“Big Shots. Andy Warhol Polaroids” opened last night at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art, sponsored by McKinney. Aside from our interest in promoting culture and the arts in Durham and Chapel Hill, this exhibit was a perfect fit for us, given Warhol’s unique appreciation for the confluence of art and commerce.

In the gallery across from “Big Shots” is another great Nasher exhibit, “Picasso and the Allure of Language.” The juxtaposition of these two iconoclasts nicely punctuated the conversation we’ve been having around the work of our friends Dan Ariely and Baba Shiv. Dan is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Psychology at Duke and author of best-seller Predictably Irrational. Baba is Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and editor of the Journal of Consumer Research.

Both are exploring the psychological impact of such traditional marketing cues as pricing and positioning. One of the most startling things you see in studying their research is that when we, as marketers, do our jobs right, brands do more than differentiate one product from another. Done right, price, positioning, packaging and other marketing levers can trigger actual physical pleasure.

Which is the link back to Warhol, Picasso and art. It provokes, it challenges, it makes us feel something or see something in a new way, often bypassing those linear microprocessors we call our left brains for a direct, non-verbal attack on the right side of our brains. In the same way that the most powerful advertising tends to work.