Brain & Buy

Before you choose, you've already perceived.Think of the last thing you bought. It feels like you chose it, and in part that's true. But before that, something else happened, faster and quieter: you saw a color, read a name, noticed a price written a certain way. And by the time you got to the decision, that perception had already done half the work.Brain & Buy is about that half, and the other one: perceptual processes and decision-making processes, and how inextricably connected they are. You can't decide about something you haven't perceived. And sometimes it runs the other way: you choose, and from then on the thing you chose looks better to you.The book follows the path of a choice, in four parts and twenty-four chapters.Perceiving. The idea you form of a website before reading a word, the shelf that decides where you look, the face that inspires trust in a tenth of a second, light, hunger, the weight of things.Deciding. The first number you see, too much choice, the stars and the best seller, the subscription you don't cancel, prices that end in 9, the word "free," the salad on the menu that makes you order the fries, the money that, to your head, isn't all the same.Buying. The cost you discover at the end, the card with two free stamps, the fear of losing, the furniture you assembled with your own hands, waiting for a trip, the gift.From the brain to the brand. Everything put back in its place inside the Branding Aura method, positioning and the brand mark put to the test of the studies, and a way to look at your brand with the eyes of those who buy.The chapters start from a scene you've already lived, at the supermarket or in front of a screen, and tell the studies that measured it, saying clearly when a study is small or still debated. Then comes "My point of view": how someone who designs brands for a living reads those studies, with the words of the trade explained on the spot. At the end you'll find an exercise for buyers, a checklist for sellers, meant for honest use only, and the box on the Branding Aura method. The sources, chapter by chapter, are collected online on the book's page.It's a book for those who buy, which is everyone, and for those who sell: people who run a shop, a company, a brand, or work for someone who does. Often they're the same person. Whoever sets the price of a product during the day goes grocery shopping in the evening and falls for the same mechanisms. You can't switch off your brain's shortcuts. You can learn to recognize them while they're working.Brain & Buy is the third book of the Branding Aura trilogy: The 22 Powerful Laws of the Branding Aura are the criterion, Branding Aura is the process, Brain & Buy is the evidence from the field. Each book also stands on its own.Renato Ravenda has been designing brands for over twenty years. With his agency, Overmatrix, he helps small and medium-sized businesses build their brand, and he teaches at universities, business schools and training institutes. He created the Branding Aura method. He has always studied how we perceive and how we decide: that passion gave birth to Brain & Buy, the YouTube channel on perceptual and decision-making processes, and to this book.