The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind

Chapter 1. $1 Trillion to Persuade the Brain

Millions of people in our global economy have jobs that depend on communicating with and persuading human brains. A trillion dollars is spent on this effort every year.

Yet few of us understand how all those human brains really work—what is attractive to them, how they decide what they like and don't like, or how they decide to buy or not buy the infinite variety of products and services presented for their consideration every day.

This book is about how and why brains buy. It dips into a wellspring of new knowledge that has been pouring out of the neurosciences over the last few decades, especially the last five years, and describes actionable insights for businesspeople and marketers that can be derived from that knowledge and applied directly to the global industry of persuasion.

These are remarkable times. It is a rare event when a science, its enabling technology, and a set of real, practical problems come together all at once to revolutionize and expand our capabilities in the world. It happened with chemistry in the eighteenth century, physics in the nineteenth century, microbiology in the twentieth century, and now neuroscience in the twenty-first century. As Charlie Rose said in a recent series of interviews devoted to the neurosciences, "we have learned more about the brain in the last five years than in all human history combined."

I am lucky to be surrounded by the best neuroscience team in the world to help me understand these ...