This way of arranging our world view is inviolable. You fight archetype and "the frame" at your peril. (You've heard of "framing the issue"? The idea of contextual Framing comes from a 50s anthroplogist named Gregory Bateson. Around here we call the distillation and mobilization of this stuff "Managing the frame^©")

Is it irrational? Of course it is. And it causes people to indeed be economic irrationalists in realizing this Statue sense. Spreadsheets and spec charts do not move them. The things we often trumpet about Standard Feature Advantage Benefit progressions are moot--because they are invariably incomplete. They do not go deep enough.

For instance, people buy SUVs "because they're safer", even though they've seen DatelineNBC and other shows explain things like higher rollover risk. Yet, against every provable, spreadsheetable, surveyed-to-death fact to the contrary, they buy them because they still "Feel" safer. ("Bigness" matters and not because "bigger is better." Think harder and you'll get to them.)

Likewise, asking people in standard terms what they want out of work, or from a particular product--what we call the old conversation--often gets you useless information: They will say what they think sounds intelligent or what they think they are supposed to say, in order to be, you guessed it, more highly regarded. Yes, more highly regarded by people they'll never see again. So they lie. And we ask more wrong questions in polls. And our focus group participants become amateur venture capitalists or marketing experts. In other words, they gild the lilly some more. Then we all run off and execute initiatives that are doomed from inception. And the cycle continues. We all do it. Boardroom to loading dock. Gen-X to Gen WWII. Bad mojo. Expensive mojo. Career-threatening mojo.

What's good mojo? Effective companies share DNA and brain patterns with their customers. Great companies and their brands are leaders of communities--internal and external. They mirror and amplify the ambitions of their respective publics. They know how to discover and employ this DNA and it's elements. Primary to all this is to understand that leaders are:

A. Purveyors of hope and answers to questions people are often unequipped to ask.

B. Guides to a future people didn't know they had. Or, had given up on.

So, actions--purchasing or not, working hard or not, sacrificing or not--are exemplars of deeper issues in play. These issues, shared understandings really, compose the language of Vision, and of Vision executed: Brand. It begins with this:

click to enlarge

In their work with epileptics in the 1950s, neuroscientists like Paul MacLean revealed a lot about brain function, and the relationship between the cortex (left and right hemispheres), and what MacLean and others call the R-complex (our limbic, mamalian and reptilian brain.)

In the graphic, you'll notice the usual left brain/right brain breakdown, with those two hemispheres stacked on top of the older, evolutionary-wise, R-complex. Our evolved left brain is younger and therefore least "senior" if you will. It is also more loosely connected to the somewhat older "right" brain, and lastly, to the oldest mammalian and reptilian brains. Why does this matter? The left brain needs the permission of the older brains to move forward into action. That is the biological connection. The brain is a feedback system of permissions, wth the oldest, seemingly most irrational element, the R-Complex, holding the keys to action.

Notice words like ritualistic, paranoid and compulsive. Sounds tribal, prehistoric even. Hardly sounds like someone we'd invite to dinner does it? Never fear, they're still vital. And when filtered up through the brain they're polite company. Polite, but powerful. And if you ignore them, probably recalcitrant or obstructionist. Or worse, destructive. Not a part of the brain you want working against you. Bad enemies the R-complex--it carries us into things like, oh, I dunno, Clashes of Civilizations or Jihad.

Our left brain is sequential, process oriented. It likes resumes, track records and consistency. It's not too big on surprises. It values "Doing" things. Contrary to what many think, the left-brain factors heavily in creative thinking and artistic technique, heavy on the technique or mastery aspect of it. Left is cool, calm and calculating. It loves words and numbers. It can handle abstracts like quantum physics. It doesn't need visuals to visualize. But as we said, it's the youngest, and the brain is like a Trade Union or the average family: Seniority matters.

Next comes the right brain. Home to images and feeling, music and metaphor, the right brain is simultaneous orgestalt, German for "all at once". Unlike the sequential left brain which likes to packet things to be effective, the right brain assimilates instantly many disparate elements and says "Ahh, Beethovens 5th" or "Oooh, a farm." It's why hearing a song from say, "The Breakfast Club" throws you back to high school or wherever you were at the time, bringing with it all the attendant feelings that fit. And this is where the right brain does its best work.

Metaphor combines image cognition (any sensory image) and feeling states. Perhaps it's reduntant, but it bears explaining: Derived from Greek, meta means "over and above", pherein the root, means "to bear across". The work of Carl Jung and philosophers like Immanuel Kant rely heavily on metaphor and its alphabet, Archetype. Metaphor is the home of dreams and myths, legends and cultural icons. It too is rigidly consistent in this part--it's why Homer's Oddysey gets rewritten in the 1950s by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa as The Lost Kingdom and then, rewritten again in 1977 by American director George Lucas, this time as Star Wars. Same story, same metaphors, same archetypes. Only 2000 years between them. Smells like a pattern, eh? As such, the right brain is half-home to knowable nareatives of motivation. Speaking of smell, something as simple as the aroma of cofffee brewing in the morning is richly laden with metaphorical meaning to a 45 year-old. They may not know it, but the smell means comfort, security and stability. It means Home, in the best sense, as they remember it as a child. Folgers figured this out through Archetype study with French Cultural Psychologist named Clotaire Rapaille. They stopped talking freshness and began promoting aroma. And the numbers spiked.

Finally, the R-complex, a clustering of our earliest Reptillian and Mamallian brains. It is the most directly connected to the right brain, it's closest evolutionary sibling, age-wise. As was noted, the R-complex is home to limbic responses such a self-preservation and reproductive urges. The R-complex is the thing that jolts our sytems into motion in times of arousal--threatening or pleasurable. (Philosophical Utilitarians will recognize the "Pleasure/Pain" dyad.)

R-Cx is the proverbial on/off switch, and it doesn't debate itself or others. But it is an often myopic boss. Our cortex (Left/Right brains) keeps it in check with that one thing unique to Humans, our evolved sense of free-will, borne of reasoning. Where other animals will attack to protect, kill readily to eat, mate or when being encroached upon, our cortex brakes this impulse--sometimes--with the concepts of caution or mercy. The mamallian self-protective impulse of the R-complex has more luck at this than the cortex also. They are immediate neigbors and speak the same language, if you will. Where a reptile will attack a much larger animal while competing for a mate, the mammalian overide warns against it, essentially saying: you're no good to anybody wounded or dead. Live to fight another day. Notice there's no mention of moral right or wrong in that statement. It is purely enlightened self-interest: I won't kill you because I can't procreate or otherwise enjoy life locked up or dead, not because God told me not to.

As we said, R-Complex is self-interested and bores easily. It also has a checkbook or energy to share. Boundless energy. But only if you can tap into the patterns that unleash or engage the right-brain/R-complex chain. Do that, and you get "truth" or "authenticity". At least, you get them as understood by the brain's owner, which is what matters if you're a marketer or a leader or provider of anything that needs buy-in from others. Which brings us to the brain progression we call FAB³. The process looks like this:

click to enlarge

Good time for a break, I've got work to do. Uhh, Chat amongst your hemispheres. More later in Part II.