BUYING WITH THE BRAIN: How marketers are using new brain science to bolster the appeal of their products
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Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Mindfield: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World by Lone Frank, to be released in the U.S. November 10.
Say the word: neuromarketing. Doesn’t exactly sound good, does it? It’s an outlandish word that scrapes across the tongue, leaving an aftertaste of thought control, science fiction, and downright creepiness. The press surrounding neuromarketing reflects this as well. The headlines are ominous: soon, the bright boys of the advertising world will get their sticky hands on our inner "buy button." Soon, marketing experts, with the help of cutting-edge brain research, will get direct access to the inner depths of our brains where, with the right stimulation, they can unleash our buying impulses and get their cash registers ringing.
Neuromarketing is a young and growing field–some won’t even admit that it is a field yet–that is striving to reveal the inner mechanisms of our consumer behavior. You might say that this interest and the issues it raises are a natural extension or offshoot of neuroeconomics and the more general studies of how we make choices and decisions. Every so often, there is also a conspicuous overlap between neuroeconomists and researchers in neuromarketing. The studies in neuromarketing are just more specific and much more directed. And the Holy Grail lies in predicting what the brain wants.
In the advertising industry, you can see neuromarketing as an attempt to make the "art" of advertising into a science. Any marketing expert proposing a multi-million dollar project to a client would like to be able to back it up with something that looks like real data, not just hunches. To answer this need, marketing has already drawn on psychology in developing tests and theories, and ad people have borrowed the idea of the focus group from social scientists. Brain research is the third wave. And neuromarketing has taken on a warm, fuzzy glow in the advertising world, where they convene meetings and conferences about its potential and, every so often, proclaim in their journals that it is the undeniable wave of the future. Such enthusiasm is harder to find in the scientific arena. Marketing is not a science, many say, pointing out that only a small handful of studies have been published in scientific journals.
Still, the whole thing started in academic circles, when in 2003 Clinton Kilts of Atlanta’s Emory University called in a team of volunteers for a series of experiments to throw light on the brain’s role in product preferences. How does activity in brain cells mirror things we are crazy about as opposed to things we absolutely hate or that just don’t speak to us? At that point, Kilts had nothing to do with marketing or advertising in general, but the fundamental question tickled his fancy.
The volunteers came in and, in the first round, were presented with an array of various consumer goods, which they were asked to rank by appeal. Simple answers on a numerical scale. In the next phase, they were taken through the MRI scanner as they were once again shown the same goods, while the apparatus registered the brain activity they aroused. When Kilts later analyzed the reactions of the research subjects, there was a common feature that leapt to his notice at once. Every time one of them–male or female–saw a product they really liked, blood rushed to a little area towards the front of the brain. The medial prefrontal cortex lit up like a beacon in the images.
This result lit a fire under Clinton Kilts, who knew he was onto something interesting. The medial prefrontal cortex is not just any old brain region–it is an area very much involved in our self-identification and the construction of our personality in general. This part of the frontal lobes is involved when we relate to ourselves and to who we are in some way. Kilts was quick to draw his conclusion. The scanning experiments, he believed, indicated that, if you are attracted by a product, it is because you identify with it. That the product fits into the picture you have of yourself.
This was quite exciting–in a nice academic way–but the debut experiment seemed to provide an obvious opportunity to do a new sort of study of the market. Kilts could see a future where researchers didn’t have to go out and ask people what they thought about a product anymore, or rely on their vague answers and poor self-insight. No, potential consumers could just be scanned and the answers could come straight from the brain.
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16 Comments
Add CommentHi, I am in real estate business, marketing has a great deal to do with the field. However, I think the article is very interesting as well as the experiment, I just think that scanning people should always be with their previous authorization. Otherwise It really sounds creepy and It would represent a privacy violation, I for example would not be okay thinking somebody is out there scanning my thoughts... Really sounds waco...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswatch The Century of the Self - Happiness Machines for a history lesson ---very scary
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswatch The Century of the Self - Happiness Machines on YouTube to see how it all began...very creepy....RDH047
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswatch The Century of the Self - Happiness Machines on YouTube to see how this all began....very creepy...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah thanks I will check that out...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe eighteen inches bewteen the heart and the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts been accepted for years that the emotional response we have is created by the "need to want" manipulating the mind to accept need is simple..........get someone you admire to endorse it.
The new phsycobabble ( nerdo want)concept of mind over matter is just an option...........simply put ,ice can be either a verb or a noun,it merely depends on your need.
lee du ploy (hong kong)
Perhaps it's a case of :"Right or wrong- it's MY Cola!"-i.e.the " product loyalty" syndrome setting in?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis 'kinship' behaviour seems to be deeply ingrained in our collective unconscious, because, in evolutionary terms, there is no doubt that visual appetizer signals evolved from our primeval food sources, e.g. fruits , roots, shoots, berries.
Small wonder then that brand names are traded like the holy grail of factoried foods, whether in solid or liquid form. Incidentally, the winning brown liquid mentioned ranks as the all-time number -one seller in any supermarket of our world, due to its addictive ingredients!
I am sorry, sunny strobe, but the -visual appetizer signals- would equally work if you were about to delve into this famous book, filled with anticipation, or when you contemplate watching the latest, well advertized, favorite movie; things that really have nothing to do with elementary evolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIF YOU READ THE ARTICLE THOROUGHLY THERE ISNT A MAGIC SCANNER OUT THERE TO SCAN YOUR THOUGHTS. AN MRI IS USED MEANING 9 TIMES OUT OF 10 THEY WERE IN A HOSPITAL SETTING. THE PERSON HAS TO BE AWOKE TO LOOK AT THE GOODS BEING PRESENTED. NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING NOT THE TECHNICIANS WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE CONSUMER.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo need to shout, gov'nah.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like that the research done here has basically painted consumerism as a biological phenomenon. So now we're genetically predisposed to be a bunch of materialistic whores? Tell me how anyone plans to demonstrate the existence of this behavior in cultures that existed around 3000 BC.
I would be very interested to know just who is funding this exploration and what motivations they could have. I have my suspicions but hey, sometimes the benefit of the doubt really is warranted.
Curiously, none of the related 'Brain' articles address one of the most important mental phenomena of our time: religiosity. And their sales pitch goes much deeper than the medial prefrontal cortex.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlle of you commenting here should do yourself the favor of reading the book - it's so much morethan this tiny bit of neuromarketing research. And the author does a great job of going into both the ethics and the broader cultural meaning of the neuroscience. This excerpt doesn't do the book justice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlle of you commenting here should do yourself the favor of reading the book - it's so much morethan this tiny bit of neuromarketing research. And the author does a great job of going into both the ethics and the broader cultural meaning of the neuroscience. This excerpt doesn't do the book justice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain - check out the book - the first chapter is all about religiosity seen through the lens of neuroscience but discussed with insight into sociology and psychology. And this is one of the most important discussions of our time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the inter-clan warfare Walter Scott wrote of, the totems and slogans served to identify one guy who looked like a haystack from another who looked the same. So seeing an oak-leaf, in time, would be a survival plus. Since similar mechanisms abound throughout the world, I would guess that brand identification is reflexive, for us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe old Scotch clan-wars used slogans and totems to differentiate between groups of hairy, burlap-wearing guys in combat. Everybody uses slogans, war cries (Old Glory, Allah Akbar, 18th Street) and totems, well, signals (The Union Jack, hand signs, logos) in areas of competition. So, could Brand Name Loyalty not be the legacy of those who were a little quicker to tell an oak-leaf from a cattail?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this