It has become a mantra: “Recent learning from cognitive science is challenging long-held assumptions of the market research industry.” And the mantra is true—but not in the way most people think. The typical assumption is that new research into fast, instinctive processing supports the idea that people’s considered responses to survey questions are just the tip of the iceberg—that the bulk of the meaning that brands hold for people is below the surface.

1. 1
POINT OF VIEW
The Disappearing Iceberg
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But really, results of new research show that
there is nowhere near as much beneath the
surface as the iceberg image suggests. What
the new science actually seems to challenge is
the metaphor of the iceberg itself.
95 PERCENT WRONG
The iceberg concept is supported by the idea,
often cited as a fact, that “95 percent of what the
brain does is unconscious.” This is said with the
clearly intended implication that 95 percent of
brand decision making is unconscious. Thus—if
this were true—marketers would need to focus
almost exclusively on subconscious processes
to truly understand consumers and influence
their buying decisions.
However, the 95 percent figure is just a
hypothetical concept. There seem to be no
scientific papers that substantiate this number.
It is undoubtedly true that a huge amount of
the brain’s energy is consumed by processes
below the level of awareness, but many of these
processes have to do with biological regulation
and low-level sensory processing, not decision
making.
Neither does the 95 percent figure fit with
evidence from our study of brands. When
we apply tools that tap into automatic, non-
conscious processes, we don’t find evidence of
a bubbling mass of associations and responses.
The Disappearing Iceberg
It has become a mantra:“Recent learning from cognitive science is challenging
long-held assumptions of the market research industry.”And the mantra is
true—but not in the way most people think. The typical assumption is that
new research into fast, instinctive processing supports the idea that people’s
considered responses to survey questions are just the tip of the iceberg—that
the bulk of the meaning that brands hold for people is below the surface.
Graham Page
Head of Global Research Solutions
graham.page@millwardbrown.com
www.millwardbrown.com
We have deployed these types of tools on
hundreds of projects in the last few years, and
what they actually show us is that few brands
evoke many ideas or responses without much
effort. For instance, we have used a variation of
the Harvard Implicit Association Test to measure
instinctive emotional responses to brands.
Compared to the strong responses elicited by
happy pictures of family and children (which
are positive) and snakes, starving children,
and Hitler (which are negative), the emotional
responses evoked by brands tend to be very
modest (and either neutral or mildly positive).
These findings are in fact entirely consistent
with the cognitive science that sparked the
discussion on changing assumptions. The core
of the science on “fast” and “slow” thinking
is that both processes contribute to decision
making, with fast processes, such as instinctive
emotional reactions, framing the slower
processes. Where possible, we will use our
fast processes for decision making such as
selecting a brand. But if and when our instinctive
responses are vague, muted, or absent, or
we are motivated to think carefully, slower
processing takes over.
The emotional responses evoked by
brands tend to be very modest.

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POINT OF VIEW
The Disappearing Iceberg
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INSTANT MEANING
The nub of the challenge for brands is to create
an instant impression of the brand without
effortful thought. Few brands automatically
convey the type of meaning that allows people
to make the quick, effortless decisions that their
brains are wired to favor. The notable brands
that are the exception to the rule, the ones
that do create instantly relevant and positive
meaning, enjoy a major advantage over their
competitors. Volvo equals safety, Red Bull
is energy, Ikea is cost-effective style. Coke’s
relentless pursuit of “happiness” demonstrates
their ambition to create such an instinctive link.
Our mental workspace is incredibly limited.
Brands with instant meaning can get into that
workspace fast, allowing people to make quick
decisions and keep competitors from even
being considered.
Building instant meaning should be a key
objective for brands.
BUILDING ON RESEARCH
Most research encourages people to consider
their existing impressions of brands and then
try to construct something from them, such
as a personality or a set of values. We aren’t
actually testing their memories. When we ask
about the feelings generated by an ad or words
that apply to a brand, people aren’t digging
FROM DIGGING TO BUILDING
So where’s the rest of the iceberg? Perhaps
we need a better metaphor for people’s
impressions of brands and the role of research
in understanding them. For years it has been
assumed that the role of the researcher is
to dig—to go beneath the surface. This is
reflected in the language we use to describe
our analysis—we mine the data, we uncover
insights. But if there is relatively little to be
uncovered for many brands, perhaps this
concept is not serving us well.
A better metaphor might be that of construction,
of building on a foundation. When we ask
people to think about what comes to mind in
relation to a specific brand, most consumers
can come up with answers for all but the least-
known brands. They reflect on the associations
they do have, however modest they may be,
and extrapolate.
A construction metaphor may be more useful
to us than that of the iceberg. First, it’s a better
reflection of reality for most brands. Second,
it helps us better understand the nature and
task of research. Finally, it highlights not only
the challenge for most brands but also the
opportunity.
A construction metaphor may be
more useful to us than that of the
iceberg.

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The Disappearing Iceberg
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GETTING THE GIST
We do know that it is the immediate gist of a
brand that counts for fast decisions. Research
questions are likely to be much more nuanced
than many of the associations that consumers
have in their minds, so looking across metrics
at the gist of the answers is likely to give a
much more meaningful insight than worrying
about whether people differentiated between
minutiae like “tastes delicious” and “has a
satisfying taste.” In our advertising and brand
research, Millward Brown has introduced
questions that focus on brand and advertising
gist rather than detail for just this reason.
Asking people in an open way for their brand
associations produces data that looks less rich
and detailed (e.g., Red Bull is energy) but is
a much more accurate view of what is in play
at the time of the decision. People can and do
answer long and complicated image grids, but
this reinforces a misleading impression of what
is going on at the moment of truth.
THE SELF-CONSTRUCTED WORLD
An iceberg is something to be wondered at and
studied. A brand is built by us, as marketers
and as consumers. Our brains are constantly
assembling thoughts and feelings in order to
into their memories for ideas they have filed
away. Instead, they are making judgments
about brands that they may never have made
before, and as they do this, they are telling
us something about the shape and nature of
the brand’s associations and what they might
mean in the real world. This is really as it
should be, since ultimately the consequences
of brand associations drive behavior, not the
associations themselves. Similarly, when
we ask people projective questions about
brands, we are not tapping a pre-established
set of values that have been subconsciously
processed—we are discovering the direction
and territory that a brand may be able to
occupy, and which will make intuitive sense to
people.
Critics of introspective research approaches
have correctly pointed out that in a research
situation, we ask people to engage with brands
and/or advertising in a much more conscious
and thoughtful way than they will in “real
life.” But that does not invalidate the results.
If people don’t register a brand’s intended
meaning or message when they are actively
thinking about it, it seems unlikely that they
would do so when they are not making an
effort.
Our brains are constantly
assembling thoughts and feelings
in order to make sense of the world
around us.

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The Disappearing Iceberg
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about brands as it was about measuring what
they do think, we have realized the need for
better tools to measure real-world thinking.
The current surge in adoption of such tools
has allowed us to get to a more realistic view
of the impact of fast thinking for brands and
clarified one of the core aims of marketing: to
generate instant meaning. By using tools that
differentiate between what is easily accessible
in consumers’ minds versus what could be built
from that, we are better placed to give realistic
guidance and measurement. And marketers
would be wise to focus at least as much on the
alleged five percent as they do on what lies
below the surface.
make sense of the world around us. A building
metaphor is much more helpful for both
informing strategy and interpreting the “brand
constructs” people produce. And the metaphor
becomes more powerful for us as our research
incorporates approaches that measure fast
thinking and instinctive responses as well
as slow and effortful thinking. As we said
earlier, decision making uses both fast and
slow processes, with instinctive emotional
reactions framing and influencing the slower
processes—and the framing has a key impact
on the brands that consumers build.
BEYOND THE ICEBERG
Understanding the implications of new
cognitive science discoveries may have
challenged assumptions about what we do, but
the industry is better for it. By understanding
that our work has been as much about
measuring what consumers might think
If you enjoyed “The Disappearing
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“Watch Graham Page interviewed on
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