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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?"
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!
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.
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
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?
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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.
.. they found men were thinking mostly about sex and women about shoes.
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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"
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
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
Advertising is just a way to make something seem like it is worth more than it is. It sucks.
I grew up with a lot of respect for advertizing, and as an art, I still do respect it. However, I've learned that like all profitable art, the field is mostly clogged with hacks.
Advertising need not be aimed at making a product look better than it is. In fact, some advertising does just the oposite (remember the "time to make the donuts" commercials? they actually tried to make donuts look as un-glamarous as possible, it was about service and dedication to the customer).
There are several kinds of ad:
1. The promise of return on investment (you will make money, or you will get babes, or your hair will grow back, peer aproval, etc). Tangible rewards promised. These are sometimes true and accurate, but often spurious.
2. The promise of instant gratification (mmm.... look at the tasty burger... do you really want to WAIT for someone to cook a non-fast-food burger?) These are often quite accurate, but far more manipulative than any other form of advertizing. It's also easy to combine this with the previous catagory.
3. The promise of quality. It's been said that you can sell a man his own shit as long as you tell him he's buying the highest quality shit. The best of this sort of ad, IMHO, was the razor ads where the guy talked about how the razor was so good he bought the company. Testimonials are one way you promise quality. Comparisons and tests are another (take the Pepsi Challenge, which was one of the most strikingly honest campaigns I've ever seen... people really did like the taste of Pepsi better when sampled fairly).
There are others, but that's most of them in a nutshell. Now, here's a little trick you can do. Watch the ads. PAY ATTENTION. Think to yourself, "why are you using this particular tactic?" For example, if you're promising me babes, why AREN'T you promising me quality? What other competing products CAN offer quality?
If you promise me quality, have you honestly compared yourself to the competition? Do you have to resort to tricks like "leading brand" (one of my favorites. you compare yourself to "leading brand" by picking your competition's bargain product that you and they both know is crap, while ignoring their "premium product"). If so, why? Is there a competitor that's actually higher quality?
These tricks force your perspective out of the hole that the commercial tries to channel you into. Once you do that, you can start to actually benefit from commercials!
The next trick is harder, and involves some actuall hard questions. You need to start asking yourself: "do I even want this class of product in the first place?"
I have no problem with ads for tampons, pads, etc. because I think most women will agree they are a good and necessary product. Imrpovements in that product are often a good thing and improve quality of life for many women. Since it's a stable market, the products actually do have to compete on improvements to the product, so everyone wins.
On the other hand, extruded cheese snack #147 is *not* something that you need in your life. The ad is still successful even if you end up buying the competition because it has convinced you that you need to to buy extruded cheese snacks at all, ever. The ad has essentially created a new market space, and just as Linux vendors don't much care which Linux you go with as long as you stop running Windows (it all serves to expand and validate the Linux market) the cheese snack vendors just want you to avoid asking "why do I need a cheese snack?"