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One of the big myths of B2B marketing states that because you’re marketing to a group of decision-makers at a company rather than individuals, the creative and copy need to focus on concrete benefits and features as opposed to the softer status and fulfillment benefits usually seen in B2C marketing. I suppose a lot of this is due to the widespread assumption that groups of individuals in a company behave more rationally in those same individuals would on their own.

This theory was disproven once again for me recently, and from a place I least expected it. I’ve always been fascinated with human behavior in real life-or-death situations (think plane crashes in the rainforest, not missed deadlines). So I finally had time to read Laurence Gonzalez’s Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies & Why. Along with the gripping stories of survival I expected came some surprisingly deep neurology lessons that rivaled anything in the behavioral sciences textbooks I studied in college.

It turns out the same reason that compels Navy pilots to ignore obvious danger signs from the cockpit when landing on a carrier is the same one that causes us to head for the refrigerator when we’re hungry: emotional shortcuts that are more powerful than the world around us allow us to sift through the barrage of sensory information to get us what we need, quickly. In panic situations like carrier landings in heaving seas these shortcuts can get us into trouble sometimes. But for most of us, we rely on emotional shortcuts to help us navigate the world safely and effectively.

Gonzalez illustrates how much we rely on these emotional pathways and how truly irrational we are with a simple illustration. Assume you are working at your desk and you develop those familiar hunger pangs around lunchtime. A completely rational being, Gonzalez argues, would try to fulfill that need for energy by expelling as little energy as possible in the process. That person would begin by systematically putting anything in easy reach in his or her mouth to see if it’s palatable enough to eat. Mouse? No. Stapler? No. Post-it notes? Don’t think so. And so on. Why? Because none of us have ever tried to eat those items before, and we’d just be responding to the stimuli immediately around us just the same way a newborn baby does; try and find out.

On the other hand, every human being driven by emotion – meaning all of us – addresses the situation by ignoring the immediate stimuli in front of us to call up some strong imagery: fridge. Pantry. Break room. Vending machine. We do it without thinking, knowing in a Pavlovian way that those actions will lead to satisfaction based on strong emotional associations we’ve made in the past.

It’s really no different in a group setting. We’ve all been a part of meetings that carry over into the lunch hour. But do those groups of intelligent, rational individuals begin gnawing on their notebooks and pens in an effort to satiate their hunger? No, though they may think about it if it gets bad enough. They behave the way we do as individuals, relying on well-worn emotional shortcuts to get us what we need.

So should we as B2B marketers give in to the temptation to focus solely on the rational sides of our target audiences? Heck no. Don’t be afraid to hit them with emotional appeals of status, prestige, risk avoidance, career advancement, unique knowledge, and any other emotional tricks that B2C marketers use to get you to buy that thing you never realized you needed until a moment ago.

Because the marketer that manages to hack through the forest of competing stimuli to find that well-worn emotional shortcut is usually the only one that survives in the end.