Early in my career, essentially a lifetime ago, we were launching a new line of eco-friendly kitchenware. My team was divided on two messaging approaches. One camp believed in the emotional appeal: serene images of pristine forests, juxtaposed with families using the product, essentially proposing that using our product was akin to saving the environment. The tagline was something pithy to the effect of "embrace nature, one meal at a time."

The other approach was more socio-culturally driven. In particular, it focused on communities that had traditions rooted in nature conservation. the advertisements showcased local figures, elders if you will, using our kitchenware while sharing age-old wisdom about respecting the environment. the tagline was (something like) "honoring traditions, preserving tomorrow."

We ran both campaigns in a split test across multiple regions. to our surprise, the socio-cultural campaign outperformed the emotional one by a substantial margin, especially in regions with strong cultural ties to nature, like certain areas in the Pacific Northwest and parts of New England. Follow-up interviews revealed that people felt a deep, personal connection to the community-focused ads. They felt that the product wasn't just another item but a bridge to their roots.

All that said, even with that and other similar experiences over the course of my career, I'm bearish about completely sidelining the more automatic responses ingrained in us. While cultural imprinting and rational processes play significant roles in decision-making, it's probably a mistake to entirely dismiss our primal instincts and inherent biases. They've evolved over millennia and shape much of our intuitive reactions, long before conscious thought even enters the equation.