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Turns out Al Reis was right. Now there's further scientific evidence. "Positioning" is just another way of describing where your brand lives in the consumer's brain. Actually, it's not all that creepy or Manchurian Candidate-ish. It's reality and it's nothing new. Of course, the San Francisco Chronicle, self-appointed watchdog for social and economic justice, has a different take, (Your branded brain) admittedly tongue-in-cheek, in a short editorial expressing relief that we're not yet at a place where pre-purchase control holds sway. We could debate this, however.

Background: ABC News: Shoppers' Brains Under Brand-Name Control details how German scientists measured how brands evoke responses, positive and negative, in the human brain. When you think about it, it comes down to a lot of what constitutes marketing in the first place: common sense. Marketers who apply it (common sense) are more highly regarded than ones who do not. It took a scientist to call attention to this?

Article in the New Scientist last January sheds further light with a slightly different scientific angle: How brands get wired into the brain - health - 04 January 2006 . Small wonder why back in the day, behavioral psychologists and sociologists were a mainstay in ad shops big and small.