'Branding Moments'​: The Secret Science of Memorable Content

A few years ago, a group of neuroscientists discovered a secret way to make content more memorable and increase conversions: branding moments.

In 2015, Cadbury's “Gorilla" was named the UK's favorite ad of the last 60 years. But the commercial almost never reached the public.

When Juan Cabral, Fallon London's creative director, and Phil Rumbol, Cadbury's marketing director, initially showed the ad to Cadbury's leadership, they were told the ad would never see the light of day.

It's easy to see why. The ad is absurd. It runs almost 90 seconds long. There aren't any people in it. Hell, there isn't even any chocolate. But Rumbol kept pressing, and after four months, leadership relented. The ad aired on August 31, 2007 during the season finale of Big Brother.

Before long, it went viral. More importantly, it drove a 10 percent increase in sales. Watch the ad below. Can you guess why?

Still unsure? I was, too, until a group of neuroscientists revealed the true reason behind the ad's success to me. It turns out that there’s a secret science to memorable content, and it has big implications for creatives of all types.

In early 2020, during the heat of the Democratic primary, my creative partner Shane Snow and I studied how primary voters responded to Democratic campaign ads, working with a neuromarketing company called Neuro-Insight.

Neuro-Insight uses neuroscience technology to examine what happens in people's brains while they watch ads and TV shows. What makes Neuro-Insight unique is its proprietary technology, Steady State Topography (SST), which pinpoints how likely someone is to remember an ad. They call this long-term memory encoding.

Over the past decade, Neuro-Insight has analyzed over 25,000 ads, and Cadbury “Gorilla" ranks in the top 1 percent for long-term memory encoding. And there’s a key lesson here for anyone who wants to tell a story that'll make people remember their company or their “personal brand.”

Our brains are built for stories. Whenever we watch something, our brain assumes there must be a story and tries to make sense of the narrative. This is particularly true when we're introduced to a compelling character off the bat — like a gorilla playing the drums.

As we watch the gorilla get into the solo, passionately flaring its nostrils, our brain is engaged, trying to decipher what's happening. Our memory encoding peaks at the very end when we figure it out. A bar of Cadbury chocolate appears on-screen, with the tagline, “A glass and a half full of joy." It's an ad for Cadbury chocolate and the joy it brings to our lives.

Neuro-Insight calls this a “branding moment" — when our brain finally understands the story and memory encoding peaks. If your brand's logo or name appears at that moment, people are much more likely to remember it.

Since a big old bar of Cadbury chocolate appeared at the Cadbury ad’s big branding moment, it stuck in people's brains. The next time they were checking out at the supermarket and saw Cadbury chocolate, they were more likely to notice it, have a positive association, and buy it. Just like that, the ad increased sales by 10 percent—huge for a CPG brand like Cadbury. People remembered the ad so well that they voted it their favorite ad of all-time, nearly a decade later.

This approach doesn't just work for consumer ads — it can be applied to any type of content.

Branding moments in B2B content

Take this “Mean Streets" video from Adobe—one of my all-time favorite B2B ads. (Yes, I am embarrassed to admit that I have all-time favorite B2B ads. There's a strong story that hooks you off the bat—a frazzled middle-aged guy meeting a dealer to seemingly buy drugs, but it turns out he's buying clicks. He gets arrested, his wife is crying hysterically, and we don't really know what the hell we're watching until the last second when the Adobe branding appears at the perfect moment — just when our brains are putting the story together.

Branding moments for creators

Lately — for obvious, selfish reasons — I’ve been thinking about how writers and creators can use this principle to help people remember them so they’ll come back for more and eventually convert to subscribers. After all, we all want more followers, more subscribers, and ideally, someone to pay us for our creative work.

I know it’s played out to use a Mr. Beast example, but I’ve been watching a lot of his videos lately for a new TV project, and guess what? He does this very well. Take Mr. Beast’s hit reenactment of Squid Games. At key moments throughout the game, as the viewer’s brain is figuring out who is going to win, Mr. Beast strategically plugs the video’s sponsor, Brawl Stars, or subscriptions to his YouTube channel. This increases the likelihood that viewers remember to download Brawl Stars — reaping bigger sponsorship deals for Mr. Beast in the future — or subscribe.

Based on Neuro-Insight’s research, there are a few other things all of these videos do really well:

• Until the branding moment, they prioritize the story over selling the brand. As Heather Andrew, Neuro-Insight's former UK CEO, explained: “This is highly effective from the brain's point of view because our brains often reject overt selling messages, while brand cues like colors, shapes, and sounds can get in under the radar."

• The clip shows real people (or animals!) experiencing real emotion. The presence of people increased emotional intensity by 133 percent in a study of social ads.

• It immediately introduces a compelling narrative. Content with an early story arc is 58 percent more likely to be viewed past 3 seconds.

Via Neuro-Insight

There’s no definitive research on this, but I imagine that concept of branding moments can be applied to written content as well — for instance, introducing yourself in a clever way at key “aha” moments when the reader is putting a story or big idea together, and then asking them to subscribe or convert shortly after. In theory, it should work for audio as well.

The next time you watch TV, look out for branding moments. And the next time you’re telling a badass story — particularly via video — try to identify a branding moment to plug your “brand” and compel your audience to take action. Your audience might be much more likely to remember you and come back for more.

If you made it this far, you may also like:

• This AI Giant Just Showed Why Storytelling is the One Skill AI Can’t Replace

• RENT: The 4 Elements of Great Storytelling, According to Neuroscience

• The Golden Rule of Storytelling

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I’m the best-selling author of The Storytelling Edge and a content nerd. And I love writing this newsletter. Subscribe for free to get storytelling and audience-building strategies in your inbox each week. I promise they’ll be awesome.

How I used GenAI in this post (Read this post for why I think disclosing this is important / useful):

• Nada, although it’ll play a more prominent role in next week’s newsletter!