Brain Branding?

Last week I was researching JetBlue for another project I was doing and I came across an article (which of course I lost) that involved brain branding. I stopped to read it and was fascinated. Basically, it said that your brain can actually be branded, meaning that it releases positive endorphins when you are exposed to a strong brand. Nike was mentioned as a strong brand (duh) which made people feel secure and happy, as oppsed to being exposed to a not so strong, say, generic brand. There was a study at the Radiological Society of North America, which indicated that strong brands activate parts of the bran. I googled the artice again, but I was only able to find something mentioned in BlogCritics Magazine ( blogcritics.org). It said this: a strong, identifiable brand is a powerful tool that in its purest form stands apart from the individual products it informs and casts a positive glow over them...strong brands appear to create a kind of mental "groove," and are processed with less effort than weak brands, which require higher levels of activation in areas of working memory and negative emotional response. I mean come to think of it, it makes sense that it takes less brain activity to recognize a known brand, rather than process a new one, but still, very interesting.

--Lauren Wettenstein