How Brands Use Psychology In Marketing

Deepak Pareek Mar 13, 2023

The landscape of marketing has changed and is ever-changing, as we speak. Initially, if you asked anybody what they meant by marketing, most people said selling and they assumed that if you’re selling something, it means you’re marketing it. It also meant putting up billboards on the streets or distributing pamphlets to market the product/service. Now when you speak of marketing, the entire landscape has changed. From traditional marketing, we have now come to the digital space and things are evolving on a daily basis.

Brands have been using a lot of these marketing techniques to market their products and services. Now when you see their advertisements on social media or their packaging in physical stores, you’ll see that they’ve been extremely smart about it. One of the factors that have helped a lot of brands increase their sales is understanding and incorporating psychology into their marketing.

Psychology is one such domain that can be used in most every sphere of life. Brands have been using this to their advantage to increase their sales. Some of the examples of how brands have been doing so are:

Redbull used the Trash Can Strategy to gain market share. During the late 1980s, Redbull was trying to establish itself as an energy drink in the UK and they wanted to capture the market share. In order to do that, what they did was pretty unique. They crushed their cans and filled the dustbins on the streets of London outside pubs, bars, and universities. This gave the impression to the general public that it’s the most consumed energy drink and as a result, they were able to use psychology to attain their marketing goal. Genius move!

Another example where psychology was used in marketing was done by none other than Apple. They used something known as the Price Anchoring Effect. During the launch of the Apple iPad, Steve Jobs was explaining the features and the screen behind him had USD 999 written. After he was done with the explanation, the price suddenly dropped to USD 499 and everyone thought they are getting all these for a discount of UISD 500 which was a steal deal. This was used by Apple to sell 40M iPads.

One of the other examples where brands use psychology to increase sales is while marketing cereals. We all know who the primary consumers of cereals are: the kids, and obviously, the kids will not buy cereals themselves so they usually travel with their parents to do so. Interestingly, the mascots on cereal boxes are looking downwards at an angle of 9.6º so as to make direct eye contact with the kids. What this does is the kids feel that the mascot is talking to them which makes them want the cereals even more. Very smart!

You look up the internet and you’ll find tons of examples where brands use psychology in marketing. The reason is simple: humans work out of a place of emotion. Humans take action when it hits an emotional chord for them. It becomes very pertinent for brands to focus on their consumer persona and see what they want. After this is done, brands should be focusing on strategies that will drive humans through emotion - happiness, sadness, anger, etc. and this will help them drive their sales.