Using Neuroscience to Build Brands
From measuring emotion to designing for it
Neuroscience has given businesses increasingly sophisticated ways to understand how consumers respond to what they see, hear, touch, taste and experience. But its greater potential may lie further upstream: not simply measuring emotion after something has been created, but using our understanding of the brain to help determine what should be created in the first place.
Published in Food Science and Technology Magazine, this article explores that shift—from using neuroscience primarily as a measurement tool to using biology and affective science as inputs into strategy, innovation and design.
The challenge is particularly important because the brain does not experience a brand or product as a collection of separate touchpoints. It integrates sight, sound, touch, taste and smell into a unified perception of meaning. Businesses, however, often develop strategy, communication, packaging, ingredients, flavors and sensory cues through different processes and teams. Each element may work independently while collectively sending conflicting emotional signals.
The scientific foundation behind THE WHEEL OF MOTIVES® offers a way to connect these worlds. Drawing on biology, affective neuroscience and multidisciplinary research into human behaviour, the framework organizes emotional choice around 12 Fundamental Human Motives—providing a common language for understanding the deeper forces behind preference.
That understanding can first shape strategy and positioning: what should this brand or product fundamentally mean? What human motive can it authentically satisfy? What emotional territory should it occupy?
The same motive can then travel downstream into what people actually experience. Communication, concepts, products, formulations, packaging, colors, shapes, materials, textures, sounds, flavors and fragrances can be aligned around the same underlying emotional meaning rather than developed separately and rationalized afterwards.
This turns multisensory consistency into more than an aesthetic objective. The positioning becomes the organizing principle for the entire experience, allowing what the brand means, what the product delivers and what consumers perceive through their senses to reinforce one another.
The article therefore points to a different role for neuroscience in business. Emotion does not need to remain something marketers discuss, creatives intuit or researchers measure. By understanding its biological foundations, it can become something companies can systematically operationalize—from human motivation, to strategy and positioning, to the tangible things they formulate, design and create.
The implication is fundamental:
Don't only measure whether something creates the desired emotion. Use the science of emotion to help create it.
From understanding why people feel → to defining what the brand should mean → to designing that meaning into what people actually experience.