Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve talked myself into finishing the pint of Ben & Jerry’s in my freezer.
It may not replace your tried-and-true marketing strategy development methodologies, but it can be an interesting tool in your toolbelt. I don’t know that Freudian psychology will help you reach different conclusions about how to market your brand than other methods, but it’s certainly an interesting way to frame consumer buying behavior and, in particular, the inner monologue they might have as they wrestle with the thought of purchasing your product or service. Smaller sizes so the ego can say: If I get this brand of ice cream, it’s only 2/3 of a pint instead of a whole pint, so the id will get what it wants but we won’t be as unhealthy.Ī rewards program: If I collect ten lids and send them in, I’ll get a free pint, so each pint I’m buying isn’t as expensive as it looks.Īn associated fitness app: If I download the app, it’ll give me a workout plan to burn off the exact number of calories I’m eating in ice cream so I can balance myself out. If I was consulting an ice cream brand solely from a Freudian viewpoint, I’d say they need to present their product as the best choice to satisfy the id, and then find other ways to help the ego deflect the superego’s objections. Understanding your product or service’s place on the gradient between the two can help you understand how to brand yourself. I don’t think I even need to bother telling you what the id is going to think of that.īut if the answer is to market to the middle, I hear you asking, then why isn’t a low-calorie ice cream brand like Halo Top doing better than a more id-focused brand like Ben & Jerry’s?īecause ice cream is almost always a choice in favor of the id, the same way that a salad for lunch is almost always a choice in favor of the superego. If you were alone in the wilderness for a month, you could live off of it and the perfect proteins we’ve mixed right in. So maybe you pivot and cater to the superego: Here’s the healthiest ice cream that’s ever been made, with flavors like kale and brown rice. Of all the ice cream brands, the superego will say, this is the very last one you should have. In fact, the harder you brand your ice cream as the ultimate choice for the id, the harder the superego might fight your consumers’ egos. You’d brand it as the ice cream that will best satisfy the animal inside your consumers that just wants sugar and fat and flavor and creaminess.īut the superego is going to push back. Now let's see what the superego would do if you come. Using just the ice cream example, it’s clear that a marketer trying to sell ice cream might be very interested in understanding the pressures placed on consumer’s egos by the id and superego when faced with an ice cream buying decision.Ĭould you simply market your ice cream to the id? Sure. The superego is the part of you that's super judgmental and moralizing and is always trying to get you to behave in a socially appropriate way. However, it’s interesting to see how Pi’s id (survival instincts) is powerful enough to take charge over the superego and ends up killing the fish for the two of them.What Does This Have To Do With Marketing?
He subconsciously knows that he should not be killing a live species due to religion, and also knows that he should not be eating fish (he is a vegetarian because of his religion). In this situation, his superego makes him hesitant to kill it. This could be the hidden meaning for Pi’s natural instincts.Īnother example is when Pi struggled with killing the fish for Richard Parker and himself to eat. In both the novel and the movie, Pi tells us that Richard Parker is the reason why he had a chance to survive. Richard Parker is Pi’s survival instincts (id), which we are all born with the moment we are born. Richard Parker is the one who kills the hyena, which is parallel to Pi killing the cook (another version of the story he tells to Japanese reports at the very end of the movie). Some researchers believe that Richard Parker, the tiger, is actually a symbolism of Pi’s id.
This also shows what imbalance of personalities can do to us. There was no superego or ego that could have stopped it from killing the zebra. The hyena on the lifeboat is an example of id, because of how it killed the zebra due to hunger.
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