Watch above or read below.

Matthew Burns:
So Steve, listen. You’re a thought guy. You’re a high thought guy. You’re constantly challenging what you see, what you know, and why you know it. And I mean the case for creativity is a book written by accountants…

Stephen Semple:
It turns out. Yes. Weirdly enough.

Matthew Burns:
Right. And you brought that to my attention. And we study at the Wizard Academy, where we’ve gone countless times, and we could go on about how we’ve learned so much stuff and everybody should go there… But we learned about the brain during the very first course you should take, which is Magical Worlds of Communication and  it talks about how we process stuff.

The brain is fundamentally so important, and understanding it is key to what we do in marketing. So if we were to talk about neuroscience today as opposed to advertising, what would we lean into?

Stephen Semple:
What would we lean into?

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. What’s the subject for today?

Stephen Semple:
Well, the subject today is, look, here’s one of the things that’s really cool that we can do today that we’ve not been able to do before, is ask people questions and see live in an MRI how the brain is processing.

Matthew Burns:
There you go.

Stephen Semple:
Because in the clip you’re going to see, even the professor who runs this experiment says, people say this, but often what people say is not what they’re thinking. But we can now actually look at what they’re thinking.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
And that’s something that didn’t exist 30 years ago, right? When I was in university, one of the papers I wrote was on hemisphere collaboration and its impact on advertising. It was hilarious. I came across it recently, and I was rereading it, and I was like, oh my God, our thoughts, our understanding of the brain, sure as hell has changed.

Matthew Burns:
Okay. No, that’s brilliant. And quite literally, all we had was how we interpreted, how we were processing, versus what is actually happening while we were processing.

Stephen Semple:
Correct.

Matthew Burns:
So I think that’s the difference. Okay. So it’s a neuroscientist. His name is Michael Platt. Let’s cue that up. Watch this.

Narrator:
Michael Platt is a professor of neuroscience, marketing, and psychology whose research demonstrates how our perception of brands influences our decisions.

Michael Platt:
There’s an idea in marketing, which is that we relate to brands in the same way we relate to people. It’s like, I love this brand, or I hate this brand. Of course, what people say can often be different from what’s really going on in their heads. So we thought, well, why don’t we just ask the brain directly?

Narrator:
Michael and his team observed the brains of iPhone users and Samsung Galaxy users with an MRI machine. While they heard good, bad, and neutral news about Apple and Samsung.

Michael Platt:
Apple customers showed a brain empathy response toward Apple. That was exactly what you’d see in the way you would respond to somebody in your own family.

Narrator:
Strangely, Samsung users didn’t have any positive or negative responses when good or bad news was released about their brand. The only evidence that Samsung users showed was reverse empathy for Apple news. Meaning if the Apple headline was negative, their brain reflected a positive response.

Michael Platt:
It really shows us that Apple has completely defined the market here. Samsung customers, it seems from their brain data, are only buying Samsung because they hate Apple.

Matthew Burns:
All right, so wow.

Stephen Semple:
So here’s the cool thing about this.

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Stephen Semple:
So we often talk about marketing strategy.

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Stephen Semple:
Okay. Strategically, let’s pretend we’re Motorola.

Matthew Burns:
Okay, wait. And this is about Apple and Samsung, right?

Stephen Semple:
But let’s say, let’s pretend we’re Motorola.

Matthew Burns:
Okay, I got you. Let’s strategically use this information now that you know that basically Apple users love their phone and defend their phone and defend it to the end.

Matthew Burns:
Love it like family.

Stephen Semple:
Love it like family. So if they love it like family, am I going to be able to get people to switch from Apple to Motorola, especially where even if there’s negative news, the Apple user will defend it?

Matthew Burns:
No, a thousand percent not.

Stephen Semple:
There’s a moat around them. Unassailable

Matthew Burns:
Force field. I mean, it’s nuts.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. We often talk about there’s always room for two big players in a marketplace. Here’s the reason why Samsung, by default, has ended up becoming the anti-Apple device. Basically, their users are happy when there’s a little bit of bad Apple news because it’s almost like reinforcement that I made the right decision.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
But they don’t have any positives about Samsung. They’re essentially using Samsung because they stand against Apple. Apple users use Apple because they stand for Apple. Samsung users use Samsung because they stand against Apple.

Matthew Burns:
Which actually means that Apple owns space in both their brains.

Stephen Semple:
Correct. But now you’re Motorola. So if I were doing consulting for Motorola, here’s what I’d say.

Matthew Burns:
Well, you really are right now consulting for Motorola.

Stephen Semple:
I guess we are. This is free for Motorola. So if I were doing consulting for Motorola, here’s what I would do. I look at it and go, I cannot take money. I cannot take share, can’t take business from Apple, unassailable. I can take business from Samsung.

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Stephen Semple:
They’re vulnerable.

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Stephen Semple:
And how I would do it is I would take the default position away from Samsung.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah.

Stephen Semple:
I would stand for being anti-Apple. Now, here’s the weird thing: we’ve seen this game done before.

Matthew Burns:
Yes, we have.

Stephen Semple:
I take you back to 2006, when Apple was a little tiny company, and Microsoft was the big company. They stood against Microsoft. They created the whole three-year campaign of I’m a PC, I’m a Mac.

Matthew Burns:
Wait a second. That was a sticky sales story. And it worked amazingly well. It was a brilliant campaign, and all Apple was saying was, I stand against these things. I stand against all the things that Microsoft stands for.

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Stephen Semple:
The I-stand-against-that door for Motorola is wide open. And I tell you, if Motorola took that stand and did it in a creative and fun manner similar to that, look, they can’t do the I’m a Mac, I’m a PC thing, but all I’m saying is it’s been done. So we know it works.

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Stephen Semple:
It was done by a little tiny company that went on to become huge. I’m telling you, if Motorola did that, they would become number two in the space.

Matthew Burns:
Are you listening, Motorola? And if you’re not listening, if you know somebody at Motorola, you have kind of an in. Just show them what we’re talking about. This really, truly, I look at this because we did talk about, I’ll put a link to the previous episode for Apple versus pc.

The phenomenal response that people got, the loving response that people got, the Apple lovers, the people who now switched over to Apple from PC because of all the reasons why they stood against what was happening with Windows, all the Windows changes and blah, blah, blah. That was an anti strategy.

Stephen Semple:
Yes, it was.

Matthew Burns:
That I stand against, I stand against, I stand against, I stand against. Apple doesn’t do that for iPhone. It’s we do this awesome thing. And even though you can argue right now that Apple’s in the worst technological advancement time of their career, they’re making iterations that everybody’s saying, yeah, you’re just catching up to what they did. Yeah, all you’re doing is catching up.

And people will still defend. Apple users are still going, yeah, but it’s Apple.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, I got my Apple phone here.

Matthew Burns:
Right. So listen, so this is crazy because there is an opportunity to join the ranks of Google, Samsung, all the guys that are using Android as their operating system versus Apple.

Stephen Semple:
But become the one who stands against it.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
And becomes that thing and doing it in the manner that you don’t really realize is becoming the anti, it’s not like we’re anti Apple, but just really, really taking that place. And this is an example. The reason why I really like this is that we talk strategy all the time, and this is an example of that. Here’s this idea, here’s the shape of the problem. Apple users are this way. Samsung users are this way.

If I’m now the third person, how do I take advantage of that? What’s the shape of that problem? Have I seen that shape of that problem before? Has somebody solved it before? Oh, they have. I can now take that idea and use it. I know it’s work, boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. Somebody other than Samsung can eat Samsung’s breakfast. Samsung is vulnerable here.

Matthew Burns:
You called me that day when you got this. You had that so fast. I saw this morning. I thought about it for about an hour, and then you called me and said, man, I go, oh, I got a sticky sales story. We have to talk about this. It was so easy for you to put all those together. But again, you’re a business topology guy. I mean, if you guys listen to the Empire Builders Podcast, you’ll see he’s been breaking down businesses for three years now and how they became big and what they’ve done to get there.

Stephen Semple:
Five years?

Matthew Burns:
You’ve done it for five years?

Stephen Semple:
Well, I guess it’s four. Sorry, it was four years.

Matthew Burns:
I was going to say five seems too long.

Stephen Semple:
We’re coming into our fifth year.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right. So the guys, this is the guy that can do that, can see it from every angle, look at the shape, and then see he now figures it out how everybody else has done it, so that we can then take that shape and go, oh, wait a second. This would fit over here. We just got to plunk this in and take this out and boom, here. Now you can do the exact same thing that was already solved.

Russian scientists call that TRIZ. We call it the 40 answers of Da Vinci. We’re looking at solving the problem from the only angles that exist. So we don’t have to be that creative, which I love.

Stephen Semple:
So here’s how you can use this in the everyday mainstream business. That’s who our customers are.

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Stephen Semple:
You’re in a marketplace where there are two strong competitors, one deeply loved the other one not really loved, but there it’s maybe respected, but it’s not loved. This is your opportunity. If you can see it and you can sit there and go, this kind of feels like Apple, Samsung. You know what you do? You become the one to stand against the one who’s loved.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
Watch the I’m a Mac I’m a PC for the flavor of that. Look, we modeled that. If anybody has ever listened to the Empire Builders Podcast and heard any of the Sir Richard Poshingham ads, Sir Richard Poshingham and Mark Tapper are Mac vs PC.

Matthew Burns:
That’s exactly what it is.

Stephen Semple:
It is modeled exactly off of that. Exactly off of that. And you would not know that if I didn’t say that to you. It’s not obvious, but now I say it, you’re like, oh, I can see it now.

Matthew Burns:
Yes, yes. No, absolutely.

Stephen Semple:
But that’s your opportunity. If the shape of your market is that shape, this is how you can apply that idea.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. No, that’s brilliant, man. This one was great. I love getting into the brain. Listen, there was no way to really, truly fight this fight before. Only now can we actually see what’s happening and what those real thought processes are when you can actually define what those two stances are for these two brands.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of science that can back up some other things, but only now can we start doing this. So let’s take this new advancement information, use it to our advantage. Wield it like a sword.

Man, this was really good. Thank you. Thank you so much. This was fun. Now I’ve got to go back to some clients. I got to figure out some ways to use this.

Stephen Semple:
Motorola, give me a call.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, we’ll figure out a way to get into their world. Thank you, guys. Listen, we’re over by the way. Congratulations to us. We’re celebrating a year in one video with this one is all right. Wow. Yeah. I think this is video 53, and so thank you for sticking around and watching, and we’ve got lots more to come.

We’ve got tons of ideas we’re going to bring to the table. Steve, you’ve been awesome, and I can’t wait to do 52 more. Alright, that’s awesome. This has been fun. Thanks, guys.

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