The Neuroscience of Stress and Peak Performance in Sports and Advertising

January 22, 2020 Prince Ghuman & Matt Johnson

Fun Fact: Throughout American sports history, no other brand has been partnered with a league longer than Wilson has been with the NFL (Source: Wilson). Photo by Dave Adamson, Unsplash

In 1991, Whitney Houston owned her anthem performance at Super Bowl XXV. Great performances like hers are unforgettable, but anthems don’t always go so flawlessly.

Consider teenager Natalie Gilbert’s performance during the 2003 NBA playoffs. After getting off to a solid start, she forgot the words halfway through. Thankfully, Trail Blazers Head Coach Mo Cheeks’ was on hand to join Natalie and help her through the last half.

In the end, Cheeks’ greatest assist was turning a shaky performance into a touching moment, reminding us of the power of nerves and how it impacts performance.

While some flourish under pressure, others falter beneath it. For every clutch performer like Patrick Mahomes or Whitney Houston, there are countless others who choke. There’s something about the ability to perform in a high-stakes, high-pressure situation, differentiating an excellent individual from the sensational MVP. Since not everyone can be the standout Super Bowl MVP in their own right, brands market toward those who want to be.

To find out how a high-stakes moment turns a performer into peak performer, we need to better understand our relationship with stress. To cater to a bigger market other than professional athletes, we’ll know how aspirational brand identities are created with the promise to push us to a whole new level.

A Gift from Evolution: The Fight-or-Flight Stress Response

As human beings, stress is one of our oldest natural impulses. When we’re exposed to perceived threats such as facing a lion, we activate a mode called the fight-or-flight response, activating our sympathetic nervous system, which pumps cortisol (a stress hormone) into our bloodstream and increases our heart rate. This is the signal that once told our ancestors to run for their lives. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here writing this blog today (we’re forever grateful).

Since we don’t find ourselves running from animalistic predators anymore, our fight-or-flight responses are activated by the stressors of modern predators: deadlines, taxes, and public speaking. When we feel our heart racing and body sweating, and find ourselves either pushing through or forgetting a line or two in a speech, we experience the same stress response our ancestors used to run away from lions. The only difference is it’s activated a little less. And when there’s less of one thing, there can be room for another.

When we hear of stress, we naturally think of that sinking queasy feeling we get in our gut when we think about an upcoming speech. But it doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, because we can use it to our advantage. After all, our ancestors have taught us to be the best runners we can be at the sure sight of a hungry lion. If our sympathetic nervous system had a slogan, it would be “when the moment calls for it, be the best you can be.” And that’s exactly what the best clutch performers do—they use the moment to their advantage.

This is where euphoric stress or eustress comes in. It’s the powerful combination of confidence, excitement, and hyper-focus when we’re eager to get through, achieve or overcome challenges. The exhilarating feeling when we’re riding KingDa at Six Flags? That’s eustress. The thrill of watching Parasite? That’s eustress. The excitement in not knowing what to wear on your first date? That’s eustress. People perform well with the right amount of stress. It’s what helps us nail a crucial pitch at work, final exam in college, or help the wide receiver catch the winning touchdown just before the end of the fourth quarter. Just as athletes retire after playing for a time period, we go downhill once we go over that perfect degree of stress. When we are the slightest overwhelmed, we start to miss deadlines, receive low grades, or get intercepted by the opposing team and lose the game.

There’s math to illustrate this phenomenon. The graph below shows a bell curve relationship between stress and performance. When there’s too much stress, we choke, get overwhelmed, or worse—burnout. When there’s too little of it, we’re left bored, less energized, and motivated. Clutch performers operate within this sweet spot of optimal performance.

Source: Biopics, Positive and Negative Stress

Interestingly, the same effect can be seen on a social level. The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that performance can also be influenced by the presence of others. This is called social facilitation, wherein top performers—like athletes, musicians, stand-up comedians—have the ability to use eustress in reaching peak performance because there are teammates playing with them, people watching, or both. It’s when millions of people tune in every Sunday that Derrick Henry reaches the peak of the bell curve. And the same goes for brands that are loved by millions of people all over the world.

How Brands Use the Peak Performance Promise
to Influence Consumer Behavior

Remember our sympathetic nervous system’s slogan “when the moment calls for it, be the best you can be”? Unsurprisingly, several brands have used variations of this as part of their own brand voice because thriving under pressure has an innate appeal.

Brands like Nike and Gatorade incorporate stress and peak performance in their product messaging to connect with individuals who aspire to thrive under pressure. They build strong positive associations through advertising.

Nike’s ads always aim to speak and empower its audience with its main slogan “Just Do It,” mentioning it at the end of every ad. Their 2019 “Dream Further” campaign directly depicts stress and the benefits of social facilitation, featuring Makena Cook, a 10-year old rising soccer star, nervous to play at the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Amidst all the chaos of the crowd cheering, she plays a key part in the most intense stressful moment of the game by assisting the goal. The stress, crowd, peak performance are all there to not only inspire but to push for stronger association.

Gatorade has also done something similar. In 1992, it featured a compilation of Michael Jordan shooting, dunking, and winning, while children sing “Be Like Mike” repeatedly. While Nike frames its inspirational message through creative storytelling, Gatorade takes a more straightforward approach, telling basketball hobbyists to drink Gatorade to be like Mike.

By now you might think it sounds ludicrous that anyone would believe to be more athletic if they drank Gatorade or run better and faster if they wore Nike shoes. But what’s beyond ludicrous is how successful both brands have been at associating themselves to peak performance. As of 2018, Nike’s brand is worth $28 billion, holding the throne as the most valuable global apparel brand while Gatorade controls more than $8 billion of the sports drink industry for decades in the US and 75% of the global market.

Whether it’s subtle celebrity connections, the influence of costumes, or seasonal pairings, our brains are incredibly sensitive to associations. They influence our thoughts and emotions much more than we realize, and often at an unconscious level. This is why peak performance marketing is so effective in driving our consumer behavior. It’s why most pianists show off their musical prowess on a Steinway piano, why every swimming junkie wears Speedo, and why top chefs only trust knives made by the Japanese or Germans.

As consumers, we think of brands in terms of these qualities. Whatever our industry or hobby, we aspire to bring out the clutch, peak performer in all of us. And when it comes to brands, we put our trust in the ones who are there for us just like Mo Cheeks was there for Natalie.