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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?"
as being that big a difference from just showing the ads and asking people.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Voice over: Lightspeed fits today's active lifestyle. Whether you're on the job [Fry is shown at a company meeting wearing just Lightspeeds.], or having fun [Fry is shown with a woman in her underwear.] Lightspeed briefs. Style and comfort for the discriminating crotch.
[The dream ends. Fry wakes up.]
Fry: Oh what a weird dream! I'll never get back to sleep!
[He falls asleep.]
[Scene: Planet Express: Lounge. The crew are sat around a table.]
Fry: So you're telling me they broadcast commercials into people's dreams?
Leela: Of course.
Fry: But, how is that possible?
Farnsworth: It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain just like this liquid gets into this egg. [He holds up an egg and injects it with liquid. The egg explodes.] Although in reality it's not liquid, but gamma radiation.
Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No sirree!
all you have to do is think about b00bies...
then they will start showing you ads with b00bies on them...
yes, i know, im a genius !
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
to make better products!
Surrender YR pattent!
Advertisers are just doing what they have always done. They are just using new tools to see how they affect consumers.
There isn't necessarily anything sinister about it.
There should be a moderation category "Dumbest Comment EVER"
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
No way!
Whereas today there are lots of commercials that annoy the SHIT out of a lot of people, but which happen to work all right at keeping the brand in people's minds, in the future commercials will be designed NOT to annoy people -- more specifically, me.
Aw, who am I kidding?
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.
Personally, I don't like advertisements tapdancing on the chest of my own free will...What do you think
If they're able to build advertising to get you to buy the product from this "technology" you really don't have free will do you? They're just abusing you of the idea that you have free will.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
People worry too much that this thing is gonna turn into some mind control. We are all faced everyday with things we want/want to do, and we spend all day denying ourselves most of these things. I mean, just seeing a hot girl fills my head with all sorts of thoughts and feelings, but it doesn't make me act any different then i would normally.
Programming is simply the application of logic to creativity
Personally, I don't like advertisements tapdancing on the chest of my own free will...
You still believe in free will.
Its like that hot GAP girl a year or two back.. Remember her now? . Well even though I may have had stimulated brain activity... doesn't mean I would buy GAP, unless there was a chance to see the clothing on the floor...
Increased brain activity != purchase product... But I wonder if "lesbians still = ratings".
And for your viewing pleasure, all the above links are work safe.
Tournament Management Online &
The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Ah, this must be what they call 'progress'...
=Smidge=
Um...while this is certainly an interesting story, and an indication of the ridiculous amount of money going into advertising research, I fail to see what's wrong with it.
It appears to me that all this company is doing using an MRI and a neuroscientist to analyse focus group results rather than a sociologist or a psychologist. Which is fine with me, if ad companies want to scientifically proove that the libido sections of men's brains have a stronger responce to the model with the cell phone, then the logic sections do to the cell phone and it's list of features, then that's their own business. Granted, this will increase the price of the product on which they're doing market neuro-research; but the market will ultimately determine the value of the research.
Either way it's not you're brain being explored. (Believe me if Madison Ave. were using an MRI on you you'd know) And too, this research could add more value to neuroscience in general than it does to marketing so it's a Good Thing in some ways...
credo quia absurdum
You want a product that sells?? Give it a flashy package and get some famous people to say it's "cool". Look at the mini-rc cars "whoa shaq plays with them, they must be cool", or look at a Buick ... okay wait, step back let's leave the buick's ...
My point is still clear though, it's not our brain waves, not how we were raised, what we really enjoy, ask yourselves, when was the last time you used EVERYTHING you buy??
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Personally, I don't like advertisements tapdancing on the chest of my own free will...What do you think?
I think you need a nice refreshing Coke.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
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......
It's only free will if someone lets you have free will.
This space for rent.
Oops, mark that Redundant.
Wouldn't this be a cool add-on for Tivo, though? Include a headset that functions as a mind-operated remote control, and grabs all the marketroid data in the background. Oh, and look for telltales of anti-social behavior while you're at it. If the subject appears to be too anti-social, just send a command from TivoJusticeCentral to send a high-voltage current across the temples. Bang! A better society is just a programming choice away.
If I can get JUST the ads that I might be interested in, that's a good thing. I would love to give out all kinds of marketing info if I would only get stuff that interests me. (assuming the total amount of advertising I receive would go down)
I don't need to know about womens clothing (not into that), or vinly siding (I rent).
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
CBC is an institution in Canada, celebrating its 50th anniversary. For those lucky Americans who live close to the border, CBC has offered excellent hockey coverage, as well as superior Olympic Games coverage.
Well, except in Microsoft's case.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
MrMRI : Hey Mr advertising guy, we've got this great Idea.
MRAdd: What?
MrMRI: Just lie down here, keep still and I'll tell you...
half an hour later.
MrMRI wispers
MRMRI: Well, you get people to lie down in an MRI machine and user ther brain waves to sell.......
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Perhaps the problem is that you think you have free will... ;-)
...the subliminal advertising that some theatre owners tried back in, what, the 50's or 60's. By flashing a single frame of a heaping bucket of buttery popcorn every once in a while during the movie they were able to convince the viewers that they should buy some popcorn during the intermission (remember those?). This practice was ruled illegal. I'm hoping that this ``neurological marketing'' is seen as the same thing as subliminal advertising. In fact, I'd bet that the marketing folks are really just trying to bring that idea back but are wrapping it up in a new name to fool people into believing that it's not so as to avoid the backlash they encountered in the past.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
the one that says "Adbusters". I closed the page just before I could see if that was another article or an ad itself.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Stuff like this amazes me as there is no real science behind what these companies are doing. They manage to foist technological prowess on ignorant marketing types or they don't know enough about neuroscience to be dangerous to science education in the public.
Wow, this is right up there with folks that tell you they can analyze alpha waves and tell you something about depression or your overall psychological health. (alpha waves are real and result from thalamo-cortical relays induced by relaxed eyes-closed wakefullness, but there is no evidence in the scientific record that indicates people can determine psychological health from their analysis).
The problem with work like this is that cortical patterns of activation are an emergent phenomenon that differs widely among different people which may reveal why DARPA is interested in "fingerprinting" brainwave patterns. But seriosly folks, lets have some studies that indicate emotive components can be accurately predicted from functional magnetic resonance imaging before we start foisting this crap on the unsuspecting public. (I presume they are using fMRI as plain old MRI simply looks at structure based on reconstruction of atomic "spins". Perhaps they are also using MRS or magnetic resonance spectroscopy as well, but I doubt it.)
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Or maybe it just wasn't hard. This is an industry that believed that sketching naked women and skulls into ice cubes would get people to buy more whisky. These people will buy anything, even if it is the completely premature application of brain imaging techniques to marketing.
Well this thing reminds me of Matrix's brief and relatively incomprehensible episode, when Neo gets up from his eternal bathtube... You live in some sort of jellish liquid that emulates your environment, a tube feeds you with all your desired nutrients and several wires catch up your needs and reactions. A big cable connects you into the virtual world so that you think you're living...
Right now they catch up desires and wishes. Why not to think they soon they glue your mounth with a tube and pomp you with dogfood? And drill your skull to hammer your brain with the idea that you're eating the best dish on Earth?
When I went to school I was told that capitalism is based on free markets and competition. No need for central planning, simply let market forces select the best product.... but now we have adds that can effectively hipnotize you into buying some shit... "must buy beer, swedish bikini good" style adds....
This seems to have more in common with communist propaganda than with core values of capitalism...
2c worth.
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.
The psychology of buying decisions has been researched from a million different angles for as long as things have been bought and sold. Sure this is a little more invasive look into our noggins to see what makes us buy stuff, but how is it any different than say stuffing a room filled with prototype toys with a couple dozen young kids to see which ones are going to be holiday hits? Don't tell me a bunch of psychologists and marketing dweebs with clipboards behind a one way mirror is any more cold and clinical than sticking someone's head in a machine for an MRI.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
.. they found men were thinking mostly about sex and women about shoes.
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Also known as Reverse Neuromarketing?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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"
Marketing monkeys have money to throw around using MRIs for product targeting while HMO members have to fight tooth and nail to get HMOs to cough up money to use MRIs for life-and-death situations.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
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
Through a friend I used to get to do a lot of focus groups. At one for a clothing chain we were asked how important we though it was that the clothes were manufactured in Canada (where I live). Everyone on the panel said that it was ultimately important, except me. I argued that when it came down to it few people actually buy domestically produced goods and that obviously it doesn't matter. I got into quite an arguement with the others until I pointed out that they were all wearing clothes that were not only not made here but were not even Canadian brand names (DKNY, Gap, Tommy Hillfiger, Nike, etc). They wouldn't let us leave until I conceded that buying Canadian was important to me.
This got me thinking about the nature of the focus groups, don't the companies know the opinions they are getting what people say not necessarily what they do? I suspect that the scans will allow for more accurate polling. You could ask a group of women if they like a half naked ad, they may say "no" but their brains might tell a different story.
If I understand Bell's Theorem correctly, doesn't it boil down to the fact that we don't really have free will anyway?
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Yet another case of Sam I Am figuring out how to get us to eat those disgusting Green Eggs and Ham:
From Soupyet.com:
Green Eggs and Ham is not what your parents told you. It is not a story about trying something you think is gross and discovering that you might like it. It is a dark tale of the evil implications of the age of information in which we live.
Sam I am is the archetypical villian of modern society. He is the ever-present, ever-persistent marketing puppet of the information age. He peddles his wares incessantly via any and all means, until we give up in desperation and eat those disgusting green eggs and ham. Not only do we eat them, but the parable has us shouting for glee that we love the green eggs and ham that have been forced down our collective, societal throat.
Sam I am is, poet, priest, and politician. But he may also be: boss, parent, spouse, news anchor, movie star, CEO, etc.
Green eggs and ham are the collective physical, emotional, metaphysical and other wares being thrown at us faster and faster in this so-called information age.
Read any good sonnets lately?
Personally, I don't like advertisements tapdancing on the chest of my own free will...What do you think?
If you are in total control of your, as you say, "free will", what do you care if someone attempts to appeal to your interests? Perhaps you are concerned that they are able to make some low-level appeal to your senses below what you can consciously understand but effective enough to influence your behavior? At that point, how would you even know it was happening?
If you don't make yourself available to be targeted by the "tapdancers", then perhaps you won't have to worry about whether or not you are consuming something because you want to or because someone made you think you want to.
Why does everyone bitch about advertising? You don't have to observe it if you don't want to.
Speak truth to power.
Your don't own your free will, you license it. And the subscription fee is due.
Money for nothing, pix for free
How is this different than marketing studies where they have people push buttons based on their like or dislike of a product? It's maybe a little more accurate, but really it's not some radical jump that gives them the ability to brainwash people. If they were actively scanning all people as they passed by a store, that would be one thing, but this is using focus groups of volunteers.
The fact of the matter is that all people walk through this world trying to impress images on others. We're the clever entrepeneur, the sports hero, or the trusted religious leader. In the end no matter the images that are pushed onto people, it doesn't hide the truth of what's underneath for long. The entrepeneur turns out to be a swindler, the sports hero's a thug, and the trusted religious leader is a child molester. So even with all the technology in the world, nobody's going to convince us that we should buy crap that is in fact crap.
Now, if they were pumping people with drugs, or something like that, that'd be a different story. Ultimately this will just refine their abilities a little bit more, and probably sell a few more things. They aren't telling us what to do, and we still possess free will, so I don't see the harm.
Frankly I'd rather that they had fewer more influential ads than slathering their advertising feces over any flat surface on planet earth. Maybe studies like this will help them realize that it's all becoming white noise and that we're just learning to ignore them.
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I'm curious about the "Nikes are fast" comment. Are you a runner?
More Gatorade is consumed by people sitting on couches watching Gatorade ads than by hard-core street basketball players. The same goes for Nikes. You'd think people would want to buy sneakers which are comfortable for standing around and walking to lunch, but images of people running are far more compelling than images of people at desks.
I adore Nike ads. I think they're playful, fun, and often inspiring. They often concentrate on the ethic of sport: getting up early in the morning and doing it when you could be lying in bed. I don't wear their shoes, but I'd buy a videotape of their ads.
I wear nikes because I love that fact that they're made with care by young indonesian girls.
/ st rategie/nikeboycott.html
Anyone can make a shoe because they're making a living wage, it takes real devotion to make shoes all day long for $1.80.
http://www.citinv.it/associazioni/CNMS/archivio
What were you expecting?
And as for the Italians.... sheesh
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Is this saying that broadcast media is the injector? That it's creators are intentionally modifying our dreams for their own ends and that they don't care about the side effects?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Communist system has one hypnotizer...
Free Market system put hypnotizers in direct competition with each other!
I take your 2c, now you senseless!!! HA! HA! HA! Old Hong Kong Joke!
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Subliminal adverts are below concious perception because the mind typically does not want to see what's there. Typical images that can be seen in ads are of death, rejection and failure and other things that cause emotional distress. Just visit Budwiser, download their images and LOOK at them with higher zoom levels for a while. It's frightening, it's real and it works.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Marketplace on CBC, that's a Canadian station for you Americans...
It's not just Americans who haven't heard of CBC.
No one outside Canada cares about the call letters of your pissant stations.
But she doesn't have a problem with neuromarketing -- or any other subconscious probing.
"I think if they can find a way to help us find a way into that magic little feeling that shopping can give you -- if you do it right and you get the right thing and you don't spend too much money, hats off to them. Thank you. I think it's a service."
Since she doesn't have a problem with neuromarketing -- or any other subconscious probing, one could guess that she is quite an easy lay. Go for it /.ers! Most likely she'll overlook your pizza stained sweatpants, as long as you keep repeating, "Geek is Chic...Geek is Chic..."
It's sheepeople like these that are making world domination easy. Make sure you wear a condom when you handily take her womanhood.
News flash: people who volunteer for medical research aren't always in much of a position to buy consumer products. Maybe the people who might actually buy your sports sedan will think about the car instead of the girl, you know?
It's amazing the things people will willingly do for a study like this. Advertizing psychology does stuff like put little cameras in your living room, to track your eye movement when you watch commercials. Who would volunteer for that to be in her home? Chee-sus! (And who are the people who start fooling around on camera? Supposedly happens, or according to a psych teacher I had anyway.)
Advertizers have no scruples, but are we this willing to participate in the process?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I don't like advertisements tapdancing on the chest of my own free will...What do you think
then it's not free will. how about that?
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
Check those facts, please.
It's the eventual political application of this. Politicians appealing directly to the subconcious and potentially overriding the concious/rational choices (we hope) the public would make.
You Are Being Lied To.
Would you rather those "young indonesian girls" made their $1.80 the old-fashioned way?
(repost for those like me who don't read mish mash)
Well, as a Communication Strategist and Designer, (aka, layman's tongue Marketer) I have to say, "Yep, this'd be the next step."
What is sorely missing from most all of the comments thus far is the declaration of what marketing is.
Everything produced "nowadays" (as in for the past 30 years) considers marketing, everyone makes their "informed decisions" about products that, generally, were created to fulfill a market segment. *GASP* IMPOSSIBLE!?
Yes, utility has a lot to do with marketing, hence versions and price ranges and upgrades and add-ons.
Sure, the color of a plastic strip sewn into the side of a Nike shoe, the positioning of products on shelves (companies purchase shelf space and position, it's not just up to the major food chains to throw the product wherever they want), the graphic design is focus tested for years... and none of this considers the marketshare strategies (when to saturate, when to disappear, when to recampaign)... but this is just the skin of marketing.
What is at the heart of marketing? Basically: finding out what people want, and giving it to them. Do not confuse the more sensationalist tactics of marketing (superbowl commercials, sex, et al) with marketing itself... besides, if you claim you can ignore commercials well, fine, show me how you ignore forming an image of a pink elephant when I mention a pink elephant. That's now in there, at least for a little while, in that real estate known as your brain.
What would I have to do to get to to remember pink elephants for longer (don't answer that)?
This handy MRI would tell me what YOU want, essentially, without worrying about the noise.
Y'know, simplifying the signal chain as much as possible? I just finished reading about a campaign with a sporting good company that got the permission of a store to place cameras into the store to monitor how certain point of purchase displays were being used. Using this information, a new (and improved) point of purchase display was produced and sales of product X increase.
People in the store know they're being "watched" and enter an agreement to the surveillance by default inside the store.
I wonder if there's a petition I can join to battle surveillance cameras in commercial spaces! Basically: since when is telling me what you want such a bad thing? Especially since I'm asking you? Are you scared because I might tap in on the "purchase mindlessly instinct" and present a commercial not unlike the cat food commercials that were designed to get cats all in a tizzy? That I can fire a sort of Valis beam from the TV that 'forces' you into a neurological, and ultimately consumer, response?
I guess the fear is that this could lead into forcing people to do what they don't want, like making you smile when electrocuted. But as user testing stands right now, there's nothing inherently (or even remotely) evil about polling 50,000 people, getting the information, and producing a product that, for that segment, would appear to be successful.
And, uh, yeah, if I presented data to a client that stated "in 50,000 MRIs which told us that certain regions of the brain in these people exhibited pleasure" that's a hell of a lot more impressive and realistic than saying "I asked 50,000 people and they told me."
Bottomline: don't sign up for the MRI focus groups, that way the products won't necessarily be made for you and you can complain that things aren't the way you'd like them... that's fair. But this whole "marketing is automatically evil" spiel is ill-informed. I'm sure the Psychic Friends told you that, though.
-- The truth is the only thing that nobody will believe.
On second thought, it probably wouldn't take off. How would you market it?
For what it's worth, my wife is a podiatrist, and New Balance seems to be her favorite brand as they tend to have good arch supports and are pretty well made. In my house, at least, they enjoy a free medical endorsement. :)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Well, here are my answers -- this is pretty easy?:
Adhesive gauze strip?.....Store brand.
Acetametaphine?...........Store brand.
Chlorine Bleach?..........Store brand.
Pressed Chicken Strips?...Breast meat, not "pressed." (yuck)
Facial Tissue?............Store brand.
Battery?..................Cheapest. Alkaline.
Any questions?
Yeah, I'm jaded. Advertisers barely bother with me, so my favorite shows keep getting cancelled.
you want to know how to influence people to buy your product? make a quality product at a reasonable price....
want an example? SAAB minivan verses a GM minivan... they are BOTH identical.. I really dont give a rats ass about manufacturers claims and nobody really truely cares that SAAB is supposedly safer... yet GM minivans outsell SAAB minivans almost 5 to 1. Why?? because SAAB is horribly overpriced for what it is. People in general, when they dont have tons of money that they dont know what to do with care most about quality+price..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I hate it when TV viewers explode in my living room.
What I want to know is, where are they getting the people to lie still and take a brain scan while looking at ads? Are there really people out there who like ads sufficiently to do that? Are they paying a really, really rowrbazzle lot of money?!
Are the experimental subject people crazy?! I mean, what's the angle here? I mean, what do they say to putative volunteers, "Oh, we're going to bombard you with commercials and take pictures of your thoughts while we do it, so we can make more and more irresistable ads"? I don't get it.
I mean, the research is one thing. You have to admit that, since the crawling slime are running out of venues in which to place their scrofulous offerings, they must want to make them work better (although I doubt that will lessen the saturation level!). However, where (and how) are they finding their research subjects?
This isn't precisely the kind of research they can do on rhesus monkeys or something (although with the way ads are now, you'd think they were written by planaria for rhesus monkeys, or something), but who's giving that famous "informed consent"?
Eeek! An entirely new meaning of the ad-copy phrase "Not tested on animals"!
--shudder-- Ok, I'm scaring myself. I'd better stop now.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
... but nobody's forcing you to watch TV. Though I suppose that's not the only medium to which this technology might be applied.
No I didn't look at it at first but I am sure to now! I may not be 100% anti-anything but I am always interested in stuff similar to this; if only to laugh at some of the conspiracy theories.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Did you do your own experiment to come to this conclusion? Which brand of sneaker did you use as your control.
He may not have conducted his due diligence, but I have. In my experiment, I wore one Nike running shoe on my right foot, while my left foot was bare. I then ran over a variety of surfaces from sand and carpeting to hot asphalt, burning coals and gravel. I then ran the experiment again with the other Nike and the other foot bare.
My results showed that I tended to travel less distance on the bare foot, making large circles. Video footage also shows a slight limp in my bare foot, particularly on rough surfaces or where temperature extremes were found. Thus, I can conclusively say that Nikes are indeed fast, or at least faster than bare feet.
Hm.
You are saying that on the hot asphalt, you were SLOWER with the bare foot than you were with the COVERED foot? Interesting.
But I toast you, for you are Science!
God is real unless declared integer
In that, each layer is independant. What happens at the hardware layer is independent of the data flow.
While there is a great deal of intergration, I suspect that using this model would be useful.
In this regard, monitoring the blood flow would not be useful in assessing the problem of the girl I mentioned above.
Just like monitoring the flow of electrons in a computer would not help you address and correct a problem in a data base. You could eventually sort out which bits are located where, etc but it is really the long, slow, and wrong way to go about it. You do do not address a database via mechanical or basic electronic fixes.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I doubt that the approach is much more than a way for the agency to claim that its approach is more reliable than traditional focus groups.
it's kind of cool from a neuroscience perspective, though.
Amazing magic tricks
I mean really... if you don't want them scanning your brain, don't let them! It's not like they can carry around a portable brain scanner and scan random people on the street. The equipment used is large and oftentimes requires the scanee to soak their head in electrolyte (basically salt water). Yes, I've had something similar done to me before.
If they say, "Well, we really want to scan your brain...", tell them it'll cost them. Charge them as much as you personally feel your brainwaves/intrests are worth.
Wow... I think I just camed up with a great new business model...
1. Think
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
;-)
Where do you live? You can't sell blood where I come from -- there are specifically rules against it, which is probably due to a bunch of heads rolling in the '80s when they found out a bunch of people were transfused with tainted blood -- HIV and Hep. C. At least where I come from (if not where you are) there is a perception that anybody who'd be wanting to sell blood is probably a bad risk as a donor...
Do people hate needles more than being exposed to ads for long periods of time? For me that's a tough call, and you'd think with all the comments about anti-spam this and anti-popup that around here...
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
What would be cool would be to hook up a bunch of /.ers to
such a device and note which brain areas light up, which
become dim, which go totally dark, etc.,
based on which posts are being read.
This sort of thing might eventually become the basis for
a new kind of moderation system.
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
If Microsoft had used this they may not have used a butterfly as the MSN mascot.
I guess it didn't occured to the Microsoft management that using a bug for a Microsoft mascot wasn't a good idea.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
We get blood for transfusions from unpaid donors. In fact, if I remember correctly, there are actually laws against selling blood (or buying it) here.
Would people in the US really not give blood if they weren't paid for it? That's kind of scary.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
From the article:
"The potential for good and the potential for ill are both huge here. I don't know what we will call brainwashing, but until we come up with a better term, I would suggest it's at least a kissing cousin."
"That's completely unfounded. It has nothing to do with controlling consumer thought...nothing to do with manipulating consumer thought. All we can do is observe and learn," Brighthouse's Koval says.
Yeah, observe and learn how to control their thoughts. Doesn't the potential for abuse outway the societal benefits here?
moto411.com
Ah, but I don't live in "America". Well, I live in North America, but I don't live in the United States of America, which is what I think you mean. Which also explains why I didn't know that the US encourages people to give blood by paying them. An unsurprising development, but nevertheless, something I didn't know.
In retrospect, I'm sure that neuromarketers probably find ample volunteers by paying enough money to recruit them, but as I said in my original post, you'd have to pay a lot to interest me...for two reasons. Number one is that I just hate ads, and number two is that I'd hate to think I was helping the suppurating advertising pustules. One would think that (because of the widespread dislike of ads) they would have a hard time coming up with volunteers, but I guess not.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Seriously. If they want me to buy more, they should focus on making better quality products rather than focusing on trying to make the ads better.
/. readers) am not most people.
I don't care how awesome they make the parties look, or how much they pump up the fake breasts of their beer girls. I still won't buy Budwizer, because it is a low-quality product I don't need.
Likewise, I won't buy MAXIM hair coloring no matter WHAT they make the girls in the ad do to the guys in the ad.
Sadly, _I_ (or most
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
you know what's going on, right?
if i'm not mistaken, the that's that's parsed is as such:
y = 1 / (2 * pi);
since y is an int, and 1 / (2 * pi) is obviously less than 1, y = 0; try putting parens around the 1/2 and see what you get.
The other reason you might not know that is because it's not actually true. Firstly, giving plasma is a little different than giving blood. Secondly, the US isn't doing it - companies within the US are doing it. The only role the US is playing here is that it refrains from making it illegal.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The belief that one is not affected by advertising is one of the single most effective bits of mind control currently in play.
Society and culture have been largely defined by media and advertisers, perhaps unwittingly, though in some of the darker ways, I tend to think it is entirely intentional.
Example. .
The Shaving Razor. Razor blade companies were selling to Men who shaved the hair from their faces. They sold many razors and all was good. Until one day some bright spark realized, "You know. . . Our market share appears to be limited to exactly half the population. But if we could somehow get women to shave as well, then we might effectively double our income! Now how can we go about doing this. . ?"
It started with leg hair, and then over the years it progressed to hair under the arms. --When I was small, I remember that my mother and her friends had hairy under-arms and nobody batted an eyelid. It was normal. This, of course, is no longer the case. The psychology used was that of body hair being, "Dirty". This message was directed at both men and women.
The move was very, very effective, and it took less than 100 years to fully implement. (Shaving genital hair is now becoming normal.) The linking of sexual desirability to hairlessness was not an essential, natural & biological foregone conclusion. (Please forgive me for quoting Desmond "the Conceited Hack Blo-Hard" Morris), but in some cultures, female facial hair is actually a turn-on. While certain aspects of physicality are universally appealing; symmetry, healthy skin, etc., the desirability of how hairy one is, is very much a manipulable one, and the top ad people know this.
Partly through this progressive altering of culture and the resulting sales of thousands of stupid grooming products, certain generalities were discovered. .
It was learned that reinforcing negative self-image in the public was both easy to do and highly effective in turning people into good consumers. By association, it was learned that creating rifts between the sexes and between friends, by nurturing impossible 'ideals' which we all have been told to want in our friends and lovers, and by reinforcing our belief that Consumer Products will not fail us when our friends and loved ones do. . . our entire society, the way we think, the way we teach our kids, the way we address all kinds of critical issues, has been invisibly altered in enormous, fundamental ways.
They are now selling anti-depressants in women's magazines! --Prozac, among others, is now available in a variety of forms, even mixed with birth control pills. "Nobody wants a grouchy girl friend!"
Don't think Anti-depressants are so bad? (They're just pills, after all; everybody is taking them.) Well, where do you think that idea came from?
It's unacceptable for kids to 'misbehave', (act like kids). --That is, when you try to make kids sit in rows for hours on end, they naturally go loopy. And this is now also controlled with drugs, and considered normal! How? Why, you popularize 'diseases' like 'Attention Deficit Disorder'. Different kids are going to have shorter or longer attention spans, and some are going to be downright hard to deal with, and some may even have real psychological anomalies, but this represented a very small slice of the population only fifty years ago; why is it that today we are mass-drugging millions of kids? One out of every three people I know today has been on, or is currently addicted to anti-depressants!
Social programming, with the result of million dollar profits for the food and drug companies.
And this is just one of an endless number of examples.
--Another of my current favorite examples of an ad which people don't see the full darkness of is a recent IKEA commercial. --Perhaps you've seen it: "Mom, Dad, I'm pregnant." -To which the father explodes in a rage and accuses the mother of being a bad influence, "I'm not the one who smoked dope in college!" A fucked up, stressed out scene of family strife. Then an IKEA sales appears in the scene and in a warm manner asks the couple if they'll be taking the living room set, to which the couple warmly accept.
I've seen this style used in a number of places. It works like this:
The upsetting emotional scene acts as a psychological opener on the viewer, setting up a variety of conditions in the brain. When this state is at its height, the scene shifts abruptly to one with a warm and genial message, effectively solving and soothing the alarmed state in the viewer.
And this is not merely intellectual in nature. Brain chemistry changes and the way stimulus responses as recorded by evolving synaptic pathways are all understood in exacting detail by science.
The end result? --The brain associates IKEA with something which can instantly remove stress and alarmed states. Further, it plays on the, "You Can't Depend On People," lie with which we are hammered daily.
It extends far beyond advertising. Either by design or by default, it extends to popular programming. Shows like the aptly named, "Friends," displays both impossible standards as 'normal' as well as the 'appropriate' role model reactions we should have when those impossible standards are not met. Look at all television shows. These attitudes, the dispicable people on Seinfeld, were not normal, but they are becoming so! It's all part of the same game.
And I'm sorry, but 'Will Power' alone will not protect you from these sorts of psyche manipulations. --Though the ad industry likes to quietly promote that "Advertising doesn't really affect you," so as to ensure that people don't know that they need to put up their guard in certain ways. --And this in itself, the belief that "Ads don't affect me," is a perfect example of successful advertising.
The only defense is Knowledge. Knowledge Protects. If you know about this stuff, if you can see this stuff, then it becomes much, much, much easier to block it. To keep yourself off mind-numbing drugs, to keep yourself away from toxic foods, to keep yourself out of dangerous, draining work places and to treat your friends and loved ones with the enormous respect and care they deserve.
Don't be fooled. Don't be used. There is a full psy-war being waged out there every day against you and me, and while it is being driven by greed, its effects reach far, far beyond the simple question of whether or not you will buy Brand X beer or Brand N shoes.
Very simply, if you don't learn how the war is fought, you are lunch.
-Fantastic Lad
Personally, I'd consider prostitution before I'd led a marketing guy anywhere near my subconcious mind...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
they would find out that I will never buy a Ford because of that sheepfucker cowboy who fails to respect his own limitations and boundaries and refuses to compromise thinks (relatively speaking) highly of his pickup.
They also would conclude that the blonde woman from the Old Navy commercials is a bad mom.
They would also find negative reaction to any commercial featuring Donald Trump and Grimace plotting to take over the world in some high-rise boardroom with one dollar hamburgers.
They would take the hint and stop running these 3 commercials I don't like.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
If you shoot youself in the head so as to not succumb to our neuroads you are stealing!
Plasma is not the same as white blood cells. Plasma is what your white blood cells float in.
This of course 'loads' the statement emotionally, making it more appealing to agree to it rather than repudiate the intimate terms- if you disagree with the statement you are also risking being assigned to the 'mindless droid' camp, and not everybody has the subconscious security to be willing to contest the point.
That's how cults like Objectivists persuade people to their views, by drawing lines in the sand and inviting people to categorize the world as 'superior beings and mindless droids': if you accept the premise, it is very unlikely that you will assign yourself the status of 'mindless droid'. But by the same process, if you instinctively reject being classified mindless droid, it's loading the dice strongly in favor of siding with the person stating the premise, for emotional, subconscious reasons having to do with personal insecurity. This is neuromarketing old school style: rig the game so the person accepts your premise and then let them rationalize WHY, using terms you've supplied them.
But then you know all this, being such a not-mindless-droid, right? ;)
Scott Adams, the 'Dilbert' cartoonist, is a trained hypnotist. In his books he has stated in all seriousness that his experience as a hypnotist has given him a deep and wary distrust of ANYONE's 'free will'. Basically, your free will is a hoax- if you are hypnotized and made to get up and twirl and sit down again, and then as a posthypnotic suggestion you're 'triggered' and do this, you will make up all sorts of silly rationalization for why you 'wanted' to do that. If the action isn't totally silly, you may even be irate at any suggestion your will isn't totally free. And yet, what's happening is you're being prompted on a level BENEATH will, and explaining to yourself why you act the way you do.
This is perfectly common and normal and just the way the mind works. Get used to it- normally your pre-will impulses, like recoiling from a hot stove, are healthy and useful, or anyhow driven by harmless biases.
Seeing as you have already been prompted to defend a concept of 'the will above all' against any challenges, possibly because of the threat of being considered a 'mindless droid' if you DON'T claim your will overcomes all outside manipulation, I really can't expect that you have much resistance at all to such manipulation. It seems like you protest too much, and are willing to lump most of humanity into an 'inferior will' category just to defend your concept of will in the face of evidence that challenges it.
But that is no concern of mine :)
I'm sure I'm vulnerable to many forms of manipulation. It just happens that objectivist-cultist-us-superiors-against-all-those -retards rhetoric is not a form that works very well on me. Dunno why, it just isn't persuasive.
Cheers, and watch out for the mindless droids :)
And when I want to sell YOU something, I now know what approach to take. Except I've totally ruined it with this disrespectful little comment post. Oops :) well, someone ELSE can profit from presenting you with IdiotsAren'tSmartEnoughToBuyThis/YouLookSmart type of pitches :)
I don't watch TV or listen to the radio. I read books. I guess I'm lucky I'm not under arrest yet ;)
Hmm... I see your point about manufactured shame, but I don't think the ads did the manufacturing, given that 100 years ago the whole topic was considered one of the "womens mysteries" and the products that WERE available were a hell of a lot worse than what we have today (as your linked articles note, the tampon was not invented until the 30s).
Also, you make the mistake that a lot of people make with cigarettes. Yes, there have been health risks associated with women with dry or unusually constrictive vaginas, and yes, those women should avoid tampons, or at least the high absobancy ones. Yes too, to the fact that the companies who were producing these products failing to disclose that information.
Now ask yourself this. If those companies had relied 100% on word-of-mouth and never advertized, would they have disclosed any more than they did? No. This was not a case of advertizing hurting anyone, this was a case of companies hurting their customers totally independant of how they advertized the product, and the companies, not he phenomenon of advertizing should be held accountable.
Let us not provide such underhanded tactics with a straw man for them to use in their defense.
With patents being extended to being forever I'm going to guess that Oog the Cave Salesmen is going to sue for his patent.
Sales has been about trying to hyponotise people into buying your product.
Otherwise we'd just have "Windows: It works" "Linux: It works better. so say IBM" "Macintosh: It's easy and powerful" "Solarus: It's better than the rest" "Nintendo: Videogames"
I don't actually exist.
The harder you look for something, the more likely it is that you will find it, whether it exists or not.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey