Branding, is it an Inception?

What’s the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm?

An idea.  Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea takes hold on the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. A person can cover it up, ignore it but it stays there. Information is forgotten, but an idea fully formed, understood? That sticks in there, somewhere.

This opening statement of the movie Inception reminds me of the first lessons my advertising guru taught me. We are always trying to play with these so called ‘ideas’ in branding or communication. ‘Inception’ is all about that game. Good brands are created out of these inceptions of ideas in the minds of their customers.

We always say that emotional connect make the customers act and rationalisation helps them to justify their actions. So emotions work better in most of the communication especially when we try to connect to the customer and create a positive inclination towards the brand. This is the exact strategy they have used in inception and it is evident in the statement of Cobbs.

“The subconscious gets motivated through emotion, not reason, so we have to translate the idea into an emotional concept and plant it. We could split the idea into emotional triggers, and use one on each level”.

They did the inception successfully by piggy backing the emotions of Fisher: "My father accepts that I want to create for myself, not follow in his footsteps." These positive emotions act powerfully in favour of the dream architects. Not just that, the dream architect always insisted on placing the idea deep in the subconscious levels of the mind for a better inception. We always try to achieve these in our communication strategies.

The reason for the failure of the inception by Eames in the past was like most of the failures in communication strategy seen around us. The insight / ideas were not deep enough and the inception addressed superficial issues. To be effective the communication or inception should always be based on the simplest and the basic insight of the consumer. Eames was not in favour of direct inception of the idea to break up the monopoly of Fishers Empire because of his previous experience. Eames says “there you’ve got various political motivations, anti-monopolistic sentiment and so forth. But all that stuff’s at the mercy of the subject’s prejudice you have to go to the basics, the relationship with his father”. Fisher’s inception was done below three layers of dream for a better reception. This is  the most difficult task we face during the formulation of communication strategies.

The subtlety of the changes what we are trying to make in the subject’s psychological layer is also very important. Possibility of resistance by the projections or perceptions is very high as the changes become aggressive. Ariadne was attacked by the projections of the Cobbs in the dream training because of this reason. This principle is very much applicable in real world communication scenarios, where we have to handle the projections and perceptions of the TG.

Inception also speaks about the responsibility of communication and branding professionals, towards the society. Haven’t we come across statements like the one below in branding and marketing?

 “This isn't the usual corporate espionage, Mr. Saito. This is inception. The seed of the idea we plant will grow in this man's mind. It'll change him. It might even come to define him”

We can see an extreme case of dream addicts also in the pharmacy of Yusuf.  The old man says “They dream to be woken up... the dream has become their reality...and who are we to say otherwise?” This is a classical state where brands give the reason to the existence / identity to the consumers. Consumers are dreaming and living the lives of celebrities and kings when they use branded products and services, ultimately that becomes the hope for their existence.

In short we can see inception of communication and branding principles everywhere around us It’s a good guide for strategy inspirations if you can dream and analyse within dreams and inceptions.