Don’t Confuse Me With Your Facts
Apologists must be aware of 4 generally accepted fallacies:
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Consumers think in a well-reasoned rational way
- In fact, emotions are closely interwoven with the reasoning process. Most often they are dominant.
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Consumers can readily explain their behavior and thinking
- 95% of our thinking is unconscious. Our rational mind serves mainly to make sense of behavior AFTER it is executed
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Consumer’s memories accurately represent their experiences
- In fact, consumers memories represent what they think about their experiences not the experiences themselves
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Consumers think in words
- We think in terms of images. If I say the word “dog” you do not call to mind a biological description of a dog. Instead, you bring to mind a picture of a dog. And your dog is likely to be different from my dog
We Make Choices With Our Emotions…
We Explain Those Choices With Our Intellect
So we THINK consumers make choices and decisions with their rational faculties when, instead, they make them with their hearts. We think (and, frankly, they think) they draw an imaginary “pro” and “con” chart and make the best decision based on The Facts. When, in fact, they are rationalizing a choice already made in the subconscious.
Our emotions, by definition, are unconscious. So, our challenge, as an Apologist, is to speak to those emotions. So, never argue the facts, the evidence or try to be rational. The doorway to this soul is stories. And, if you have been in practice for long, you have lots of stories.
