Not long after his breakthrough, Clinton Kilts helped to found a new division for the American marketing consultancy BrightHouse, their Neurostrategies Group. Their focus was not intended to be ordinary market studies of the type that are supposed to tell producers how to put together a commercial for strawberry jam or sports cars to hit a target market. It was claimed in their launch statements that all the studies done would be of a general character–designed to increase our understanding of how consumers think and, in particular, how they develop a relationship to companies and brands.
The discussion quickly came to turn on the concept of branding. The fact that something–be it a product, an institution or a concept, for that matter–is not just immediately recognizable but has a narrative of its own. The product is not just a physical thing but comes with a whole mental universe that penetrates the consumer. Think of Gucci, iPod, Mercedes, and take note of the images the words bring to mind. Branding has been a hot topic for a long time in the advertising world, and it is one with phenomenal force. Most of us know that branding palpably influences our choices and shopping habits, but researchers suspect that branding can also fundamentally change the way we comprehend sense impressions.
At least that is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the only (so far) classic study in neuromarketing, a fascinating study of what can be called the Pepsi paradox. For decades, it has been known that Pepsi is the preferred cola in blind taste tests, but it is still Coca-Cola that continues to be the absolute bestseller in the U.S. and the rest of the world. However, since 2004, we have been able to see the short-circuit going on in the head of the cola-drinking masses.
The originator of the experiment was Read Montague of Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, who must be credited with breaking through to the broader public with the experiment, which was essentially a cola-tasting while being subjected to MRI. Just under seventy volunteers were first asked to taste the competing products in a blind tasting and, just as so often before, Pepsi was the big winner. Pepsi also set off greater activity in the so-called ventral putamen than Coca-Cola. The putamen is an area cradled deep in the brain in the striatum, which is, among other things, a component in the reward system. So, the interpretation was straightforward–the activity meant "this feels good."
In the next series of experiments the subjects tasted colas with visible labels. When the research subjects knew which brown liquid was which, almost all of them suddenly preferred Coca-Cola. They were convinced that the taste of Coca-Cola was far superior to Pepsi. This shift in attitude followed an important change in the brain–this time, the medial prefrontal cortex went into action. The cerebral cortex intervened with its higher cognitive processes and triumphed over the immediate feeling of reward that was evoked by the taste impression. The product that actually tasted worse and provided a poorer physiological reward was viewed as better when the whole identification apparatus and the idea "this is so me" went into action.
The cola experiment, which came out in the journal Neuron, might be said to show that branding is mind over matter. And, of course, this got marketing people to think in a new way. Now they could hope that the methodology of brain research would help to explain how people build up the much sought-after positive branding story. The dream is that researchers with their scanners will discover what has to be done to get the right elements into play to achieve a tenable branding. Storytelling aimed right at the medial prefrontal cortex.
Excerpted from Mindfield: How Brain Science is Changing Our World by Lone Frank. Copyright © 2009 by the author and reprinted by permission of Oneworld, previously published in Danish as Den Femte Revolution by Gyldendal in 2007, English translation by Russell Dees
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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?
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