Why Every Marketer Needs to Understand Neural Synchrony
Key points for applying neural synchrony to marketing
Communication is a crucial task in marketing. By understanding the neuroscience of human communication, we gain a general framework that brands can apply for their own communication
At the heart of successful communication is neural synchrony: the shared pattern of brain activity between speaker and listener during conversation
Applying neural synchrony to marketing means understanding the consumer's own communication style, linguistic preferences, and cultural references, and carefully curating one’s message to fit their unique profile
Imagine you’ve just had the best French Toast of your life. It was so delicious - so perfect - that you want your best friend to be able to understand just how wonderful it was.
Trouble is, they weren’t with you to experience this extraordinary meal. And you didn’t have your phone on you to take a picture either. So it's up to you—you must communicate from scratch just how amazing it was.
This is a familiar scenario for us humans - we have to communicate if we want to share our experiences. It’s also a crucial process in marketing. Everything you can hope to accomplish as a brand - whether it's building associations, announcing a new product launch, or writing advertising copy - relies on your ability to speak to your target audience effectively. It comes down to knowing the right thing to say, and to being understood.
How can you ensure that the message you want to project is interpreted in the way that it was intended?
This is easier said than done, especially in today’s fragmented media landscape.
However, by examining the neuroscience of communication, brands can gain an organizing framework for how to approach this. By examining what enables human communication to be effective, marketers can take steps to ensure that their message is articulated clearly, effectively, and emphatically.
The first step is understanding the neuroscience of language and communication. At the level of the brain, what enables effective human communication? This ultimately comes down to a phenomenon known as neural synchrony.
How Brains Communicate: Neural Synchrony
The neuroscience of language and communication is complex. Scholars have argued for years whether language is contained in a single place in the brain, or whether it's more of an emergent phenomenon, requiring synchronized activity across multiple regions.
While specific parts of the brain, such as Broca’s Area, and Wernicke’s Area seem to be highly specialized for language. Damage to these regions in adults leads to specific deficits in language ability known as aphasia. All in all, however, modern neuroscience suggests that there’s no one “language module.” In most speakers, language reliably engages broad swaths of the left hemisphere, especially in the left temporal lobe.
Thankfully for marketers, knowledge of specific neuroanatomy isn’t necessary here. It’s not about which specialized regions need to be activated and in what way. In fact, it’s not about what happens in the brain of a single person at all. Instead, the most important insight comes from the very general pattern of brain activity across the two people communicating.
This is the phenomenon of neural synchrony.
Neural synchrony is the literal synchrony in brain states between speaker and listener. When you’re the speaker, your goal is to replicate the same pattern of brain activity that you have in your head into the head of your conversational partner.
For any given idea there’s a unique constellation of neural activity which represents this. This can be anything, such as a memory from your childhood, a concept, or a recent experience you’ve just had. It could even be, for example, your memory from that delicious French Toast breakfast. There’s a unique constellation of activity in your brain that represents this.
Your job as the speaker is then, is to inculcate that same pattern of activity into the brain of the listener. Literally. The more that their brain, comes to have the same pattern of activity as your brain, the better they’ve come to understand your message. Neural synchrony is about sharing your internal state in a way that makes it their internal state. The better you are at replicating that same pattern of brain activity, in their head, the better the communication.
This neural synchrony is crucial. Research using neuroimaging tools, such as fMRI, finds that the degree of neural synchrony between a conversation partner predicts how well they comprehend one another’s messages. We’re all prone to the occasional miscommunication, but the greater the synchrony, the more we’re understood.
Similarly, other research finds that the neural synchrony between a teacher and their students predicts learning outcomes, suggesting that it’s also crucial for memory as well. And impressively, neural synchronization between parent and child during playtime even predicts outcomes in child development and learning. Wherever we look in human psychology, neural synchrony helps make our messages clearer, more meaningful, and more memorable.
So how can you apply neural synchrony in your marketing?
Executing on a Brand Strategy with Psychology at it’s Core
Optimizing for neural synchrony means being able to anticipate how your message will be perceived and ultimately interpreted. People use language in all kinds of ways - different types of vocabulary, different slang, different metaphors, etc. This makes daily conversations interesting, but it also presents a challenge to clear communication. Successful communicators understand their audience and craft their messaging appropriately.
As a marketer, your biggest hurdle is the audience size. Instead of 1:1 communication - as with human dialogue - in brand communication, it's 1 too many. The good news is the fundamentals don’t change.
We, humans, are of course, prone to the occasional misunderstanding. But human communication is very literally the best and robust kind of communication that the world has ever known. So despite our imperfections, brands can borrow from the science that enables this. At the end of the day, it's about neural synchrony.
Neural synchrony is crucial and underappreciated aspect of neuroscience-based marketing.
The recognition of the unique linguistic tendencies and preferences of your specific consumer. This infuses the classic marketing adage of “know your consumer” with a linguistic layer. Think about how your consumers communicate. Do they say ‘i’ll be right back’ or BRB? Are they fans of emojis? Do they use pop culture references? And if so, what kind? By answering these questions you’ll be able to better replicate the same pattern of brain activity that you have in your head into the minds of your consumers.
Going Beyond Marketing Communication
In marketing, better communication opens up a range of untapped opportunities. These linguistic insights help illuminate how the audience communicates amongst themselves, which is a crucial element for fostering brand communities. They can also be combined with an interactive alignment approach, so enabling the degree of synchrony will only compound over time. And of course, better communication means better brand storytelling.
And so while the neuroscience of language and communication may be complex, applying it to marketing doesn’t have to be. This comes down to adopting a neuroscience-inspired framework for communication, and fleshing it out with the linguistic insights of your customers.
In the end, it’ll be as easy as whipping up some French Toast.
Photo by Kabati Darlami via Unsplash
About the author
Matt Johnson, PhD is a researcher, writer, and consumer neuroscientist focusing on the application of psychology to branding. He is the author of the best-selling consumer psychology book Blindsight, and Branding That Means Business (Economist Books, Fall 2022). Contact Matt for speaking engagements, opportunities to collaborate, or just to say hello
References for Applying Neural Synchrony to Marketing Communication
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