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More on Neuroscience and Marketing
SLiK812 writes "The NYTimes is running a
story
about how marketing companies are using neuroscience to determine how to reach a consumer's buy button more efficiently. A quote from the article, 'At issue is whether marketers can exploit advances in brain science to make more effective commercials. Is there a "buy button" in the brain? Some corporations have teamed up with neuroscientists to find out. Recent experiments in so-called neuromarketing have explored reactions to movie trailers, choices about automobiles, the appeal of a pretty face and gut reactions to political campaign advertising, as well as the power of brand loyalty.' Some groups have branded this as Orwellian. I pretty sure I saw the child of this tactic in Futurama somewhere." There's a related story in the The Independent. We've had previous stories on using MRI scans to market products.
Now along with Radio guy(who advertises serious stuff) Radio Female( who pushes the sensitivity button) TV baby( who pushes the happy button) we have research into the buy button that allegedly will induce me to buy something before I even see it, sort of like the LotR Trilogy box platinum extended boxed set with gondor I ordered today.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st 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 bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
Folks, it's not Orwellian unless it is backed by a totalitarian state. Most of your fears would be better directed at a Huxleyan future.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
I don't think a brain analysis is an effective way to determine consumer behaviour.
Our behaviour is most likely shaped by the environment and condition we're experiencing.
Truth to be told, any sports car will trigger my buy-button, but can I afford to buy it?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
To make guys buy: Gorgeous women implying the purchase of a product makes said guy more attractive.
To make women buy: "Sale"
True.
For a given value of true.
"People buy from emotion and justify with logic" has been around since the turn of the last century among a certain segment of the marketing people.
The new bit I suppose is to try to pinpoint the triggers more exactly, to reduce those unpleasant random variables like human free will and choice and stuff. It's so much easier if "They" can just model you on a mainframe, debit your account, and ship you whatever it is you're supposed to buy from them next, I suppose. Not that this is what they think they're aiming for, but I doubt the net effect will be any different.
Quote:
You see, Vicary lied about the results of his experiment. When he was challenged to repeat the test by the president of the Psychological Corporation, Dr. Henry Link, Vicary's duplication of his original experiment produced no significant increase in popcorn or Coca-Cola sales. Eventually Vicary confessed that he had falsified the data from his first experiments, and some critics have since expressed doubts that he actually conducted his infamous Ft. Lee experiment at all.
This kind of thing has been around for a long time. The basis is a Behaviorist view of the world that says that given a certain stimulus, most of us (enough of us) will respond in a certain way. Marketing from that viewpoint becomes about pushing the right buttons, and finding better and better ways of pushing those buttons.
Your opinion on how good or evil this kind of thing is may come from how much you agree with that viewpoint. Can marketers refine their science to such a point where you have almost no choice but to buy what they tell you?
Depending on which side of the coin you fall on, this is all either smoke & mirrors, or cutting-edge research that will eventually rule the world.
In the end, you either have control over your urges, wants, and needs, or you don't. You either are in control of yourself or you're not. If you're not, then you've probably accrued all sorts of gadgets, toys, and things you don't really need. And doubtless you have/had sex with anyone that got you remotely excited. Actually, that doesn't sound so bad...
Really, though, we are either in control of our faculties or we are not. If we're not, then we're just animals with no will. If we are, then this is no more concerning then someone plucking your heart strings to sell insurance. I highly doubt there is some subversive way they can force us to buy against our will using some sort of deep-seated neurological button. A shopping spree isn't exactly a survival mechanism.
It surprises me that, what I would consider to be a more pertinent study, has not been done: how do people filter out advertisements? Everyone is focused on what sticks; however, it may be equally as valuable, if not more so, to determine what does not stick - what we don't even notice. Perhaps this has to do with the get quick attitude of our society. Finding what sticks goes towards the goal of making another "1984" commercial that catches everyone's imagination. However, finding what does not stick allows you to build a much more lasting brand. To do this kind of brand building you don't need to make an immediate impression, you just need to slowly infiltrate people's conciousness. I wonder why large corporations and these researchers don't look at this more often
I'm a beta, so I'm happy leaving these smart thoughts to you.
John
Put a metric shitload of money in my bank account they would find my buy button pretty quickly.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I wonder if I am the only one who feels he has been watching less ads in the last few years than ever before in my life. I now own a HD-based videorecorder that allows me to skip ads. What's more I feel my TV-consumption is at an alltime low due to crappy programming and the PC as a competitor. Although I find myself in need of a Robo-Cola from time to time. ;-)
Online I use Firefox with Adblock so I hardly read any ads on the web, ever.
I switched to Linux three years ago and my daily dose of desktop advertising (ICQ, Splashscreens, branded bootscreens) went down to zero.
While I am on the outside (beware) I am mostly reading books or listening to commercial-break-free MP3 music (during subway rides or on the bus) and when I am out at night I try to avoid "the hip joint (TM)" where all those guerilla-marketing groups show up. I prefer small, subculture clubs with decent pricing and good music (including hot AND smart girls).
So, I guess I am much less under the commercial thumb then I was back in 1995...
Nice to see that some of the mods don't bother reading the linked ads in the original message before downrating posts. My post was A) not off-topic and B) not trolling. Apparently irony is lost at times around here, but I'm not surprised.
To elaborate, there is nothing all that surprising about this for those of us who study politics, since modern politics is really about brand-marketing. Candidates are packaged and presented in ways designed to appeal to us on a gut level rather than with regard to their actual policy positions.
This is magnified by the role of political parties, since a candidates political party is in fact a brand. Over 60% of the electorate still consider themselves members of one of the two major parties. Most party members will vote for candidates of their party, regardless of what that candidate says or does. This holds even though most of those claiming party membership don't even know what the party stands for.
In political campaigns, the cognitive effects of this are readily apparent by listening to how people react to the different candidates. Those with stronger partisan identification will filter the 'news' in such a way that it more neatly fits their biases - ergo 'Coke tastes sweeter'.
Heh.
I used to drink Coke, until I thought, 'Hang on, what's this doing to my teeth?'
So I switched to Diet Coke. Until I thought, 'Hang on, if I want to drink a fizzy brown liquid that tastes like battery acid, I can buy own-brand cola from the supermarket for a quarter of the price.'
So I switched to that. Until I thought, 'Hang on! Why am I drinking stuff that tastes like battery acid at all?'
Wow, was the cola industry pissed!
(I also stopped eating at fast food joints about six months ago. Man, if another billion or so people do the same, those evil megacorps are *really* in trouble, huh?)
You must think in Russian.
One aspect of marketing/advertising/design is ergonomics and human factors, which helps advertisers structure their materials in the most logical fashion for the way people process information. Just look at any cover of Cosmopolitan and you'll see the end result of years of studies of the scanning people do when they see a document. Important elements seem to jump out at you without you even realizing it, and if you have time you can read the smaller text under each element to find out more. Cosmo, ironically, probably has one of the best-designed magazine covers. Color, layout, subject matter ("SEX" or related words are the lead/top priority item on every cover) and other design elements are used to great effect. The end result is that you look at the magazine, your eye traverses multiple times across the impossibly beautiful woman whose style (if you're a woman) you want to emulate and you then want to buy it, or you don't want to buy it because you don't really read Cosmo. This is why they sell them in checkout lines-- they're an impulse item for non-subscribers. Same thing with Maxim, Playboy, and other glossy magazines.
Compare a well-designed magazine cover like Cosmo with an ugly or poorly designed cover like TV Guide or Hot Rod magazine and you'll see who has the best understanding of human factors. Cosmo is pleasant to look at, "Guns" magazine really isn't, even if you are an enthusiast.
I for one welcome our new human factor-embracing overlords-- as long as they don't beam ads into my head.
Recent experiments have shown that subliminal messaging works, but the effect wears off after a second or so.
One experiment consisted of a subject sitting in front of a computer screen. The screen would blink briefly (about 1/100 of a second) and then show a list of words. The subject would then pick a word randomly. It turns out that if one of the words was displayed during the blink, the subject would almost always pick that one, but if no word was shown, if a word not in the list was shown, or if the delay between the blink and the list showing up is more than a second, word selection is random.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
You're right, people do have to be induced to this kind of behavior. Now if I wanted to do that, how would I go about it? I would start by transforming money into a non-objective substance I could create at whim. I would then spend 80 years convincing people that my arbitrary creation of fiat currency was the only thing stabilizing their economy. I'd further start shouting about waging a "war on poverty", and once I had convinced people they had a "duty" to help those "less fortunate" (i.e., less successful, less capable), I'd begin stealing from the successful to pay the unsuccessful. This would limit incentive to produce, i.e. profit motive, because people would learn two lessons:
1.) Even if you work to earn a living, your money will be stolen to give to those who cannot earn it, because they cannot earn it, and
2.) If you cannot or will not earn a living, the government will provide it for you, either by taking from those who do earn a living, or making up new money.
Most people don't understand, and don't bother to learn, the complex relation that exists between interest, inflation, central banking, fiat currency, government wealth redistribution, and all the other sure signs your economy has collapsed into unsustainable socialist democratic rule, which brings me to the other part of the scam.
I'd further convince people that, despite the present condition of their government being a direct affront to the constitution (for example, massive legislative and war-making powers vested in a near-supreme executive), the nation was intended to be, and therefore is, a direct democracy, and the will of the majority will circumvent the "inalienable" rights of all others (for example, property rights like the right to keep wealth you have created).
Once you have reached this point, you have created generations unfamiliar with the concepts of self-reliance (they get their income, in whole or in part, from the government) and personal responsibility (even if they don't agree with the welfare state, they perpetuate its existence with excuses like "Well, sure I'll take a welfare check. After all, my tax dollars paid for it, so I'm just getting mine back."), who believe they have a sanction to lay first claim to the property, rights, and lives of others by virtue of belonging to "The Majority". In this state, people naturally assume little if any responsibility for their financial condition, as they've rationalized away their oposition to socialism and have no desire for self-reliance, because they never saw any example of its benefits. So, without knowing their system is unsustainable, they willingly go into debt on the assumption their government will take care of them. How? SHHH!!! Don't ask questions like that, just assume it will work, or you might jinx the whole thing!
The truth is that if people are made to be dependant on a government, their personal responsibility collapses, and of course they will buy on a whim. The government will bail them out, they can keep borrowing, they can dig deeper in, and they really don't believe anyone will ever call in the debt. Well, we've been accumulating debt as a nation for well over a century, we're about to accumulate $15 trillion more from social insecurity when the boomers retire, and our international creditors are going to start getting nervous. Don't blame the marketers, they're just working with what we've been giving them, and what we're giving them is what most people have been screaming for as an ideal, and what we've been practicing on a national scale, whether they admit it or not.