By Kevin McIntosh

Looks like Social Media is getting closer and closer to Santa in terms of having some influence around the holidays.

ComScore Research in Virginia released a report from a survey earlier in December that revealed holiday shoppers were relying more on social media for recommendations on holiday purchases in 2009.

According to the report, 28 percent of those who had begun their holiday shopping this season indicated that social media had influenced their purchases.

Consumer-generated product reviews were the most common form of social media influence (13 percent), followed by an expert product review (11 percent).

Facebook fan pages attracted seven percent of respondents who said they’d followed brands on Facebook to take advantage of special offers and deals. Another 6 percent said they have been influenced by a friend’s Facebook status update referring to a particular product.

Five percent of respondents indicated they had followed a company on Twitter to take advantage of special offers and deals, while 3 percent said that a friend’s “tweet” about a product influenced their purchase behavior.

Who knows, maybe next year kids will just tweet their wish lists to Santa.

Originally uploaded by Gaetan Lee

Last night while lying in bed trying to fall asleep, for some reason I started thinking about branding and why it works. This led me to start thinking about how the human brain works in general.

If you think about it, the branding process is simply about applying shortcuts to the decision-making process. Which is exactly how we like to process information anyway.

This is why we gravitate to metaphors and analogies when trying to process new information. Techniques such as these rely on familiarity. And familiarity is comfortable. It gives us a feeling of security. Which is why these literary techniques have been embraced by everyone from Jesus to Elvis.

You might say we’re all kind of lazy when it comes to thinking, and when it’s time to make a decision, we like to rely on shortcuts to help us get there.

The Brain Searches Brands Like Google Searches Websites

Fortunately, I have some recent research that backs up what I’m saying here.

A recent study conducted by the international brand consultancy, THEY, compares the process a brain goes through in brand selection to Google.

According to Tjaco Walvis, who led the one-and-a-half-year study, brand choice is largely unconscious.

“But in that process, the brain behaves much like Google. It seems to use a set of rules called an algorithm to pick the brand from our memory that best and most reliably fits our functional and emotional needs at that particular moment. It behaves rationally, but in an unconscious way,” says Walvis.

Based on the study, Mr. Walvis concludes that the brain’s “algorithm” for brand choice has three elements:

Firstly, the brain selects the brand it has learned is best able to satisfy our biological and cultural goals. We unconsciously select the brand that is the most uniquely rewarding, based on its associations with our goals and the brain’s reward centers (e.g. the dopamine system).

Secondly, the brain selects the brand that has shown most frequently in the past that it is able to fulfill these needs. Coherent brands that repeat their promise are more likely to be chosen. Volvo, Coca-Cola and Disney are examples of coherent brands.

Thirdly, the brain selects the brand it has interacted with most intensely in the past. Brand participation creates numerous new connections in our brain, facilitating that brand’s retrieval. Nike Plus is an example of strong participation concept.

But in all three cases, the brain is working with past information to make decisions. Again, it’s the power of familiarity.

Now I’m just waiting on a brain study that reveals why a single guy like me is lying awake thinking about branding instead of thinking about swimsuit models.

–Kevin McIntosh