As you can see in this short video clip. The areas of the brain that are activated during the commercial.

And another, weird commercial.

No comments on this one. “You dream of punching small animals?”

And Coke off course…

Neuromarketing is an instrument that is used to help us understand what consumers are “already thinking” about products and brands. So Neuromarketing is not about invoking feelings, emotions or opinions into consumers minds, as some said.

Neuromarketing is good. I mean think about, the more we know about our subconscious needs and desires, the more useful and meaningful products will be made. Don’t we want to love the products we buy? Don’t we get frustrated when we don’t find something we like or love, when we are out “shopping”? PS: I never go out shopping =)

Imagine products that earn more money and satisfy consumers at the same time. Until today, the only way companies have been able to understand what consumers want has been by observing or asking them directly. This is not good! Because most of the time, the conscious mind doesn’t know what we really love.

In the future, everything will be called “targeted products” or “orchestrated products” that will fit our needs and wants, and no one else. People are different, we function in different ways, we don’t like the same stuff, so why do one product for millions of people? Isn’t that stupid?

So the future is all about a complete understanding of the thought, feelings, needs, motivations and desires of all the consumers in the world. That is when we can really produce some really cool stuff!

So as a “neurobrander” I could tell you: “Do you know what you want for Christmas? You might say, no? But I know =)”

I’m very pleased to share with you one of the most comprehensible papers on Neuromarketing by Dr. Nick Lee, who is a Professor of Marketing and Organizational Research and the Editor of the European Journal of Marketing.

The paper was published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology in 2007. Since I don’t have “researcher rights” to the article, Dr. Nick Lee was very kind to send it to me personally. I’m very happy that he did share this paper with me.

I will try to shed some light on the important stuff from this wonderful paper by Dr. Nick Lee, Amanda J. Broderick and Laura Chamberlain.

The advantages of psychological measurements for marketing was mention two decades ago by Weinstein et. al. back in 1984. But it wasn’t until 2002 that the term “neuromarketing” was coined by Ale Smidts.

The Editor of Science, Donald Kennedy, said that “brain imaging will be used in ways that infringe personal privacy to a totally unacceptable degree”. And this is basically what the introduction tries to “solve”. They say that, it should be a clear distinction between the academic field of marketing research and commercial marketing, and that there should be some form of collaboration between the field of marketing an neuroscience in the future. This suggestion has been “fuzzy” for researches of both marketing and neuroscience.

Marketers feel that the instruments needed to study neuromarketing and/or neuroeconomics are absent from their “office”. There are not many researches of marketing that have access to PET, MEG, fMRI, EEG or GSR instrument, to be able to study how the brain reacts to different products and stimuli. Therefore there is this suggestion of a future collaboration between the two domains of academia, neuroscience and marketing. Marketers want to find the “buy button”, just as psychologist want tot find the “love button”.

The literature of neuroscience questions the ethics of neuromarketing and asks why we should use expensive medical instruments, such as an MRI, to make people buy more stuff, as if they are not already doing that? But from an academic point of view, marketing researches are not trying to make “the best product”. They want to understand the subconscious mind of consumers, and thus be able to augment their understanding of “why people buy”.

Just as neuroeconomics defines itself as “the application of neuroscientific methods to analyze and understand economically relevant behaviour”, neuromarketing define itself as “a field of study can simply be defined as the application of neuroscientific methods to analyze and understand human behavior in relation to markets and marketing exchanges”. From an academic perspective, there is much into marketing then such “consumer behavior”.

Today there are three companies in the US (NeuroFocus, BrightHouse and Buyology Inc.) and one in the UK (Neurosense) that actually do use fMRI, EEG and GSR for commercial purposes. But these companies has nothing to do with the academic research of neuromarketing since most of the data are confidential.

It’s very important to notice that the results that come from fMRI and EEG are very different. I will try to explain this in a later post.

What exact moments in a TV commercial are responsible for “brand awareness” and augmented “attention”, has been studied by Young (2002), using simple EEG measurements. The importance of “memory” and “information processing”, and augmented activity in the left frontal cortices, has also been studied using EEG, by Rossiter et. al. (2004).

Choice-making is based on “presumed reward”, by the consumers unconscious mind. Erk et. al (2002) found that objects of high social-value, such as sport cars, resulted in higher reward center activity (orbitofrontal cortices, anterior congulate regions, occipital cortices), than small cars. McClure et. al. (2004) found that there was a higher preference for Coke over Pepsi, and that there was a recruitment of emotion and affect-related areas of the brain (hippocampus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex). But when the testers where blind folded, no such activity was found. This is the implications of a strong brand like Coke-Cola.

The final part of this paper gives suggestions for further research on neuromarketing. The key areas to investigate are trust, pricing, negotiation, and ethics.

Persona in Japan are gaining followers in the corporate world as the value of the technique becomes known.

Japan Persona -- Basic Approach

Image from http://www.personadesign.net/en/index.html

Why did I re-brand persona to Neuropersona? 

I have observed over the past 12 years that the persona approach has been used by companies who find that the old market segment approach does not help them serve customers or compete in the marketplace.  While the behaviour focus of persona tools is very good, it is possible to quickly add more value to the approach.

I wanted to talk about a subject that I just started reading about this week – “neuromarketing.”  Apparently, this term was coined in 2002, so I guess I’m a little behind the times.  According to Wikipedia, the definition of “neuromarketing” is “a new field of marketing that studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli.”

(before I continue with this subject, can I remark on HOW SCIENCE FICTION-Y THAT SOUNDS!!!! )

Anyway, the concept is quite simple:  you don’t always answer truthfully (for a variety of reasons) when you are asked if you like something, so neuromarketing focuses on your brain’s response instead of to your verbal response.  Having worked at Arbitron for years, where we published radio ratings, I’m familiar with the concept of people not answering truthfully to their real preferences.  For example, in markets where they measure listenership with a paper diary system, there are women sometimes who are embarrased to say they listen to “Howard Stern”; yet, in those same markets, when Arbitron rolled out their Personal People Meter (a passive device that detects the radio station a carrier is listening to), the numbers might show a much higher listenership of women than the diaries did.   Then, there’s the issue of recall:  if you don’t write down right away what you listened to, as time goes on, your “recall” of what you listened to becomes less and less accurate.  Finally, there are some typical biases each of us have, because of our sex, race, religion, hair color, etc. that can cause us to provide “biased” answers (however inadvertent).

As cool as this sounds from a marketing perspective, there are detractors of this new field who say that this can lead to tremendous corporate manipulation of their brands, or even for more effective propaganda for a government.

PBS recently published a nice article on neuromarketing, so you might want to check it out here to get more details on this intriguing new field.

A very interesting paper on “human behavior” by the Department of Psychiatry, Laboratory for Neuroimaging and Neurophysiology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt.

In neuroeconomics, reward and social interaction are central concepts to understand what motivates human behaviour. Both concepts are investigated in humans using neuroimaging methods. In this paper, we provide an overview about these results and discuss their relevance for economic behavior. For reward it has been shown that a system exists in humans that is involved in predicting rewards and thus guides behavior, involving a circuit including the striatum, the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala. Recent studies on social interaction revealed a mentalizing system representing the mental states of others. A central part of this system is the medial prefrontal cortex, in particular the anterior paracingulate cortex. The reward as well as the mentalizing system is engaged in economic decision-making. We will discuss implications of this study for neuromarketing as well as general implications of these results that may help to provide deeper insights into the motivating forces of human behavior.

A study on Neuromarketing made at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Rome La Sapienza.

In conclusion, they studied the different expression pattern in the Brodmann areas (BAs) in response to “remembered TV commercials” and “non-remembered TV commercials”. They did find a difference, a finding that is very important to any company doing TV commercials.

Abstract

We investigated brain activity during the observation of TV commercials by tracking the cortical activity and the functional connectivity changes in normal subjects. The aim was to elucidate if the TV commercials that were remembered by the subjects several days after their first observation elicited particular brain activity and connectivity compared with those generated during the observation of TV commercials that were quickly forgotten. High-resolution electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were performed in a group of healthy subjects and the cortical activity during the observation of TV commercials was evaluated in several regions of interest coincident with the Brodmann areas (BAs). The patterns of cortical connectivity were obtained in the four principal frequency bands, Theta (3-7 Hz), Alpha (8-12 Hz), Beta (13-30 Hz), Gamma (30-40 Hz) and the directed influences between any given pair of the estimated cortical signals were evaluated by use of a multivariate spectral technique known as partial directed coherence. The topology of the cortical networks has been identified with tools derived from graph theory. Results suggest that the cortical activity and connectivity elicited by the viewing of the TV commercials that were remembered by the experimental subjects are markedly different from the brain activity elicited during the observation of the TV commercials that were forgotten. In particular, during the observation of the TV commercials that were remembered, the amount of cortical spectral activity from the frontal areas (BA 8 and 9) and from the parietal areas (BA 5, 7, and 40) is higher compared with the activity elicited by the observation of TV commercials that were forgotten. In addition, network analysis suggests a clear role of the parietal areas as a target of the incoming flow of information from all the other parts of the cortex during the observation of TV commercials that have been remembered. The techniques presented here shed new light on all the cortical networks and their behavior during the memorization of TV commercials. Such techniques could also be relevant in neuroeconomics and neuromarketing for the investigation of the neural substrates subserving other decision-making and recognition tasks.

One of the main contribution to neuromarketing is a paper published by McClure et al in the prestigious journal Neuron (McClure et al. Neuron 2004). The purpose of the experiment was to understand the cognitive processes behind the choice between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. More than sixty volunteers underwent both behavioral testing and event-related fMRI sessions. In one group, the tasting sessions were totally blind: 2 doses of soda were presented anonymously and the subject had to tell which one tasted the best. In the second group, one of the two doses was explicitly designated as Coca-Cola, the second one was anonymous but was actually also Coca-Cola. The situation of the third group was identical to group 2 but with Pepsi in place of Coca-Cola. The results are surprising: while Pepsi’s and Coca-Cola’s success was similar in blind tests, a strong bias toward Coca-Cola was found in brand-cued tests. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation was correlated with soda preference in blind tests. This area is known to be implicated in signaling basic appetitive aspects of reward. In brand-cued tests, the strong bias towards Coca-Cola was associated with activations in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. These results could indicate that consumers are more influenced by their memory of the trademark than they are by the taste of the product.

If 95% of our thoughts occur in the unconsciousness, why bother with customer surveys? Neuromarketing tells us to look inside the human mind, to really find out what people like, dislike, like more or less. So what if we know what “triggers” our mind, we can only make studies on the products we have, or run some trial and error experiments? What works, what doesn’t? Then try to answer the question “why”? And based on that, never do that “mistake” again. I don’t know?

But we still have to make that product our selves. The success lies in Creative Intelligence and not in the science of marketing itself. Functional and intelligent creativity is the only way to an emotionally  strong brand.

I do have an idea for the future, that I’m not going to share on this blog (not yet…), because of it’s profound economic value. You might know what I’m talking about, if you have read this post carefully.

Where does creativity come from? Can anyone be really creative, with creativeness that lead to a profound success in business? Or is it a skill, you are either born with it, or not. I mean, can anyone be a Da Vinci, Dali or Mozart? I don’t think so, and maybe neither do you?

So do we have to find these really creative men and women to get our business to the top? How can we find them? Should we find them, or should we let them find us? Do we really need them? What would we do without them? Stick to process management and accounting?

What is the next big thing in your business? If you don’t know, then probably you will not do so well in the years to come.

Overseen by Dr. Mario Beauregard and Dr. Vincent Paquette, two neuroscientists at the University of Maryland, Canada, the “nun-study” wasn’t carried out to further any religious agenda. It was simply to use neuroimaging to find out more about how the brain experiences religious feelings or beliefs. The two doctors where trying to uncover the answer to a complex question: what parts of our brain light up when we’re engaging in private, spiritual experiences, such as prayer, or when we’re experiencing the sensation that we’re close to God. When the nuns talked about their religious experiences a flurry of neural activity in their caudate nucleus, a small, central brain region that produces feelings of joy, serenity, self-awareness, and even love. Another activated area was the insula, which the scientist theorized relates to feelings associated with connections to the divine.

The sense of belonging is a profound influence on our behavior. Sensory appeal is another characteristics of the world’s great religions. Close your eyes and walk into a church, a temple or a mosque. You’re immediately enveloped in the ambiance of the building and you know where you are. Products and brands evoke certain feelings and associations based on how they look, feel and smell. Another integral part of religion is storytelling. All strong brands have their story outlined in a very compelling way. Most religions celebrate a sense of grandeur. Have you payed a visit to the Vatican or Mecca? Have you been in the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas or Hotel Burj Al Arab in Dubai? Ever visited flagship stores of Louis Vuitton, Prada and Apple? You get the point. So what about evangelism? Isn’t Luxury Branding about “making them feel honored to be members of its fold”? Have you thought about Symbolism in religion? How powerful do you think the apple of Apple Computers is to it’s “followers”? Did I mention mystery? Ho powerful isn’t mystery in the world of religions and strong brands? When the unknown become more powerful than the known. Coca-Cola with it’s secret formula and Unilever with it’s so called “X9 Factor”, that never really existed. What is a Sony Trinitron? People don’t know but they love it! Or what about the “scientific” formulas of the global cosmetic industry that match with the wearer’s DNA? Do people really believe in that? They do because to most people DNA is a mystery!

To conclude. The most successful products are the ones that have the most in common with religion. Martin Lindstrom  and Dr. Calvert discovered, through fMRI, that when people viewed images associated with strong brands (iPod, Harley-Davidson, Ferrari, etc), their brains registered the exact same patterns of activity as they did when they viewed religious images.

I know some other “tactics” that will raise these strong religious-like emotions when a consumer views a product. Think about gatherings, unification and love. We haven’t talked about chanting and Brand Music yet. Understanding the power of Sound is vital when building very strong brands! The is even a Swedish company called Music in Brand (www.musicinbrands.se) that specializes in Brand Music.

HAHA! Olá mais uma vez!!

Meu último tópico gerou algumas boas discussões, e, por isso, resolvi pesquisar um pouco antes de escrever esse novo post, que por sinal é uma viagem no mundo da neurociência!

Portanto, amigos, aí vão indicações para ler esse post: a) Abra sua cabeça (tente uma meditação ou algo do tipo antes de ler); b) Leia tudo antes de criticar (lembre do tópico “a”); c) Não escreva que não tem nada haver com marketing; d) Não escreva que é uma viagem (porque eu já sei disso! haha).

Como eu havia escrito acima, o meu último tópico sobre Neuromarketing gerou alguns bons comentários e até críticas. E isso é bom demais! Quer dizer que estão lendo o que eu estou escrevendo! Todos esses feedbacks me incitaram em pesquisar um pouco mais sobre as técnicas utilizadas pelo Neuromarketing, e foi assim que achei um artigo escrito pelo jornalista científico David Dobbs, e publicado na revista Mente&Cérebro, o qual será utilizado aqui.

Desde que começou a ser utilizado a cerca de uma década atrás, o Imageamento por Ressonância Magnética Funcional ou (fMRI – sigla em inglês) vêm causando certo tumulto no mundo científico e até mesmo fora dele. Utilizando-se de uma precisão (espacial e temporal) bem maior do que os outros métodos, a fMRI despertou grande excitação por possibilitar a observação do cérebro em funcionamento. Isso levou a uma série dos mais diversos estudos, seja com esquizofrênicos, altruístas, até o estudo do cérebro de consumidores que compram Coca-Cola, mesmo preferindo o gosto da Pepsi. Os psicólogos que são a favor do método elogiam a fMRI por tornar a psicologia algo mais quantificável, assim como os neurocientistas cognitivos defendem esse tipo de imagem como uma vasta e recente expansão na compreensão do cérebro.

Mas nem todos são a favor do método, aqueles que argumentam contra, seja no campo técnico ou filosófico, citam o fato da precisão da fMRI – uma vez que mede a atividade neuronal, indiretamente, ao detectar aumentos no fluxo sanquíneo asociados à atividade – quanto à legitimidade de relacionar complexas funções mentais com determinadas regiões do cérebro.

Para explicar melhor essa história eu preferi, entretanto, dividir o artigo em 3 partes (História, Os prós,e Os contrários) para facilitar a organização do post.

HISTÓRIA

O imageamento cerebral teve início com um método do começo do século XX chamado pneumoencefalografia. Era um procedimento perigoso em que o flúido cérebro-espinhal era substituído por ar afim de mostrar o cérebro mais claramente nos raios X. Nos anos 20, foi desenvolvida a chamada angiografia, produzindo melhores resultados ao capturar imagens de contrastes injetados na corrente sanguínea. Mas apesar das melhorias, ambas as técnicas ainda eram restritas a mostrar apenas a estrutura estética em vez da função.

Nos anos 70, por sua vez, foi desenvolvida a Tomografia Axial Computadorizada, ou TAC, a qual explorou as tecnologias de raio X, tirando fotos com muito mais detalhes, mesmo que ainda estáticas. Foi também nessa década que surgiram os primeiros scans, responsáveis pelo imageamento funcional, mostrando, além da estrutura cerebral, seu funcionamento. Já o PET scan (singla em inglês para Tomografia por Emissão de Pósitrons), é um tipo de scan que mede o aumento no fluxo sanguíneo associado à atividade neuronal, dando uma idéia de quais neurônios podem estar procesando informação.

Apesar de serem fascinantes, alguns inconvenientes podem ser numerados com relação aos scans. Isso porque os pacientes submetidos ao método ficam receiosos e até preocupados com a ingestão de material radioativo, sem falar que o processo em um scan requer quase que uma hora, as imagens possuem uma resolução temporal relativamente ampla de 60 segundos (ou seja, é preciso esperar 60 segundos para medir o fluxo para uma área) e a resolução espacial é de 6 a 9 mm.

A fMRI surgiu então na década de 90, como uma evolução mais precisa dos scans antigos, mas dividindo opiniões técnicas e filosóficas. Em um procedimento normal desse método, a pessoa, primeiramente é mapeada em repouso com os olhos fechados, de forma a oferecer uma leitura basal. Após o primeiro momento, a pessoa é mapeada novamente enquanto executa algumas tarefas mentais, seja usar o computado, olhar diferentes produtos, propagandas etc. Na técnica mais comum, o aparelho mede o aumento do fluxo sanguíneo ao verificar uma mudança no magnetismo ocorrida quando um volume de sangue aumenta na proporção de hemoglobina fresca e oxigenada em comparação com a desoxigenada, que tem carga diferente. As regiões emissoras de ondas aparecem com cores mais claras nas imagens, com o vermelho mudando para amarelo quando o fluxo aumenta. (video)

OS PRÓS

- Escaneamento de uma corte transversal cerebral em menos de 2 segundos, permitindo mapear a maior parte do cérebro em um ou dois minutos;

- Resoluções espaciais muito mais precisas de 2 a 3mm, conseguindo coletar informações em voxels (união volume com pixel) de aproximadamente o o tamanho de um grão de arroz;

- Não requer a utilização de contraste possibilitando um mapeamento mais extenso, e acaba com o receio de ingestão de materiais radioativos.

OS CONTRÁRIOS

- Alguns estudiosos da área dizem que o aumento detectado no fluxo sanguíneo pode estar alimentando mais de uma operação, devido ao fato da ação neuronal levar milionésimos de segundos, enquanto o afluxo de sangue continua por dois a seis segundos;

-  Um vez que cada voxel encerra milhares de neurônios, pode ser necessária a ativação de milhares ou mesmo milhões deles para acender uma região cerebral, é como se uma seção inteira de um estádio tivesse de gritar para ser ouvida;

- Em alguns casos um pequeno grupo de neurônios puxando pouco sangue, ou um circuito fino de neurônios conectado a regiões mais amplas, podem executar funções tão cruciais quanto um grupo maior, mas tanto passarem desapercebidos quanto serem identificados como uma função de menor importância;

- É possível que alguns neurônios funcionem melhor do que outros, e assim consumindo menos sangue, o que pode representar erroneamente a neurodinâmica real.

O FUTURO

É preciso reconhecer que o cérebro funciona como uma orquestra, e que, apesar de um grande passo em busca da evolução e pesquisa cerebral, a fMRI ainda não consegue captar cada “instrumento” da “orquestra cerebral” separadamente. Mas isso não significa que a fMRI não deva ser utilizada, pelo contrário, ela deve sim ser utilizada, entretanto, é necessário a experiência e uma leitura cuidadosa e detalhada para não envolver erros no entendimento do mapeamento. Algo similar às marcas de pneu no chão de um acidente, em que é necessário um perito experiente e que recolha também outros dados para poder assim tomar uma conclusão do que aconteceu.

Espero que vocês tenham gostado!

Abraço e até a próxima!

Felipe “Cliff” Almeida

Neverend Experiencial Comunication

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Título: Brain Scanning
Subtítulo: o neuromarketing chegando a seu extremo
Livro: Buy-ology: Truth and Lies About Why we Buy (Martin Lindstrom) – Ed. Doubleday, 2008 – NY, USA

Ricardo Pastore

Neuromarketing é um campo novo do marketing que estuda a essência do comportamento do consumidor.

É a união do marketing com a ciência e considerado uma chave para o entendimento da lógica de consumo, que visa entender os desejos, impulsos e motivações das pessoas. Pesquisadores utilizam tecnologias de Imagem por Ressonância Magnética funcional para medir a quantidade de sangue oxigenado no cérebro visando identificar com precisão as variações das suas actividades. Portanto quanto mais uma determinada região do cérebro estiver a trabalhar, maior será o consumo de combustível (principalmente oxigénio e glicose) e fluxo de sangue oxigenado para aquela região.

O neuromarketing já conquistou uma legião de fãs, e não só. A ideia de entrar no interior do cérebro humano levou vários grupos de consumidores a manifestarem o seu desagrado, em nome da ética, contra uma técnica que acreditam ter o poder de manipular o consumidor.

Foi nos Estados Unidos que o neuromarketing deu primeiro que falar. As experiências pioneiras serviram para fornecer novos argumentos a um duelo clássico, alimentado há anos: a guerra entre a Coca-Cola e a Pepsi. Mais ainda, revelaram o poder que uma marca pode ter, conseguido através de campanhas de marketing.

Tudo começou com a publicidade feita pela Pepsi nos anos 70 e 80. Os anúncios eram simples: convidados a escolher qual a bebida com melhor sabor entre várias colas sem identificação da marca, os participantes acabavam sempre por optar pela mesma: a Pepsi.

No entanto, era a Coca-Cola que liderava o mercado. A dúvida perseguiu Read Montague, cientista da Universidade de Bayler, no Texas, até ao Verão de 2003, quando decidiu fazer uma experiência capaz de desvendar o mistério.

Para isso, reuniu um grupo de 67 voluntários e fez o teste das colas, dando a provar amostras de Coca-Cola e Pepsi, sem identificação de uma nem de outra.

Quando confrontados com a pergunta sobre qual tinha melhor sabor, a resposta foi pronta e apontados os copos que continham Pepsi. No entanto, tudo mudou a partir do momento em que lhes foram mostrados os rótulos. Nessa altura, a Coca-Cola liderou as preferências.

Com recurso a um aparelho de ressonância magnética, que ilustra o fluxo de sangue para as diferentes zonas do cérebro, Montague assistiu, em tempo real, ao que se passava no cérebro dos voluntários. Verificou que, quando não sabiam o que estavam a beber, eram despertadas na mente zonas associadas ao prazer, enquanto que, conhecidos os rótulos, eram funções racionais que determinavam a preferência.

A conclusão, publicada na revista Neuron, em Outubro de 2004, foi de encontro ao que defendiam, há muito, os profissionais do marketing: as campanhas da Coca-Cola tinham conseguido afectar as preferências dos voluntários de uma forma que nem eles próprios, conscientemente, conheciam.

Aqui, a marca teve mais impacto do que o próprio sabor.

O neuromarketing vai dizer às empresas como o consumidor reage, em relação à cor da embalagem, ao som da caixa quando agitada, ao cheiro de determinados produtos entre tantas outras questões.

Embora alguns consumidores não vejam esta técnica com bons olhos, a verdade é que se trata de uma técnica que nos mostra resultados muito interessantes e que pode ajudar as empresas a moldar melhor os seus produtos às necessidades dos consumidores!

How the Brain Reveals Why We Buy … Advances in neuroscience are changing the way some companies position their products, giving birth to the new field of neuromarketing
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.

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

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE . . . It is quite disturbing to contemplate that Madison Ave Advertising “gurus” have chosen to delve into this mind control mechanism which appears to operate in each of us. It is quite another thing to contemplate that … “government” … any form of government … is also engaged in this same research.

The salient message is … “we” … that’s you and me … have at all times absolute control over what we allow to reach our minds as “we” are required to give sanction to all information “we” take in. Yea, I know, you don’t want to believe it as it requires you and me to admit to ourselves that we are at all times accountable and responsible and that’s not something we want.

Being made aware that this type of testing is taking place is to be forewarned and therefore forearmed.

… I invite “us” to consider not to shame, blame or criticize but rather simply ask … what would it look like when it’s fixed … and own that ONLY we have the power to bring about the change needed to fix it …

Olá!

Podem ter certeza, que esse é talvez um dos temas mais discutidos ultimamente em relação às novidades mercadológicas, seja por causa da revolução no pensamento de mercado, seja por causa dos benefícios que pode trazer em relação à eficiência e eficácia nas campanhas de marketing, ou seja devido às questões éticas que circundam o assunto. Mas uma coisa é válida, Neuromarketing é um ótimo tema de discussão e estudo para todos aqueles que estão buscando novidades na área mercadológica.

Mas, o que seria o Neuromarketing?

Segundo Roger Dooley, (www.neurosciencemarketing.com) consultor norte-americano e presidente da Dooley Direct LLC., o conceito de neuromarketing se dá como:

“A aplicação da neurociência no marketing. Neuromarketing inclui o uso direto de scaneamento e imageamento cerebral, assim como de outras tecnologias de mensuramento da atividade cerebral que atuem na identificação da resposta cerebral a certos produtos, embalagens, propagandas ou outros elementos de marketing. Em alguns casos, a resposta cerebral medida por essas técnicas podem não ser conscientemente percebidas pelo indivíduo, por isso, esse dado pode ser mais revelador do relatórios em pesquisas, focus groups e outros.

De uma forma mais geral, neuromarketing também inclui o uso de pesquisas neurocientíficas no marketing. Como, por exemplo, o uso de fMRI ou outras técnicas, pesquisadores podem achar que um estímulo específico pode causar uma resposta consistente no cérebro de indivíduos em teste, e que essa resposta está relacionada a um comportamento desejado (como tentar algo novo, por exemplo). Uma campanha de marketing que incorpora específicamente esses estímulos esperando criar um certo comportamento, pode se dizer estar utilzando o neuromarketing, mesmo que nenhum teste fisico tenha sido realizado para a criação da campanha.”

Legal. Mas e aí? Como funciona na prática?

CASO PRÁTICO (link original)

instruções

Vou deixar vocês com um exemplo prático bem legal. As instruções são fáceis, só olhem para as duas propagandas, (observe os mensageiros) e pensem qual delas vocês mais gostaram? Se fossem marcas diferentes, qual empresa você escolheria? Depois veja os resultados abaixo.

Agora observe o mensagerio da propaganda 2

Antes de ver os resultados do level de confiança, olhe bem as duas imagens e tenha certeza da sua opinião.

Resultados

Propaganda 1

Propaganda 2

Análise

É seguro dizer que você confiou mais no menssageiro 1? A pergunta, na verdade, seria por que?

Todos nós que algumas características faciais podem nos dizer um pouco mais sobre a integridade de uma pessoa, neste caso acredita-se que o mensageiro 1 foi favorecido simplesmente porque ele retrata melhor a mensagem a ser entregue e se conecta com o receptor de uma forma mais profunda que o mensageiro 2.

O mensageiro 2 falhou na conexão emocional, pois é retratado por uma menor densidade de atividad facial, gerando uma menor conexão emocional e, assim, menos credibilidade.

Interessante, não é mesmo? Uma abordagem no mínimo interessante.

Abraço e até a próxima!

Felipe “Cliff” Almeida

Neverend Experiencial Comunication

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Hace unos días lanzamos un concurso para conseguir un ejemplar de Neuromarketing para el que había que proponer empresas que crearan verdaderas experiencias en sus clientes. Podían ser tanto positivas como negativas.

De los resultados obtenidos podemos extraer dos grandes conclusiones:

1. Cuando hablamos de experiencias positivas influye en gran parte la marca que está detrás de la empresa y del producto o servicio. Que aparezcan empresas como apple, coca-cola, starbucks nos dice que cuando pensamos en este tipo de empresas tenemos claro que su posicionamiento tiene mucho que ver con la experiencia. en pocos casos se menciona una buena experiencia durante la compra o el uso. Es curioso como entendemos que es un factor prácticamente higiénico (debe ir sí o sí asociado a la venta) la buena experiencia durante la compra.
2. Las malas experiencias siempre tienen relación con los momentos de uso o compra. Si durante la compra se produce algo inesperado y que no nos agrada, tira por tierra todos los esfuerzos que hemos realizado con anterioridad.

Hay empresas con las que tenemos un mayor nivel de permisibilidad a la hora de tener en cuenta errores que hayan podido tener durante el proceso. Estas empresas sobre las que tenemos mayor nivel de perdón suelen ser de dos tipos:

1. Las que tienen una marca fuerte con las que se vinculan emocionalmente las personas, de forma que hay ciertos niveles de error que les son permitidos
2. Aquellas que responden rápido y bien ante errores durante la entrega de la experiencia a los clientes.

¿Qué os parece? ¿Cuándo consideráis que una experiencia es positiva? ¿Y negativa?

borjaime

Ever heard of the word Neuromarketing? (it’s not brainselling):

‘Advances in neuroscience are changing the way some companies position their products, giving birth to the new field of neuromarketing’…
By Lone Frank -Sci Am

Ya tenemos los ganadores del concurso de Neuromarketing con ediciones Gestión 2000. Queremos agradecer a todos, en primer lugar vuestra participación, sin vuestro empuje no habría sido posible.

Los ganadores de esta edición han sido:

Raquel con Coca-Cola

Tristán Elósegui con Movistar

Rodrigo con Raynair

Aquí tenéis los resultados:

Rogamos a los ganadores que se pongan en contacto con nosotros en la dirección marketingtakeaway@gmail.com para pasarnos sus datos de contacto y donde quiere que le enviemos el libro.

Os recordamos que los ganadores serían los 3 que más votos consiguieran en cualquiera de las categorías.

Enhorabuena a los 3

borjaime

Link surfing following my previous post, I’ve come across another great video on Martin Lindstrom explaining some of the fascinating findings from Buy.ology:

Great learnings from this video:

• Warning labels on smoking packages – from the “Surgeon General’s warning” to text-based and even explicitly graphic ones – has the opposite effect on smokers! It actually makes them want to smoke more!

• The Coke bottle so well designed as a strong brand because, even if it is smashed into a thousand pieces, a person can pick up a piece and correctly identify it as a piece from a Coke bottle. Takeaway: Does your brand own something so strongly (a shape, colour or size?) that, even when it is “smashed” customers will recognise it?
• There are strong similarities between branding and religion! Both rely on 10 pillars:
  1. Sense of belonging
  2. Clear vision
  3. Power from enemies
  4. Sensory appeal
  5. Storytelling
  6. Grandeur
  7. Evangelism
  8. Symbols
  9. Mystery
  10. Rituals

85% of buying habits are unconscious. By understanding our unconscious habits, we can gain better control of what we buy as consumers and what we produce as companies.

- Martin Lindstrom, Buy.ology

Here’s a great video featuring Martin Lindstrom, author of Buy.ology and neuromarketing guru, sharing with us the “tricks” that retailers use to get us to buy more stuff:

Fascinating learnings from this video:

• 90% of what we buy are unconscious decisions
• 60% of what we buy is decided in 4 seconds
• The size of the shopping basket – the bigger the shopping basket, the more shoppers will put in. There is a subconscious need to “fill up” the cart
• The presence of other shoppers in a store influences you to buy the more “premium” item. Without the presence of other shoppers, you would buy the cheapest brand available. Apparently, there is some subconscious desire to show/portray an image to the other shoppers that you can afford better stuff! This is why stores 1) make sure that there are lots of people/traffic within and 2) are designed in a way that shoppers can see each other.
• 2-for-the-price-of-1 deals are sometimes not a deal at all! 2 trays of strawberries may contain less strawberries than one large one. Yet consumers will always go for the 2 trays – because they think they are getting a deal.
• Limiting quantities for purchase – by just adding the phrase “Limit 3 per customer”, retail stores create a false sense of scarcity and limitation. Shoppers react by being greeding and buying the maximum amount allowed to them in order to ensure they don’t “lose out” – even if they never intended to buy that many quantities of the same product!
• The smell of fresh cut grass in a DIY store subconsciously influences customers to think that service levels have increased (in Lindstrom’s experiment, by 49%!). This is because scent is a good trigger for subconscious feelings and memories.

Si quieres saberlo te facilitamos 3 alternativas.
1ª tira de wikipedia
2ª escribe a Punset (algo sabe de neurociencia)
o 3ª la mejor; participar en nuestro concurso y gana el mejor libro de neuromarketing por cortesía de Gestión 2000.

Los hallazgos sobre el cerebro son una gran fuente de información, pero resultan dificiles de interpretar. A día de hoy sabemos que el sistema límbico funciona como una esponja y dota de un componente emocional toda la información que recibe, evaluando y grabando estas valoraciones en la memoria emocional de la experiencia. También sabemos que las percepciones de los clientes no son reflejo directo de lo existe a su alrededor, es decir, de la realidad objetiva, sino interpretaciones que realiza el cerebro sobre ella. El 95% de las decisiones de compra las toma el sistema límbico, es decir, nada de hemisferio izquierdo. Podemos afirmar pues que el neuromarketing ya no es una promesa futura, sino una realidad presente, más incluso para aquellos que llevamos el marketing por las venas. De esta forma, una empresa que crea experiencias tiene más posibilidades de calar en el consumidor que una que no lo hace, llega a su parte emocional.

Por todo ello, os proponemos que participéis en el concurso indicándonos una empresa que cuide la experiencia de cliente o que la vilipendie.

Para participar sólo tendréis que proponer una empresa que consideréis que crea experiencias realmente memorables o realmente malas en un comentario en este post. Tendréis hasta el jueves 29 para proponer vuestras alternativas. El día 30 publicaremos la encuesta para que podáis votar. Las votaciones estarán abiertas hasta el lunes 2 de noviembre. El día 3 publicaremos los ganadores.

Habrá premio para los 3 más votados. Así que a pensar en empresas

¡¡Esperamos vuestras interesantes experiencias, perdón respuestas!!

borjaime

Se entender a mente humana fosse possível, o mundo seria um tédio!! Mas Martin Lindstrom é abusado e ousou tentar ir a fundo na mente do consumidor construindo um estudo de neuromarketing. O resultado foi bom!! Vale a pena!

Boa leitura!