of
these (inter)connections as possible”. (Walvis, 2007, 186)
How to do that? By designing an engaging, participatory
About Natalia Hoffmann
Natalia Hoffmann is a cognitive semiotician and a
writer. She’s a strong believer in the neuro-field’s
potential and dedicated to its development. Natalia
runs a blog nowiapply.bubblegumpie.com where
she analyses advertising and branding cases from a
cognitive semiotics’ perspective.

4. This article (textual and pictorial content) is subject to copyright. For educational purpose only.
More information: Neuromarketing Science & Business Association (www.nmsba.com)
neuromarketing 13 / 201520
brand environment (for instance, through immersive
communication forms and media) along with customer
involvement strategies. Lego’s experience stores around
the world are a prime example of inducing propitious
neural connections in customers’ brains. Rather than
passively displaying closed boxes on long shelves, the
stores’ interior design encourages direct experience
of the brand and its products, with dozens of cylinders
containing Lego bricks to be grabbed and play spaces
built into the middle of the retail space.
2. Maintain coherence in brand offerings
and motivate recurrent exposure
From a neurological standpoint, branding policy needs to
be coherent across time and space (i.e., across physical
touch points such as advertising, point-of-sale materials,
products, new product development, packaging, websites,
etc.) to build strong associations. The most efficient way
to externally activate established synaptic connections
(associative pathways) leading to a brand engram is
through consistent repetition of a core message that is
specific and relevant to the brand. In turn, incongruent
or ambiguous marketing communications produce a
cascade of inhibitory and suppressing signals across the
associative network, weakening brand associations and
blurring the engram. The latter is a recipe for reducing
the brand’s chance of being chosen and for destroying
its financial value.5
Take as example the Colgate brand’s
decision to launch a range of food products called
Colgate’s Kitchen Entrees. In 1982 the marketing idea
behind it was that customers would eat their Colgate
meal and then brush their teeth with Colgate toothpaste.
However, the product was a failure, for the public found
the meanings associated with toothpaste and those
associated with food largely incompatible.
3. Introduce diversity
Although repetition and specificity constitute the
core components of coherence, in applied marketing
settings they must be combined with customers’ need
for diversity, revelation, and expansion of meaning
to broader mental categories. Research has shown
that coherent variations around a core brand concept/
experience reinforce the brand’s associative network,
as they draw more attention and induce more active
processing (“elaboration”) of incoming information,
which in turn increases memory performance (activation
and retrieval).5
Coca-Cola is a great example of a
successful branding execution with their yearly rollouts
of Christmas adverts since the 1920s. The almost
century long history of Coca-Cola Christmas advertising
has reflected the socio-cultural changes that took place
(war, female emancipation, but also changes in fashion
or Olympic games) and resonated with social sentiments,
while unchangeably retaining its core brand meaning of
”happiness”, ”sociability”, ”family time”, etc.
4. Hardwiring: Assess the impact
Strong and stable mental associations are only built over
time. The process is long and known as hardwiring. Once
established, associative networks are impossible to
dissociate and difficult to override. According to Franzen and
Bouwman, “Brand associations that are already consolidated
in long-term memory cannot be broken off. The only way
this can change is by developing new associations and
not activating old ones anymore. The chances of success
depend on the intensity of the old associations and the
power with which the new ones are developed.” (Franzen
and Bouwman, 2001, 71) In deciding whether to update
brand associations or to disrupt and change them radically,
research is needed to determine their strength, nature, and
scope. Consider McDonald’s current attempt at overriding
the brand’s long existing ties to unhealthy food. Promoting
salads and wholesome breakfast options as part of
McDonald’s corporate identity might just be a very long shot
and one to only hit the next generations.
Needless to say, customers do not perform the same type
of rational, detailed analysis that marketers, researchers,
and scientists do. Still, the public’s largely subconscious
assessment of brands and their symbolic meanings greatly
influence market positions and financial results. Merging
neuroscience with marketing has the unique advantage
of throwing light on the connection between customers’
neurobiology and their economic behavior in responding
to this most elusive of all brand assets.
» continued reading from page 19
References:
1
Ries, A. and Trout, J. ([1981] 2000), Positioning: The Battle
for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in an Overcrowded
Marketplace, New York: McGraw-Hill
2
quoted in Franzen and Bouwman, 2001
3
Kingdon, M. (2002) Book Review of The Mental World of Brands:
Mind, Memory and Brand Success, Brand Management, Vol. 9,
No. 6, July, pp. 481-486
4
Batey, M. (2008) Brand Meaning, Routledge
5
Walvis, 2007, 185
6
See for example Kandel et al., 2001; Craik and Tulving, 1975
Bibliography:
Franzen, G. and Bouwman, M. (2001) The Mental World of Brands:
Mind, Memory and Brand Success, Oxfordshire World Advertising
Research Center
Walvis, T. H. (2007) Three laws of branding: Neuroscientific
foundations of effective brand building, Journal of Brand
Management (2008) 16, pp. 176–194
marketing strategy