Episodic Memory and Foresight & What Customer Use Imagination For
Imagine yourself sitting at your desk. You are trying to write something for your business, a product description or ad or email.
Your normal coffee cup is sitting there, slightly cold, and you think you should top up so its hot. But it’s also late in the day and another cup isn’t a good idea. You see you just got an email.
You open it up, and it is this newsletter.
After reading it, and sharing it to friend, you are clear-headed. You know exactly what to type. Fingers clanking on the keyboard for a few minutes, and you finish writing all that copy.
With a clap of the hands and a quiet whoop! you’re done. Good job.
When you picture that scene, that little scenario, you are using your memory. You reconstruct your office, desk, coffee cup, and everything around from memories of your workspace. You are also imagining emotions.
What does it feel like to have writer’s block
What does it feel like to be clear headed
What does it feel like to be relieved your work is done
You might have gone even further and imagined what you would go do after.
What’s interesting is that you read the same 122 words as thousands of others, and what you pictured in your head will not be even remotely the same as another’s.
Our memories and experiences shape how we envision future or hypothetical events.
And that goes for everything you read… including the copy you hypothetically wrote…
How Tomorrow Gave Us Today…
Humans survived a lot of stuff. Not like the nuclear obliteration kind, that one is still on the table. I’m thinking of the saber-tooth tigers. Volcanoes. Earthquakes. Floods. John Cusack movie stuff…
How were we able to survive?
We made it to the top of the food chain because we invented tomorrow. Without the concept of tomorrow, we would only think about right now. Find food. Drink water. Go back to cave.
But 500 million years ago, our ancestors decided that the sun was going to come up again after nap time, and maybe we should make some plans.
Tools are the perfect example of planning. We invented tools because we knew a need we have today will probably arise again and again. So we sharpens sticks to catch fish and fend off animals. Hammers to build shelter. Weaved fiber into ropes and nets.
We didn’t toss our tools aside when we were done because tomorrow…
From sharpened sticks and hammers, to the wheel and the wheelbarrow, to the reins and carriage and the Model T. Ships to sail the oceans and ships to take us to the moon and back.
Everything we make, iterate, and build is so we can do something with it tomorrow.
A tomorrow that is part of our memory…
When our ancestors developed stronger memories, we gained foresight. We caught fish and remembered where the fish were. So the next time we wanted fish sticks for dinner, we imagined we could find more fish in the same spot.
It not only kept us full, but it kept us safe. We knew where predators were and stayed away. We learned what made us sick and stayed away.
The ability to learn and replicate actions from memory gave us fire… and now we’re lit.
Episodic Memory
Episodic Memory is explicit memory which is part of your Long-term Memory. This mental structure can be credited (or blamed) for the decisions we make.
When you are weighing options you try to remember prior experiences to help inform your decision. If the decision is about something completely new, you might think back to similar experiences.
For example, my wife found this spicy ramen earlier this year. We cooked up a couple of packets for lunch one day, and holy sh-coville it was painful. Delicious, but spicy enough to have to take a breather in the middle. I was sweating profusely. But it was delicious.
Our brains remembers pain quite well. So we can avoid it. When we wanted to eat it again, we remember clearly how spicy it was, so we had the foresight to use only one sauce packet for 2 packets of noodles.
Still yummy and a lot less damage to our stomach lining. Our memory is constantly helping us navigate life and H-Mart. Without memory, we’d be destined to repeat our first experience.
Episodic Foresight
Generally, we’ve thought of memory as a store of past events. And that prediction was separate, a process or skill we possess. Frontal lobe stuff.
But foresight is actually the function for which our memory exists.
From an evolutionary perspective, however, natural selection doesn’t care if your memory is accurate looking backwards.
What matters are the consequences of your memory for survival and reproduction moving forward. Memory is for the future.
—Excerpt from The Invention of Tomorrow
Episodic foresight relies on the same underlying cognitive processes and episodic memory. Together, these two make up our mental time-machine that allows us to detach ourselves from the here and now.
With memory, you go back and relive a past experience
With foresight, you project yourself into a novel situation
Foresight uses past experience and other information to imagine situations so we can assess and evaluate what might happen. This is called future-state planning.
Say you have been asked to speak at a conference in Las Vegas. It is your first speaking gig. Exciting!
Based on previous trips, you know that you will need to book a flight, get your business attire packs, reserve a hotel room. Easy. Been there, done that.
As for the speaking part. You remember the last time you gave a speech, it was at a wedding, and you were super nervous. So nervous you didn’t want to do it, but a friend gave you the advice to start with a joke. They have found that to relax the audience and yourself.
You did and it worked. Everyone was relaxed and you got through the speech smoothly.
Ok, so this speech shouldn’t be much different. You know what to do. You also imagine there will be a projector and a podium there. Now you can figure out what materials to prepare.
The date arrives, and everything goes off without a hitch. You deliver a great speech. Standing ovation. And your next speaking event will be easier. Because what happens in Vegas, does not stay in Vegas.
Whatever happens is part of your episodic memory…
The Customer Needs Foresight
Foresight has a huge impact on our decision-making process, and therefore huge implications for your business.
When a person is in the latter part of the consideration stage of their customer journey, they are evaluating which option is the best fit. They will use episodic foresight to imagine themselves using your product.
This is where marketing matters.
In order for a customer to imagine themselves using your product, they need all the relevant information. Video, text, product photos, lifestyle photos… and they want all the info readily available.
And in fact, brands today are great at presenting all the relevant information, beautifully laid out on semi-templated ecommerce websites. It’s pretty standard. If you are using Shopify or BigCommerce or the like, the structure of their builder leads brands to include everything.
So why then do some stores do great an others suck?
Self-Projection…
In June this year, I was looking into electric bikes. I already cycle every day, but these ebikes just seemed fun. There are several couples in my neighborhood that have them, and several times riding uphill, a couple has blown past me effortlessly on their ebikes.
I was basically sold on the idea. My wife wasn’t though.
She rides her bike every once in a while, but not as into it. For a week, I had been comparing various brand and talking about them. Wife did not care. It’s not like I was going to start riding 2x a day.. so whatever. No need.
On a Sunday we were out for a walk. It was one of those really nice days. Warm, sunny, kinda breezy. You wanted to be outside.
We were walking through the neighborhood, and I turned to her and said, “You know, if we had a couple of ebikes, we ride over the hill to Breakside Brewery for a beer and some food.”
Boom.. her face lit up, and was like. “I want that.”
And now we have an ebike.
Unplanned. In one sentence. She projected herself into that scenario. She knew enough about ebikes, but could never see herself on one. In that moment, she could. And she wanted it.
Self-projection is powerful. It creates desire not demand.
As a customer on your website, I only care about myself and what I’m going to get out of it. I don’t love your product… Not yet at least.
If I have all of the relevant information and pretty pictures, that’s great. Rationally speaking I should be able to decide yes or no. But like so many customer who abandon cart, I'm still on the fence. I don’t yet have a connection.
But if you can make me imagine myself using your product?
Well, now there is some electrical activity up top.
And if you can invoke the right emotion at the same time?
My rational brain isn’t weighing out the pros and cons. It is actively looking for pros to support my emotion and so I can add to cart.
The inverse is also true. If you invoke the wrong emotion, my rational brain will find plenty of reasons why I your product is not what I am looking for.
Know Your Customers
Talking to your customers is where you get inspiration for copy and content.
It is not to simply know where they shop your category or what they state is important to them. The purpose is to understand them as people and their experiences around your category.
That is how you are able to speak to them. Write words that make sense in the context of their life.
Great brands create the best content when they draw inspiration from their actual customers. They don’t try to “hack” the customer with a manufactured emotion.
Your goal as a brand is to create moments that help customers have episodic foresight of your product of service.
Your goal is to tell the story that gives your customers get an intimate perspective. A mini-narrative that aids in their own self-projection.
That’s what this is all about.
Now think back to the beginning of this article. To the scene you created…
Sitting at your desk, trying to write some copy. Trying to come up with something clever to write that will click with your reader.
Now think about your customer, the memories and experiences they have about your product or service, how will they imagine using your product?
What feeling are they looking for?
And what can you write so that they project themselves into their own scenario?
What we are up to this month…
This month’s deep dive into Customer Psychology: Price Anchoring & How it Affects Purchase Decisions
Last week’s community discussion: Talk of Recession and Inflation
This week’s discussion: Something about ChatGPT… (come back mañana)