How we shop is automated in the sense that the mind will efficiently check (in microseconds) whether an advert is relevant to us but logo is only one of the ticks, what the mind hunts and wants more than anything else is relevance.
For example an advert pops up for Diesel:
Do we like Diesel? Yes
Ok, what is it for? Polo Shirts
Do we like Diesel Polo Shirts? No
We don’t engage.
That is all over in microseconds. The power of the mind runs even deeper as we may like polo shirts but if it was patterned, styled, coloured wrong for us then we judge it accordingly.
The mind has a style in mind for you, in the same way it knows what food you love and hate and the same for people, places, work and fun. It’s all personal to you, that’s why the truth of personalisation is that it’s just a math game of understanding what each individual prefers and styling them to what they most desire and eliminating experiences that they as individuals simply do not like.
It leads you to a thought; but I change over time!
Do we change over time?
Absolutely but it is only a marginal change. We all adapt our style but not by much and it depends on our shopping personality (such as whether we follow trends or mug them off and feel more individual).
It’s what causes and creates change that is the neuroscience gem for style; Experience!
It’s only what you experience in life that creates your current version of self. It comes from how others talk to you, how you see the world and the what and who of what influences you from media to music to musings to muses (like our Liam, still the coolest ‘do ever).
This cycle of change happens within the unconscious mind, that’s where your database of self makes it home. As you adapt, the database adapts accordingly;
Conscious moment: We are influenced by a friend and decide we no longer like black hats and prefer red.
Unconscious action: Ok the database has been changed, preference is now red hats, avoid black.
That may just be a moment in time, you might decide your friend was wrong and you override this decision and go back to black. Or, it might become a permanent change inside self and red is now your hat preference and black sucks.
That example is being repeated inside the mind all day, everyday, it’s inside the unconscious mind, the most complex adaptive mathematical algorithm one can imagine!
It’s this kind of decision making that makes up your preferences and it runs super deep. There are 120 factors for each item of clothing which makes up this unconscious database of style. The same is true for everything we experience in life, it’s why understanding self can take a lifetime to master and why understanding others is just as challenging.
To where we started; Are we automated shoppers?
Two sides to this.
Yes we are automated: A lot of what we decide each day from engagement or do nothing, to interaction or leave it be, to talking or keep schtum is predetermined by your past experiences and thus how the mind has loaded it’s version of who you are.
BUT, we have an override: New will still be engaged with, it just has to catch our attention for the right reason, with the right context and in this case because it touches the emotional connection to our styled mind.
We humans are certainly complex but we have a pattern of why we do things, we change but only marginally (hat by hat :)). We all have a version of how we style ourselves, including people who don’t care about style in a fashionista sense of the word.
Clothing is still a strong part of how we show our identity and how we rep ourselves. It’s why Gap in the Matrix exists, we understand that style is personal and that the time of irrelevant mass ads, mass emails and brand HQ dictated retail experiences is dying.
It’s time to give the individual the style (& experience) they desire.
