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barrage it encounters. Frustrated, the brain ignores all of the messaging, which has run together to form an irritating diversion. Whenever possible, position your message or product in scenarios without clutter. If clutter is unavoidable in your crowded category, make sure your message, image, package, or product is clean and clear, and uses white space and simple, direct messaging to offer a breath of fresh air to the frustrated brain viewing it.
    Arriving home, you turn to one of your three screens (perhaps all of them), and monitor messaging for the rest of the night (read more about multimedia screens in Chapter 14). You fall into a restless sleep, which is essential for your memory to consolidate important information that may help you adapt tomorrow.
    Cavewoman in a Car Pool
    As you see here in Chapter 3 and in Chapter 5, the brains of men and women are very different. They evolved to serve best the needs of each gender as early human society developed. So, in the service of equality, let us look at how a typical female brain experiences two typical days—100,000 years apart.
    Day One
    You wake weary with a hungry newborn in your arms. You feed and clean your baby, and then set about finding some food for yourself. You are dangerously thin and very thirsty, the child’s needs stripping you of your stores of fat.
    With the child always in tow, you venture out into the area around your dwelling. The other women, adolescent girls, and children of your tribe soon join you. Together, you return to a chaparral where you’ve found tubers and berries before. When the children sleep, one or two women guard and comfort them, while the others continue to gather grains, roots, and occasionally, small rodents or snakes. The women’s band stays close, always on the alert for predators, prepared to stand between danger and the children. Yet they do not attack larger, dangerous animals. As their large prefrontal cortex knows, P1: OTA/XYZ
    P2: ABC
    c03
    JWBT296-Pradeep
    June 7, 2010
    10:3
    Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA
    Your Customer’s Brain Is 100,000 Years Old
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    such “all or nothing” attacks could leave their infants unguarded, vulnerable, or dead. While they don’t comprehend it, this caution permits them to fulfill their primary evolutionary goal: to procreate successfully.
    The band of women and children spend the day gathering food, communicating, and in general supporting each other (but if a person can sneak or lie
    —use deception—to gain an advantage that may be beneficial to her survival and genetic fitness, she will). The women tend the sick and use their superior empathic skills to know what they need. Quickly, they learn to “read”
    each other and the babies of the tribe, who can only communicate with facial expression and eye contact. Without words, successful mothers can tell quickly, within a range of different abilities, if her baby’s cry means hunger, anger, fear, boredom, sleepiness, or irritation. As she nurses the child throughout the day, oxytocin flows through her system, keeping her calm, even slightly sedated, and most certainly deeply, thoroughly devoted.
    Women, particularly mothers, are supremely skilled at empathic skills, watching others and knowing what they’re feeling and, often, what they need. The female brain is hard-wired to seek out community and uses this enhanced empathic ability to foster it. When presenting a message, package, product, or store environment to a largely female audience, engage her empathic mind. She engages immediately with faces, particularly when they’re making direct eye contact with her; she reacts positively to women in groups, enjoying a shared activity; and she cannot look away from a baby making eye contact with her.
    As the shadows lengthen, the men of the tribe return. One has made a large kill that will provide vital protein and calories for his family. The women celebrate and reward this hunter and they become cautious and