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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?"
I smell the distinct scent of subliminals around this. Which is to say, it's a sexy, seductive idea, sure to garner oodles of funding from idiots in various marketing departments, but its relevance is limited... and kudos to the researchers for thinking of such a silly but powerful way to run their gravy train!
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I personally don't think this is any worse than ad agencies doing market research to determine which ads work and which ones won't. This is just taking it to the next level.
Don't get me wrong, I dislike advertisements as much as the next guy, but what differentiates me (and most of hte geek community) from the next guy is that fact that I know how to look at an ad and know when I should and should not listen to what's being said. When someone watching an ad is aware of the techniques used to create the ad, it's not very likely to work.
Example: The annoying beer commercials designed to associate their beer with having fun. I know that's what they are doing, so I know to ignore the commercial.
I seriously doubt any ad developed using this technique will be so effective as to hinder my ability to logically conclude whether or not the product being advertised is actually worth spending money on.
Marketing doesn't work anyway. I wear Nikes because they're fast, not because they look good on TV.
Are you being intentionally funny? Why do you think that "Nikes are fast?" Was there a consumer study I missed? The only one I read said that Nikes were no better than other shoes. Did you do your own experiment to come to this conclusion? Which brand of sneaker did you use as your control.
Or do you think that "Nikes are fast" because that's just umm... common knowledge? And where did that come from?
God is real unless declared integer
I hate the word consumers - it's just a smokescreen to talk about ourselves without emotion. Advertisers don't surround themselves with garish billboards and obnoxious ads to get themselves to spend money on things they don't need. They surround /consumers/ - as though they are exempt from the crap.
What we are really talking about is a group of people scanning peoples brain patterns in reaction to product images to find what can actually make us "behave the way they want [us] to" (direct quote)
There is something wrong about that. It kind of reminds me of the whole Snow Crash thing really.
Advertising is just a way to make something seem like it is worth more than it is. It sucks.
The difference is that they are trying to monitor the stimulus response mechanism of the people involved.
I do not know of any scientific study or body of knowledge that directly studies the pathology of the stimulus response mechanism as a mechanism by itself. You have to go outside the mainstream sciences to see anything looking at the area. Psychoanlysis, for example, does not study this, and addresses it indirectly if ever. Psychiatry, with it's love affair for medication, is more of the same.
In fact this is the first such study that I have even heard of, and the use of it is not theraputic at all. Unless the therapy is that of weight reduction of an obese wallet.
A therapy would be interested in looking at stimulus response mechanisms, and learning to help people whose mechanisms are out of whack. {example: I knew a gal whose boy friends, each in turn, all that the same first name. creepy)
This is no such thing. It is research for better mind control of the consumer today.
You would thing that this would be a fruitful area for research if you actually wanted to help folks. But the money seems to be focused elsewhere. I wonder why?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"