In marketing, what happens before someone sees your message is often more important than the message itself. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, about how most buying decisions are shaped long before logic has a chance to participate.
Think about how you react when you walk into a store. Sometimes you immediately feel comfortable even if you can’t explain why. You hear a familiar tune, you catch a pleasant scent, and somehow, you already trust the place before you’ve even looked around. Or you see a video online, and within a few seconds you find yourself smiling or feeling connected before you even realize what’s being sold. That’s not coincidence. That’s priming.
Priming is the process where your surroundings quietly prepare your brain to think, feel, and behave in a particular way before you consciously decide to. It’s one of those invisible forces that shape human behavior more than we care to admit.
Psychologists have been studying this for decades. What they’ve discovered is that our brains don’t wait for us to think before they act. They are constantly scanning for signals—sound, color, temperature, tone, rhythm—and forming associations that lead us toward certain emotions. You think you’re making a decision, but your brain has already tilted you in a direction before you even start weighing options.
This is where sonic marketing comes in. In retail environments, for instance, background music is one of the most powerful priming tools. Studies have shown that when stores play slow, soft music, customers slow down too. They take their time, they browse longer, and they often end up spending more. The same product, the same shelf, and the same customer, but a different soundtrack completely changes the experience. That’s how subtle and powerful priming can be.
You’ll notice the same thing in restaurants. Dim lighting, warm tones, and mellow music immediately make people feel more relaxed, even before the waiter arrives. You might leave thinking the food tasted amazing, when in truth, it was the environment that did most of the work.
The same principle shows up in one of my favorite examples of psychological priming outside marketing—the movie Focus starring Will Smith. In one scene, he plays a skilled con artist who primes a wealthy gambler throughout the day using numbers, words, and symbols that seem random. Later that night, when the gambler is asked to pick a number during a high-stakes bet, he confidently chooses the exact number Smith had planted in his mind all along. What looks like luck is actually preparation. The man’s subconscious had been quietly guided for hours without realizing it. That’s what priming does. It doesn’t push. It prepares.
When you understand this, you start to see marketing differently. Every color, sound, and texture becomes part of the brand’s language. The message doesn’t start when the ad begins—it starts the moment the first cue is felt.
That’s also why good advertising follows a very deliberate structure. Think of the most engaging TV commercials you’ve ever seen. They rarely begin with the logo or even the product. Instead, they start with a relatable story—an everyday moment, a feeling, or a situation that draws you in. There’s no branding yet, no hint of who’s behind the story. You’re simply watching, getting invested, softening up emotionally. Then, slowly, the cues begin to appear. A color on the wall that feels familiar, a line of dialogue that sounds like the brand’s voice, a setting that subtly carries the brand’s identity. Only near the end does the logo appear, accompanied by a short sound or melody—what advertising professionals call an audio mnemonic or sonic logo—that seals the emotional experience.
This sequence isn’t random. It’s the psychology of timing. The ad first primes you emotionally, then connects that emotion to the brand. By the time the logo appears, your mind is already open to it. You’re not being sold to; you’re completing a story you’ve already joined.
Unfortunately, many local advertisers miss this completely. They want their logos on screen from the first second. They insist on their brand colors in every frame. They want every line of dialogue to mention their product. In doing so, they break every law of priming. When the brain detects branding too early, it switches from feeling to evaluating. Instead of relaxing into the story, the audience starts resisting. The guard goes up. The experience shifts from connection to defense. The result is an ad that’s loud but forgettable.
The brands that get it right understand that emotion leads and branding follows. They know that priming is about setting a stage, not shouting a name.
You can see this in smaller, everyday examples too. A coffee shop that uses warm lighting, wooden textures, and soft acoustic music is priming people for calm and connection. A youth clothing store with amapiano beats, graffiti-style visuals, and energetic movement primes people for self-expression. A bank that uses clear, steady tones, clean design, and predictable patterns primes for trust. Each brand is telling a story before a single word is spoken.
Priming only fails when what people experience doesn’t match what they were led to expect. A spa that promises peace but feels chaotic destroys trust before a therapist even greets you. A restaurant that advertises luxury but uses plastic chairs creates friction between what customers were primed to believe and what they actually find. People can’t always explain why they feel disappointed, but their subconscious knows something doesn’t line up.
That’s why priming isn’t manipulation—it’s alignment. It’s making sure the experience, the environment, and the message all say the same thing. When those elements agree, trust forms almost instantly. The customer feels right before they can explain why.
Every brand has what I call a subconscious contract with its audience. People expect you to make them feel a certain way. They might not know how to describe it, but they know when it’s missing. That’s why the best marketing often feels effortless. It doesn’t fight for attention; it feels natural. It fits the mental script your audience already holds about what your brand should be.
Priming also affects long-term brand memory. If a customer’s first few experiences with your brand make them feel calm, respected, or inspired, that emotional memory becomes the lens through which they’ll interpret every future encounter. That’s why consistency matters. You’re not only shaping today’s mood—you’re building tomorrow’s memory.
So, when you think about your marketing, don’t start with what you want to say. Start with how you want people to feel before you say anything at all. Ask yourself whether your colors, sounds, and tone set that feeling even before the message begins. Because in the end, persuasion doesn’t start when your audience listens—it starts when their senses do.
Eventually, though, priming reaches its limit. When people have seen the same cues too often, their brains stop noticing. Familiarity turns into invisibility. That’s when brands lose attention, not because they’ve lost relevance, but because they’ve lost surprise.
And that’s where we’ll go next: how to break that pattern and use the element of surprise to wake your audience back up.
Next in the series: Breaking the Cognitive Set — Why Surprise Restores Attention.