Correspondence: Tjaco H. Walvis, THEY Paul van Vlissingenstraat 6C 1096 BK Amsterdam The Netherlands. Tel: +31(0)20 4953200; Fax: +31(0)20 4953210; E-mail: tjaco@they.nl

¹is a partner at THEY, a brand management consulting firm based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Before that, he was with BBDO. Mr Walvis advises on (creative) brand and communication strategy issues, including brand positioning, extensions, portfolio management and location branding (eg nations). He has worked with brands in a broad range of industries, including fashion, fast mover consumer goods, financial services, government, insurance, media, pharmaceuticals, private banking, postal services, publishing, retail, telecommunications and world expositions. Clients include Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, DaimlerChrysler, Dorito's, Mars, McKinsey & Company, Robeco, Sanoma Publishers and many others. Mr Walvis holds two Master degrees, in economics (MSc) and philosophy (MA), both from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is married, with three children, and lives and works in Amsterdam.

Received 14 November 2007; Published online 28 December 2007.

Abstract

Commercial brands strive to be chosen by customers, and branding as an activity is aimed at increasing the likelihood that they are. Almost all customer choices are at least partially memory-based. This paper begins with the assumption that as neuroscience is a 'hard' science studying memory as a highly regular subject matter, it should be possible to deduce several laws from it for the 'soft' field of branding. Based on primary, empirical research in neuroscience, the author synthesises three laws that govern the probability that a brand enters our awareness as a positive candidate for choice. Brands that have been built in accordance with these laws have a higher probability of being chosen than brands in the same category that have not.