A flash light in the dark

Writing stories in invisible ink: How you could spend on campaigns your target won’t see.

Case of ‘Kofi Broke Man’

If you’re familiar with the environs of East Legon, an affluent neighbourhood in Accra, then you’ve probably been on Lagos Avenue multiple times. However, there’s one particular thing about that road you may not have realised.

Lagos Avenue is arguably the street with the highest number of ‘Kofi broke man’ (Ghanaian slang for roasted plantain and groundnuts) sellers in Accra. For those who’ve been buying ‘Kofi broke man’ from that street, this might not come as news to you. However, if you’re now finding out about this, you’d be surprised by how you’ll suddenly start noticing roasted plantain sellers the next time you’re on Lagos Avenue.

So, this begs the question; How come you never noticed the roasted plantain sellers before, even though they were there all the time?

Being there doesn’t mean you’ll be seen

Just as you get excited when you see a familiar face at a crowded party of people you don’t know; your brain gets excited when it notices something it recognizes from a previous interaction. This experience is known as the “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon”.

For this phenomenon to work, two things happen in the brain: The first is selective attention bias – a cognitive bias that creates the tendency for us to notice things that our brains think are important, while disregarding the rest (Just like easily spotting your crush in the middle of a packed dance floor as if they were the only person in the room). The second is confirmation bias – another cognitive bias that creates the tendency for us to look out for things that support what we already believe (Just like how you take it as a sign your crush likes you every time they laugh at your jokes).

With these combined cognitive biases, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon makes us believe that something is occurring a lot more often than it actually is, therefore causing us to suddenly notice it, even though it’s always been there.

So, what does all this have to do with spending money on marketing campaigns your target won’t see?

Getting seen

Brand awareness is one of the most important aspects of marketing because it is what allows your brand to be easily recognized and chosen.

With the right strategy, your brand awareness campaigns can trigger the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and ensure that your target audiences’ brains screen out competing brands but notice yours, so you don’t end up spending your entire brand awareness budget on campaigns that people won’t see.

Brand awareness campaigns developed without considering or properly deploying the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon communicate like books written in invisible ink, and who can read an invisible story?

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