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Using Neuromarketing to Sell Products
Cyan Peppa writes "Marketplace on CBC, that's a Canadian station for you Americans, had an interesting story on neuromarketing tonight. '...Neuromarketing uses traditional neuroscientific methods to determine the drivers behind consumer choices. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers map brain patterns of participants, to reveal how they respond to a particular advertisement or product. This information can be used as the basis for new advertising campaigns and branding techniques...'
Now, I'm no genius, but isn't something like this wrong? Personally, I don't like advertisements tapdancing on the chest of my own free will...What do you think?"
The article is careless; they must be talking about fMRI, not MRI. The latter is the more familiar technology that provides images of brain morphology, usually by tweaking water protons. While the researchers are doubtless imaging to provide reference localization -- that is, a map of the brain -- the fMRI is entirely different because it measures brain metabolism, which is higher in parts of the brain that are more active, and so buring more sugar. So the first is a picture that looks like sliced brain, the latter is a map of hot spots that looks like an IR sensor image. They can integrate this with EEG (electroencephalogram), also, something we also couldn't do with old MRI. Cool.
Check here -- the first image you see is an overlay of functional hot spots (color) over a regular MRI (B&W). While on the topic of medical acronyms, there is not "CAT scan" anymore, it's CT for computed tomography. The earliest machines could only do axial cuts, hence "A" in CAT. But the public and TV shows like saying CAT. I used to work around CT, too, almost 20 years ago.
I'm jealous because I did research on psychiatric patients with MRI ten years ago, which was limited to detected tumors, atrophy, and other gross physical changes. That's very useful -- people with mental illnes have in some cases revealed what appears to be long-term degeneration marked by atrophy (shrinkage) of relevant lobes --but does not have the amazing possibilities of instantly detecting changes in brain activity. This is quite a bit short of reading your mind! Just 10 years ago the imaging MRI was a stunning achievement, now we're spoiled and moving into the next phase.
Is this research for marketing purposes invasive? Nah. It's just an (expensive) attempt to further quantify reaction to marketing, as has been done up to now with questionnaries and the like. It's not sneaky like subliminal advertising, which didn't work anyway despite being a compelling idea and making for a great episode of Columbo (conspiracy theorists disagree; scientists generally don't; but advertisers and maybe Republicans still try it anyway).
Anyway, advertisers have long had a general idea (sex) of (sex) what (sex) moves (sex) product (send me money). The marketers looking upon consumers as a horde of cattle, that's kind of patronizing, but it's nothing new.
Popular science reporting seems the art of taking fairly mundane research and making it sound much more exciting, wonderful, dangerous than it really is. Such as this article for instance.
They are purporting that with MRI scans of people's brains they can "read your unconscious thoughts", like some Orwellian nightmare and then pull these subconscious strings to get you to empty your wallet at the nearest GAP outlet.
Well, being myself a student of the cognitive sciences, I'd like to set a few things clear. The ability to "read thoughts" as purported by this article, while not technically false, is much more primitive than you could imagine.
An MRI of the brain can give you a picutre of what cells are most active at any given point, so you can see relatively what brain centres dominate and try to make inferences from that as to what the person is thinking. Given that our knowledge of brain function is at a very primitive level, the most useful data you can get from this type of scan is "he likes it" or "he doesn't like it". It will not tell you what images, feelings, sounds, associations are passing through the subjects head at any point, only whether they are generally positive or not. Its really no different from putting a bunch of boxes on a chart and asking the person to rate from one to ten how well they like certain things - except you get that rating directly from the brain rather than from asking the person. So in theory this ranking is more "honest" and less clouded by other factors such as social obligations, etc. which might interfere with what a person would say when asked.
The idea that this technology can be used in some Orwellian fashion to understand that secretly you are afraid of rats, or are a pedophile or like the look of women eating juicy mangoes is not going to happen anytime soon. It is unlikely that that level of analysis is ever going to be possible. Ok, end of rant.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Now, I'm no genius, but isn't something like this wrong?
Go read a Sociology textbook. There are decades of tales about cult leaders, population control, con artists, etc. Tales about power over other people.
Now go read a Management or Marketing textbook...same thing, but different jargon.
Except now, their tatics will be even more potent, as they manipulate our core humanity against us. Don't be suprised when the hopeless flocks grow even greater than before.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin