The subconscious., to put it simply, is the part of the mind where reactions and automatic functions are controlled. It extends even to the tendencies that could nudge your conscious action. This part of the mind, that is currently being targeted the most by marketers. Trying to talk and affect your subconscious might not be that easy. But when all businesses are competing on the same level, it becomes much harder to convince the conscious mind, so marketers resort to the subconscious part of the mind for the competitive advantage.
The conscious is pretty much the part I talk to now, the conscious manages the actions and decisions we are aware of, this part is the supposed leader, the part that could elaborate on the subconscious reactions even actions and puts them in check.
Of Course both parts of the mind have an effect on each other, in the case of the subconscious our main topic, it operates over the automatic functions of the body and the habits or tendencies of the person which are except for the automatic function the things that the conscious is always trying to keep in check, the reason for that is their effects on the intelligent thought process, throughout the life of a person he will accumulate habits and tendencies, and of course there are the inbuilt instincts, and the conscious mind throughout the life of the person will accumulate knowledge and experience, now when it comes to decision-making both parts of the mind get involved, that usually results in making decisions that might be on the surface logical and rational but if you look deeper into them, you will see how those decisions were skewed by the subconscious mind, affected by all the accumulated habits, tendencies, and instincts.
For marketing in this day and age competition doesn’t happen on the conscious level, the level it happens at, is the subconscious, the way marketers use the subconscious mind is by signaling
to it in a way less detectable by the conscious, preferably undetectable at all, these signals speak to your tendencies giving a desired result with the path of the least resistance like in the case of lazy tendencies or habits, another way marketers use it is by associating the product being marketed with something totally irrelevant but highly desirable, in a way signaling you that reaching the irrelevant but desirable something can be done thru this product, an example on that is the use of models in many fields of marketing, be it speaking to the sexual parts of people and their attraction to good-looking people, or in other cases their desire to feel beautiful like the models themselves. Marketers also try to signal the people subconscious certain aspect about the product to be it true or not, conveying attributes like consistency and care as an example, we all desire these attributes in all the products we would like to spend our time and money on.
The art of signaling or conveying the message is a big one, humans take in information thru many senses, that information when in the case of marketing is provided by the work of marketers, its goal is to satisfy the tendencies of the brain specifically the subconscious, that’s done thru some intelligent designs and the use of hidden attributes of things in everyday life, one of the biggest tricks marketers like to play is anchoring, anchoring is the action of taking into consideration irrelevant information when making a decision, this is prevalent in the electronics Industry where they jam pack technology with functions to you might not be relevant but the fact that they list them as important features gives them a play in the decision-making process, you can see this also in many other industries in combination with other aspects like color theory, pricing, and positioning, colors tend to evoke emotions and depending on the color, the emotions can defer, also position can evoke emotions. combine them all together with sound which has an extreme effect on our state of mind. you will get cinematography and photography which are used to create and drive narratives. This can be used to evoke more than just an emotion but also lingering thought and action, and that’s what marketers strive to achieve.
This is a big and important subject in the realm of marketing, this subject in this day and age is almost a necessity, i would urge you to look into it because all of this did not originate from marketing, it’s much more than that, so their uses outside of it are even more limitless,
The subconscious and conscious are complicated parts of the mind. They dictate our decisions and what we align with. So we should always try to keep an eye on our psyche and, make use of it.