Causing Customers to Remember You at Their Moment of Need

From the library of the Wizard.... Planting a mental trigger.
One of the ways Wizard of Ads helps grow owner-operated businesses.

"Successfully implanted, a reticular activator will cause your prospective customer immediately to think of your company when she has need of your product."

YOU BUY A NEW CAR. As soon as you drive out of the dealer’s lot, you begin seeing cars just like yours everywhere you go. We can safely assume these cars were here yesterday — but yesterday you didn’t notice them, and today you aren’t looking for them. What’s happening?

Your old refrigerator begins to make odd noises. You finish breakfast and go to work, immediately forgetting about the refrigerator and the noise. During lunch, you read the paper and notice an ad for refrigerators on sale. You weren’t thinking about your refrigerator, but you notice the ad anyway. What’s happening?

You are asked to total fourteen different columns of single- digit numbers. Each of the fourteen columns adds up to exactly fourteen. You are now asked to name a vegetable. You say “carrots.” Why?

Planting a reticular activator in the mind of the customer is the Mount Everest of ad writers. The reticular activator is a mental trigger in your unconscious that directs your attention and causes you to notice and remember things you never intentionally committed to memory. Successfully implanted, a reticular activator will cause your prospective customer immediately to think of your company when she has need of your product.

It is easier to implant a reticular activator using sound rather than sight. Medical science tells us it takes 29 percent longer to understand written words than spoken words. This is because the brain must translate the written word into the spoken word before it can be understood. When we memorize the written word, it is the sound of the words we remember, not their appearance on the page. This is true even when we have been reading silently. We hear the words in our minds.

The eye cannot be trusted to remember what it has seen. One of the most frustrating parts of police work is that different eyewitnesses often recall an event differently. Yet people can repeat the last sentence a person said, even if they weren’t paying attention. How often has someone asked, “Are you listening?” and even though you weren’t, you could repeat verbatim their last statement?

Information taken in through the eyes enters into iconic memory and disappears in less than one second. Information that enters through the ears rattles around in echoic memory for nearly five seconds before it dissipates.

Well-written, intrusive ads establish echoic retention through the use of a reticular activator. Echoic retention and a reticular activator will cause you to say “carrots” after repeating the number “fourteen.”

How many times have you heard the phrase “fourteen-karat gold”?

From the Editor: But be warned - Planting a Mental trigger is NOT a short term strategy. It takes a relevant message (Uncovery and message development) and frequency (money)... and then you still have to wait for the moment of need. Do you have the patience?

PS. Do you need help planting a mental trigger in the mind of your customer?