Many of the organisations in the space of trauma, mental health and interconnected wellbeing have never experienced or embraced the power of brand and how it can be used to enable change, fuel purpose, and deliver sustainable and profitable growth. Our philosophy at Mint is that healing is achieved by reaching both the head and the heart. But the main battle is won in the head and that is why we employ neuro-design to great effect.
Albert Einstein said…
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift”.
Our challenge in helping clients to make the bigger impact they desire is often to help them to see the need to be more creative and intuitive in what they do. It’s human nature that we feel comfortable in our tribe and conforming to the rules and conventions of that tribe. It’s why every industry and sector of business becomes a sea of sameness following the same rules, talking about the same things, and behaving in the same ways. Accountants love behaving like other accountants, lawyers behave like lawyers, architects and tech business etc etc. and in our world clinics, practitioners and product or service providers behave very similarly in what they do and say. Predominantly focusing on what they do and the features and benefits of how they do it. So, we are all naturally comfortable with our tribes and it is scary to be different as it means challenging the norms, standing out from the crowd, and doing things differently. That makes people feel uncomfortable.
Yet we cannot heal our world until we heal ourselves by ‘connecting’ – mind and body – and to one another, building communities and positively impacting society and the planet. And we can’t heal ourselves without knowledge and it’s never just one thing or action, it’s lots of things and actions – small and big – that make the difference to taking what is known to where it is needed. So how can we make what we say, do and believe land more effectively with the people we want to reach?
The answer lies explaining the products, services, tools, and techniques in a more compelling way. Making the propositions, messages, and communication necessary to convey them more engaging and easier to understand. But how? Part of the answer lies in the application of what we in the world of trauma, mental health and interconnected wellbeing are most familiar with, harnessing the power of the brain and the non-conscious mind. The team at Mint are steeped in the knowledge of your world. We understand the power of the non-conscious mind and the impact it can have on our bodies and behaviours. We deploy creativity as a commercial tool to boost the impact of clients messaging in a more powerful way to help them to cut through and resonate with the people they want to reach. Translating their ideas and intent into compellingly designed experiences that people find easy to engage with and quicky decode. We do this through the unique application of neuro-aesthetics and sensory triggers in our design work.
Neuro-aesthetics and sensory triggers, are the behavioural science behind implicit understanding of design and communication, developed over fifteen years in collaboration with Bradford University School of Management and neuroscience research business Cloud Army. What has emerged is a proven commercially effective design philosophy that applies sixteen key principles and sensory tiggers to engage people with more impactful delivery. Quite simply we have applied our understanding of neuroscience from the world of mental health and interconnected wellbeing, ethically applying it to uniquely decode creativity and communication, identifying what makes brands more impactful and effective in connecting with people at a non-conscious level. When you blend this unique knowledge with deep expertise and insight into mental health and interconnected wellbeing, with people who truly understand trauma and how to use brand to inspire action, change beliefs, and behaviours, you get the most potent of results possible.
Brand design is both an art and a science. Clients do not often see the simple intuitive ideas in creative work that makes them truly effective and focus on the functional and rational messages they want to convey ignoring the deeper implicit responses that may result. Our expert team are skilled in understanding that our non-conscious drives us and our decisions are guided by our senses and the emotional responses they create. We also know that people respond to a range of bio-aesthetic and sensory triggers that impact at a system 1 level. They are subconscious, generating emotion and actions without using the conscious part of our brains. They create instinctive reactions before the cortex can respond. (Like our fight, flight or freeze response). So, if you understand the sensory triggers to activate, like the use of calm or agitation, orientation of information into simple visual clusters that the brain can process easily or deploying the use of cusps (sharp things that get our attention) and curves (rounded things that make us feel safe and secure) in typography, and the psychological use of colour you can reach people at a much deeper level. Then, if you combine this with knowledge of the ‘five simple human truths’ that must be considered when designing effective communication, then the results are very powerful indeed.
The five simple human truths are:
- The brain craves ease & order
- Humans have a limited attention span
- Humans are visual
- Humans respond to emotion
- Humans are attracted to beauty
Effective branding and communication need to be designed in response to these truths, and it should illicit action as a response. Our creative work answers three simple things. What do you want them to see? What do you want them to feel as a result? and what action do you want them to do as a response?
See, feel, do is a simple framework that is enhanced by deep understanding of trauma and the way communication can be framed and decoded effectively resulting in action. This proprietary approach is revolutionising how organisations with a product or service, in or adjacent to mental health and interconnected wellbeing, position and brand what they do for their audience.
There are other agencies out there who have ‘experience’ in healthcare but none that have deep insight into mental health and interconnected wellbeing. Nor any that truly understand trauma and how to use brand and deploy neuroscience to inspire action, change beliefs and behaviours. So we created MINT.
