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The Conscious and Unconscious Influence in Marketing

12/14/2022



The human being has a conscious mind and an unconscious mind, or what is known as the "Subconscious Mind". The conscious mind uses logic, beliefs, language, memory, and psychological and spatial cognition, while the unconscious mind is a latent long-term power, in which experiences, ideas, and sensations are stored and retrieved when needed through an idea or feeling. Therefore, marketing largely depends on targeting both minds. The more a marketing content creator is able to create a full-fledged advertisement, the more they can successfully reach the minds and feelings of the audience.

But how does this happen? What is the difference between the unconscious and conscious mind? Are purchase decisions made by the unconscious or conscious one?

First of all, the main difference between the conscious and unconscious minds lies in basic human functions and mental processes:
The Conscious Mind: it controls analytical and logical mental processes, such as communication through language, trying to understand problems, current events, and paying attention to information but with limited concentration, as it only recognizes 5 to 9 pieces of information per second.
The Unconscious Mind: it controls involuntary conjecture and intuitive processes, such as physical movements, facial expressions, and perception of past, present, and future events. It also detects and stores information with unlimited concentration. It recognizes 2 million pieces of information per second.

On the other hand, the role of the marketing department in any organization is to continuously increase and retain customers. In order to achieve this, customer behaviors must always be monitored and analyzed, and all the factors that affect them in decision-making shall be identified by successfully preparing advertisements using Meta and Milton models (Logic And Emotion) that address the conscious and unconscious minds; by conscious relaxation of the recipient, so that the advertised product is stored in memory in order to be remembered and recalled when needed.

Following are some techniques used for conscious relaxation, as put by Mohammad Subhi in Secrets of Creative Marketing Content Creation Book:
Confusion: Conscious relaxation can be achieved through overlapping music and random advertising animations and movements that engage the conscious mind. This makes the ad words intended to be delivered penetrate easily into the unconscious mind.
Overloading: Distracting the conscious mind by transmitting more than 7 pieces of information at once. The conscious mind will then transmit the excess information into the unconscious mind to store it in the long-term memory.
Prolixity: Unclear information and voices, such as whispers, cause the conscious mind to relax and lose concern and run the unconscious mind to store information in the long-term memory. The marketing content creator should identify what he wants to present to the conscious mind and what he wants to present to the unconscious one.
Engagement: Conscious relaxation by engaging it with things that appeal to the human being and then creating a linguistic connection to achieve the desired outcome.


People rarely watch or pay attention to ads, and they may turn their focus to something else until the ad is over. However, attracting the unconscious may attract the recipient's attention if it is based on correct and well-thought-out techniques. Everything is achievable. The difference lies in how these powers can be utilized to achieve the greatest benefit