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Video Transcript

2003

◊ Author ◊

I would like to share with you the three brain theory .The 3 brain the-ory is something absolutely fantastic, it’s a new way to look at why people do what they do. Once you’ve understood the 3 brain theory, you’re going to keep using it again, again and again to look at what people do, how they do it, why they do it, at different levels of interpre-tation of their behavior, and what they’re going to say about it. The 3 brain theory is really going to change your life and the way you look at advertising and product management, leadership, reward, rec-ognition, loyalty, everything is going to be changed. Let me tell you first about the 3 brains. Number one, the most important part of the brain is the reptilian, like “reptile”. Why do we call it the reptilian brain? First of all, it looks like a reptile. Within the embryo it already has this kind of shape of a snake if you like. Second, we might have this in common with a rep-tile. If you believe in evolution, it looks like once, we were reptiles, so we still have this part of the brain. We were born with it, it’s not ac-quired, it’s something inherited, congenital. Because we have this rep-tilian brain, we are programmed for two major things : • Survival • Reproduction These key elements are absolutely crucial and fundamental to under-stand the survival of the species. If we can’t survive and reproduce our genes it is the end of the species .If the reptilian was not function-ing, it will be the end of the human species. By the way every mammal has the same reptilian brain, so if their brains was not functioning it would be the end of their species. What does reproduction mean? It means that instinctively, we know

Dr. G.C.Rapaille Chairman, Archetype

Discoveries Worldwide Inc

The Three Brains

The Reptilian always wins

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what to do. The word (instinct is crucial here). There is a reptilian intelli-gence it’s a program for survival. We know what to do, we know what the priority is here. The 2nd element is reproduction. It might sound very surprising to some of you, but beauty is a reptilian dimension. What do I mean by that? I mean that from one culture to another , what does beautiful mean? Beautiful means that my genes with the genes of this person combined together have more chance to survive. If I am in a Eskimo country, a beautiful woman is going to be very round and fat, (and oily by the way), why? Because she has more chance to go through winter. And if I combine my genes with hers, my children have more chance to sur-vive. In another culture where what is necessary for survival is being able to run fast when lions are trying to catch you, long legs become very beautiful, because my genes with yours have more chance to sur-vive. This notion of relativity called beauty can be understood with the reptilian brain. Somewhere unconsciously, I am programmed to be at-tracted by people that give more chance to my genes to survive. We see the power of the reptilian. We know that on TV, when a very famous actor or comedian , and if with this person there is a baby and a puppy, they always win, they catch your attention. Why? Because our reptilian brain is so highly turned on by this notion of survival and reproduction Why ? because the babies are the future of my genes .. When I say reproduction, especially in the US culture, people automati-cally associate it with SEX. If you look at the reproduction dimension, sex represents a very short time, taking care of the baby, helping chil-dren to grow takes a long time. So sex is one short element of repro-duction, making sure my genes are going to survive is more crucial and important. We have accomplished our mission at the reptilian level when we have several generations of our genes in front of us. We can see the future. I remember, a participant to my imprinting sessions, a man in his 70’s, told us he was feeling good about everything because when he went to thanksgiving, he could see his children al 3 genera-tions of his own genes. He had a feeling of accomplishment. “ if I have to go tomorrow , I know I have done the best I could for my family, This whole notion of the American spirit “we want to create a better world for our children, to make a difference. Think about that at the rep-tilian level. We want to create a better environment for our genes to survive, In many ways, this notion of survival and reproduction gives us a dimension of immortality “when I am not around anymore, my gene are “. As you know, in my book “the 7 secrets of marketing” the reptilian al-ways wins. The second brain is the limbic brain. The limbic is the emotional brain. Emotions have dimension that we have a hard time understand-

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ing. According to the American culture, as we know, men have more difficulties with emotions that women. In many ways, there is a femi-nine and masculine approach to emotions. What is this brain? First emotions are never simple, they are always contradictory “ I love and hate at the same time.” Mothers could tell you that “I love my chil-dren but sometimes I could kill them.” It’s the same between hus-bands and wives, friends, this dimension is very complex. When customers tell you they love you, is it good? Well we think it is, we want people to love us. What if they love your products but never buy them, is it good? Would you rather have them hate your products and buy them all the time? This is not that simple or logical, it ‘s emotional. Even if it is emotional , there is a logic. I call that the logic of emotion “one step at a time”, a bit like seduction, you have to follow a critical path. You have to do one thing at a time. This order of things you have to go through varies from one culture to another. What is fascinating is that it is imprinted, acquired. If I go back to the reptilian brain “we’re born with it”, The limbic brain is acquired , it’s merely the relationship with the mother that creates a shape, a structure from 0 to around 5 for this brain. Because of this relationship with the mother, this emotional dimension is very femi-nine. In most of the cultures, the father is outside seeking food. The mother however, is a continuum of the womb is some ways. Going back to biology, we all have something is common “we all come from a woman.” Our first experience of “inside” is inside a woman. Then we’re still attached to the mother. Then we still have her hugging us, we might go a bit further but we come back to be breast fed, so it’s like being inside a circle, we went outside but we’re trying to get in contact with the circle again. Through that, we have warmth love roundness which are absolutely key. It’s very rare to experience that with the father. The father is always absent, outside doing other things. That’s why this emotional brain has a strong feminine side. The third brain is the cortex. It’s mainly intellectual. This part of the brain is not in place before we are 7. I did a lot of work with Piaget in Geneva .One of our findings was that we don’t have the full mental tools of the cortex in place before we are around seven. Before seven, children don’t have “the conservation of quantity”. Take two identical balls of clay and ask the child “are they same”? the child will say “yes”. Now turn one into a snake, and ask the child where he thinks there is more quantity. If the child is less that seven, he doesn’t have the mental tools, he doesn’t see that the shape of the clay does-n’t change the quantity. Ask the same question to a child older than seven, he will tell you “do you think I’m dumb?”

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Everything imprinted at an early age is imprinted before the intellectual dimension and a lot more powerful. Hence the message “the reptilian always wins”. What is the cortex all about? The cortex is about “let’s make things cold”, let’s try to understand (stand under), let’s try and make a rational choice. It takes some time to do that and it generates a delay. The cortex always delays things. The cortex also deals with num-bers, verification, order , which is not very natural. Think about reward and recognition: “I’m going to give you 10 percent” is good because you, like everybody else, need money to pay your bills but if you have a reptilian reward or limbic reward, the latter it is going to be more powerful. Money is the weakest way to reward people, be-cause it is cortex. If we now try to understand the connection between the 3 brains: • The reptilian is very quick, reflex. • The limbic is energy, a lot of energy, emotions (we know there

is no imprint in the brain without emotions. ) • The cortex is control. The cortex is going to slow down the reptilian “calm down relax. Take the time think several times.” By going to school, children learn to train their cortex “don’t yell too much etc” education is, in many ways, an education of the cortex, trying to force it to take over the limbic and rep-tilian. I would like to go back to the notion of imprinting. It is a key element of the creation in our mind of the Archetype, the cultural mental structures we are going to use again and again. I call those mental highways. We create connections in the brain that we will use for the rest of out lives. Your very first experiences as a child are strongly imprinted in the reptil-ian brain as it’s the only part of the brain that is really active at the time. Our program is already there. We know that “inside” means “mother,” we know that warmth is important to survive, that we have to breathe at the reptilian level. If the program doesn’t work we ‘re dead. In the second brain, emotions give us some indications about the good and the bad, what is the “survival” and what is not. I believe that love was invented at a certain time, because it gave more chance to children to survive. With men and women around, children have more chance to survive. The invention of love occurred to create a duration (the reptilian implies a very short time). We have some data showing that children loved by their parents have more chances to survive that those not loved (kind of obvious). The limbic has a function to help the reptilian. The cortex, is supposed bring you the rational dimension to help you to

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have more chances to survive and to reproduce. The problem is that it goes too far into the control of the reptilian, so we lose out on spontane-ity. When people say “give me a good reason to love you” Do mother have a good reason to love their children? They just do, this is reptilian you don’t need a reason. The conflict between the 3 brains is amazing. I’ll give you a few ex-amples about the reptilian always winning. We all know that engineers are very cortex (numbers etc). One day, in Geneva, one of my student came to see me and told me he wanted to get married. “this is great, do you know your future wife?” and he said , “no, not yet”. But I have a plan, a strategy , I know exactly what I want to get, I have a deadline and I have a list of specifications, now I’m going to start working on it and I will let you know.” A Few months later, the same guy came to see me and said “Doctor, you’re invited to the wedding”… “so you must have found the women who met all your specifications then?” “No she has none but I’m in love.” That’s the big thing, the reptilian always wins, the cortex will give you the specifications, it’s the intellectual approach to reality but sometimes when you meet the right person the reptilian tells you “this is it, I don’t know I can’t control it.” Another example deals with communication, if you have a reptilian hot button you’re going to win. If your competitors only have a cortex they re going to lose. In terms of a product, service, image of your company, the reptilian always wins. Chrysler had a problem with the latch of the back door of the minivan, I was working with them at the time , and top people told me “we didn’t do anything wrong, we have all the data, numbers, we know everything is right with this door, so we are not going to pay any compensation.” When the case went to court, the woman whose child was dead came and had just one thing, a reptilian picture, that of her dead child, and she kept crying “my child has died”. When the reptilian is up against the cortex, the reptilian always wins. Reality and numbers don’t matter anymore, this person got a huge com-pensation. If you don’t have a reptilian dimension you’ll never win. Un-derstanding the reptilian dimension is absolutely crucial,. There are some reptilian words and attitudes. In the end the reptilian always wins.

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I want to share a well known story about Olean. P&G came up with a product called “Olean”, an oil that doesn’t bring any fat to your body. It’s kind of an ideal product, you can eat all the potato chips you want with-out the worry of eating fat. P&G had 25 years of research, all the data, to suggest that Olean was-n’t dangerous. The problem was that the enemy had one word, a reptilian word. He was not arguing about numbers, he was using one word. While P&G was in the cortex, he was in the reptilian. This word was di-arrhea. He had one witness who confirmed she had spent the night in the bathroom with cramps. That was it. You cannot fight the reptilian with the cortex, the reptilian always wins. What can we learn from that? Your marketing communication strategies should always take into account the 3 brain theory. Your number one purpose should be to discover the reptilian hot button to be used (e.g. the aroma for Folgers coffee, another famous story). Aroma is reptilian, it is powerful, taste is acquired later. So if you own the aroma you’re in a better shape that your competitors. • Always try and discover a reptilian hot button for your product(s). • Second, try and understand the logic of emotion. It sounds contra-

dictory but there is an order of things, think of seduction where you have to do one thing in a specific order in order to turn people on. How do you turn people on?

• Third, you need the cortex, it becomes an intellectual alibi. It is a ra-

tional one needs to feel good about what people are going to do anyway. “I’m going to do it anyway but give me the numbers to feel good about it.”

The intellectual alibi is not the key element of communication anymore, it’s the reptilian. - Why would you buy 4-wheel drive in Manhattan? - In case I go off road - In Manhattan? You know the off road thing is an intellectual alibi. Most people buying 4 wheel drives don’t go off road. So what is the motivation there? We know the motivation associated with 4 wheel drives. People want to

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be sitting high, why? Because of the feeling of security. The cortex will tell you that high vehicles aren’t safe because they might roll over. It doesn’t matter, the reptilian perception is what matters. “If I’m higher I have more chance to survive, if you turn up in your little Pinto, drunk and you bump into my big SUV, you die and I don’t.” That’s survival, it’s very simple. “It’s a jungle out there,” that’s what people told me . They want to buy a tank, a Hummer. I even told them (Detroit) to put a machine gun on top to sell it better…why? Because it’s reptilian: “I want to be strong , to survive to fight, I’m going to kill you you’re not going to kill me.” That is the message. The “non usage feature” dimensions are just intel-lectual alibis. The price is an intellectual alibi. Numbers always are. Every communication strategy should have a reptilian, limbic and a cortex part. Sometimes the reptilian is just an image . We know that babies are very powerful images. When we did the work on tires for Michelin, the commercial was very reptilian: the baby was shown in the tire. What else do you need to say? This is a reptilian message. Then of course one can always add that “25 years of research was used to cre-ate the best product possible”: That’s cortex (give me an alibi). Price is one of the best alibis, but since you already have the reptilian image (save your baby), would you negotiate the price? What are your priorities? You’re not going to get into the mood of negotiating. However, if your consumer is not involved at a reptilian level, of course he will negotiate the price. People in advertising, have to understand that images and sounds are more powerful that words. Cortex is always words, limbic is feeling and emotion. Once we have understood the three brains then we can have a very powerful communication and a powerful archetypal communication. This 3 brain theory is completely connected with the way we imprint ar-chetypes in the brain.