People Resemble their Pets, Brands

David Schatsky | March 25, 2008, 04:57 PM

I love this item from the Wall Street Journal's technology blog.

It reported that researchers at Duke University and the University of Waterloo that found that "...exposing people to a brand’s logo for 30 milliseconds will make them behave in ways associated with that brand."

Skeptical? Fine. But the methology of the experiment isn't too shabby. Researchers

... exposed subjects to imperceptible images of brand logos for Apple and IBM (as well as logos for other non-tech companies). Surveys found that people felt similarly about the two companies in every way except creativity, where Apple came out ahead, and competence, which was IBM’s perceived strength. After exposing them to the brands, the researchers asked subjects to describe as many uses for a brick as they could."

Gavan Fitzsimons, one of the Duke professors who conducted the study, was quoted in the article.

Most people mentioned a door stop or a paperweight. “But the subjects who had seen Apple’s logo also came up with uses like tying it around my roommate’s foot and throwing him in a deep pond,” Fitzsimons tells us. The Apple-primed subjects averaged 30% more answers and independent reviewers also deemed their answers as more creative. It’s harder to measure competence, but Fitzsimons says that IBM-primed subjects had strikingly uniform answers.

They used to say people resembled their pets, but it was an open question whether a person and his pet grew to resemble each other, or people tend to select pets that look like them. Now you can ask the question about consumer brands. Perhaps people come to resemble the brands they spend time with.