Two Seconds with Massive Impacts on Your Marketing

By Nick Ellinger, Chief Brand Officer

The first second is what happens when your donor or prospect sees your communication. When your donor sees your logo on the envelope or ad, the brain remembers how that logo made the person feel in the past. Visual stimuli have power; when we see a Coke can, our brains go to our hippocampus (for memory) and our limbic system (for emotion), assuming we have a history with the Coke brand. 

The Impact of Oxytocin

Assuming that there are good memories with that logo and effective emotions, oxytocin levels will increase in the brain. Oxytocin is often called the “cuddle chemical” or the “hug hormone.” Oxytocin is released naturally as a part of childbirth and is associated with maternal behavior and social attachment. 

However, the role of oxytocin extends beyond its initial associations. Recent studies suggest that oxytocin plays a significant role in building trust. For example, individuals given oxytocin have been shown to be more willing to entrust money to strangers in economic games (Smith et al., 2025). 

In this case, we — as the nonprofit — are the strangers. When people connect with a story on an emotional level, their oxytocin levels rise by an average of 47%. Research shows that individuals exposed to oxytocin donated to 57% more causes and gave 56% more money after watching public service announcements. This is where your carefully crafted appeal plays a crucial role. And if that appeal can also spark a heightened emotional response — specifically, triggering the release of a fast-acting stress hormone called ACTH — you could see an increase in giving by as much as 261%. 

The Impact of Dopamine

Within the first second, a cascade of neurological processes begins. The brain rapidly processes sensory cues — logos, colors, language, tone — and responds by releasing key neurotransmitters like oxytocin and dopamine. Oxytocin fosters trust and connection, while dopamine delivers a sense of pleasure. For donors exposed to a nonprofit’s message repeatedly, this response becomes more automatic over time. As neurologists say, “neurons that fire together, wire together” — meaning the brain becomes more efficient at linking familiar stimuli with a specific action. 

Think of it like walking the same path through grass day after day. Eventually, it becomes worn into something as reliable as a sidewalk. That’s what happens when someone consistently sees your branding, hears your story, and feels emotionally moved by your appeal. These repeated experiences prime the brain for a learned response: It’s time to donate. 

The Neurological “Warm Glow” Effect

fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies have shown that when someone makes a donation, the nucleus accumbens — a brain region associated with unexpected rewards — activates and releases dopamine (Harbaugh et al., 2007). This neurotransmitter is linked to the “warm glow” effect people often report after giving. It’s not just emotional—it’s neurological. 

However, pleasure is a side effect of dopamine. It is less a “liking” chemical and more a “wanting” chemical. Think of the classic rat-pushes-a-lever-and-gets-a-reward-experiment. That’s what dopamine does. Do good. Get a dopamine reward. Most addictive drugs work through dopamine and most anti-addictive medicinal treatments repress dopamine. In fact, some people get addicted to giving, hooked on their dopamine highs.  

To oversimplify, when you present someone who wants to give an opportunity to give, you are giving them their dopamine. 

The Impacts of Neurology on Your Marketing

Chances are, you knew much of this intuitively — the appeal and branding of an organization create an emotional state that a person satisfies by donating — even if you didn’t know the names of the parts of the brain where it happens. 

The big implications of this: 

• It’s why top-of-funnel awareness campaigns work. You are making deposits in the bank of positive associations for your brand that will be triggered subconsciously in the brain. 

• It’s why omnichannel communications work. The response rate of every campaign is going to be below 50%, which means that every person is, on average, more likely not to donate than to donate. What you don’t want to do is have associations wire together that say, “when I get mail from the Loving Shephard’s organization, I throw it away.” Omnichannel breaks up the associations so different stimuli hit differently, building overall brand associations. 

• It’s why people get more and more loyal over time — a well of positive experiences and associations means that less thinking needs to be done each time. 

The Neurological Impact of Sticker Shock

The second second occurs after someone has decided to give — does the person get sticker shock? After all, we know that whether to give and what to give are two separate decisions, with the latter with the ability to overrule the former. 

Recent research shows that there is and that sticker stock is aptly named — people’s brains behave the same way as when they are surprised in other ways.   

Participants saw images of mobile phones (e.g., iPhone, Nokia, Xiaomi) followed by hypothetical prices. They were asked to judge whether the price was “cheap” or “expensive” based on target words displayed after the price. Prices were manipulated to be cheap, expensive, or accurate. 

During this process, they were measured by EEG (electroencephalography), which measures brain electrical activity, and MEG (magnetoencephalography), which pinpoints that activity. 

In the first second, your brain is already hard at work making sense of what it’s seeing. When people encounter something that doesn’t make sense — like a wildly incorrect price — their brain produces an N400 response, a spike in neural activity that occurs roughly 400 milliseconds after the mismatch. It’s like the brain glitch you’d experience if someone suddenly said “ferret” in the middle of a sentence about dinner. (If that made you pause, that little jolt was your own mini N400-like response.) 

These early milliseconds are about processing and understanding. The brain is evaluating words, numbers, images — deciding, quickly, if things make sense. Emotional reactions come slightly after. Oxytocin, dopamine, and other neurochemical messengers kick in downstream, helping us connect, trust, and feel good about giving. But first, the brain needs to recognize that what it’s seeing fits. 

This kind of neural response prompts the brain to search for an explanation: Why is that price off? Is this a scam? Is it low quality? When the price doesn’t trigger that N400 reaction, the brain stays calm—and that sense of cognitive ease can boost purchase intent. 

The Sticker Shock of Ask Strings

The same holds true for donations. In fact, everything we just discussed around pricing applies to giving, and it happens fast — within about 600 milliseconds (about 1 second). If your donation amounts are out of sync with expectations, you create friction. Your donor experiences higher cognitive load (translation: you’re making them think too hard), and you pay for it in reduced conversions. 

The good news? These brain responses are measurable. Neurological tools like EEG can help test whether your donation levels are hitting the right mark. Just like football is a game of inches, fundraising is a game of seconds. Understanding what’s happening in those critical first two seconds — from someone seeing your message to encountering your donation ask — is key to creating a journey that ends in that mutual dopamine hit of a successful gift.