30 Insight | the big issue
Advertising
on the
couch
It’s up there with art versus science, Richard Dawkins versus the Pope,
Man United versus Everyone Else… when it comes to enduring rivalries, you
don’t get much bigger than Creatives versus Research. It’s undeniably
irritating to have your work picked apart by whitecoats with clipboards. But
fields such as psychology and neuroscience are exploding with new insights
into human behaviour and clients are increasingly interested in finding
reliable ways to quantify their marketing spend. Is it time for creatives to get
to grips with psychology and the sciences of human behaviour, and can it be
done without losing the originality and emotional impact that makes their
work so powerful?
Wake up to Nudge Theory
Psychology and neuroscience are vast fields – inevitably as complex as the
human brain. There are many different angles and perspectives, from social
psychology, which considers our interpersonal relationships, to biological
psychology, which looks at the chemical and electrical systems in the brain,
or even evolutionary psychology, which attempts to draw links between
current human behaviour and our prehistoric past. And any of these
sub-fields potentially has many valid insights for advertising. Currently the
ideas gaining most traction in the industry are behavioural economics,
neuromarketing and a bit of old-fashioned psychoanalysis.
So-called ‘Nudge Theory’, or behavioural economics, is an idea that has
found favour with everyone from Barack Obama to outgoing IPA president
Rory Sutherland. It’s the idea that our economic decisions are informed by
social, cognitive and emotional factors. People don’t exist in a vacuum, we
don’t always make decisions based on logic and we use stereotypes and
assumptions to frame or skew our understanding of the world.
Understanding these quirks of behaviour – so the theory goes – helps us
understand quirks in the market. In terms of advertising, by understanding
the mental short cuts that we use to make decisions, we should be able to
create advertising that fits better with the way we think. It’s an idea that’s
been gaining currency over the last few years. In the UK, the IPA (Institute
of Practitioners in Advertising) set up a Behavioural Economics Think Tank
and Task Force, bringing together leading psychologists and industry
figures. “What’s interesting is that it’s taken seed more wildly than I dared
hope. Planners have really taken to it and a large number of creative people
find it fascinating, “ says IPA president, Rory Sutherland.
So what the hell is neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing is another area with a growing presence – though it has
not been greeted with a universally enthusiastic response from the ad
industry. Also known as neurometrics, it’s an approach that combines
various brain-scanning techniques with measures such as heart rate, skin
conductance (that’s what the experts call ‘sweatiness’) or memory, to establish
the emotional impact and effectiveness of a campaign.
But while these neuroscience methods can provide useful insight and
feedback if implemented well, it’s important to bear in mind exactly what
these techniques cannot tell us about advertising. They can show
approximately which brain areas are activated by a spot or a brand, but they
can’t read minds and they can’t tell us why something is happening.
While large multinationals such as P&G have in-house neuroscientists
to undertake this sort of research and many brands work directly with
illustration: kenneth andersson / eyecandy.co.uk
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 30 13/07/2011 11:47
psychology in advertising | Insight 31
The great
divide between
creatives and
whitecoats is
narrowing
as new
advances in
neuroscience
are attracting
clients to ‘the
science bit’ like
bees are attracted
to pollen. But
what does the
neuroscience of
advertising have
in store for those
on the creative
front line? Laura
Swinton scans the
latest brainwaves
neuromarketing companies, ad agencies have, by and large, remained
tentative, if not downright sceptical. It’s understandable – using science and
objective measures to assess a piece of creative work can seem reductive and
miss the subtleties of a spot.
Agency planners and creatives I spoke with shared many similar horror
stories about dodgy research. Take, for example, the spot that was judged to
have zero emotional impact despite eliciting extreme fear and enjoyment
over the course of the story – researchers simply subtracted the negative
emotional responses from the positives and came out with a big fat nothing.
But the odd experience of poor research should not discredit a whole
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 31 13/07/2011 11:47
32 Insight | the big issue
field. While there
certainly are a few
snakeoil merchants
out there, promising
the earth, the credible companies tend
to be run by university academics who are more
liable to be open about their methods and honest
about both the strengths and flaws of their approach. Most will focus on small
tweaks rather than a wholesale overhaul.
Moreover neuromarketing techniques seem to provide the most exciting
and usable insight not when picking apart completed work but when
carrying out completely new research.
Heather Andrew of Neuro-Insight recalls one project for Thinkbox, the
commercial TV marketing organisation. “We wanted to look at people’s
neurostates when watching TV advertising versus online. We found that
watching TV involved lower levels of attention but higher levels of memory
encoding. Online, memory and emotional response was lower, but attention
was much higher. More interestingly, we found that if people saw an ad on
TV first, the TV exposure primed them to be more responsive when they
encountered the brand online. But seeing something online did not enhance
reception to the TV ad. It makes sense, because TV advertising is more about
creating a brand feeling, whereas people go online to find more specific
messages and information.”
No more Oedipus Schmoedipus
Neuro-marketing and behavioural economics is a far cry from many people’s
idea of psychology. It’s all oestrogen and EEG instead of Oedipus complexes
and existential crises – reflecting shifts within the discipline which is keen to
portray itself as a hard science.
Running parallel to the brain scans and hard science is a more subjective
approach to psychological advertising research that draws from counselling
techniques, psycho-analysis and art therapy. Lindsay Zaltman is the
managing director of Olson Zaltman, a firm that uses deep, metaphor-based
interview techniques to draw consumer insights from the participants’
unconscious minds.
Interviewees bring in images that metaphorically represent a particular
product or brand and are invited to talk around these images to gain deeper
insight. Zaltman most recently appeared in Morgan Spurlock’s documentary
on branding, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, as the
adventurous filmmaker underwent a session to uncover the personality
of Brand Spurlock. It’s a far cry from the ‘objective’ science of the
neuromarketers or nudgers but Zaltman reckons traditional
psychoanalysis can provide a useful counterbalance.
“There is some really sexy research out there measuring all sorts
of metrics. For example they can tell you that a pleasure area of the
brain has lit up but they can’t tell you what type of pleasure it is. Is
it an indulgent pleasure? A contented pleasure? An excited
pleasure? A more qualitative approach can tell you that.”
Indeed, emotional (or affective) neuroscience suggests
that, biologically, there are only a limited number of emotions
with distinct patterns of brain activation and bodily responses.
Nuances of emotion are more subjective, created by language and learning
and can’t be detected by biological measures alone.
The expansion of possible psychological and neuroscientific methods to
be used with advertising is impressive, but potentially confusing. With the
current popularity of the likes of Malcolm Gladwell, who drew huge crowds at
this year’s Cannes Lions festival, and the growth of neuromarketing over the
past decade, it seems our appetite for understanding the human mind and
applying that understanding to advertising has never been greater.
You don’t have to be mad men to work here
The relationship between creatives and psychology is nothing new, and
comes with its own set of Daddy Issues.
As early as 1896, experimental psychologists were trying to peer inside
the minds of consumers. These early researchers came up with a theory that
should gladden the heart of any megalomaniacal creative director – they
thought that advertising worked as a form of hypnotism, with the copywriter
pulling the puppet strings.
The relationship between the disciplines was cemented in 1920 when
John B Watson, the influential father of behavioural psychology was
unceremoniously kicked out of John Hopkins University following a
scandalous, headline-hitting affair with a student – and he found refuge with
a certain J Walter Thompson. Watson, who is famous for his work on phobia
(in particular training a small toddler to fear fluffy white bunnies), quickly
rose through the ranks of the agency and became a vice president. He was
part of the agency’s drive to legitimise advertising by demonstrating a
scientific rationale behind the work.
By the 50s, psychologists were a well-established part of the agency
landscape. Vance Packard released Hidden Persuaders, a squillion-selling
book on the psychological techniques deployed by advertisers and
politicians to manipulate the public.
But despite the history – and the shiny new modern techniques clogging
up the aisles at ad festivals – these days psychology and its cousin,
neuroscience, don’t enjoy the same privileged position within the industry.
Intuition versus theory
The common perception among psychology students and academics is that
advertisers deliberately use well-established theories in order to manipulate
and persuade – but the truth of the creative process is more intuitive and
organic. “I was always interested in psychology at university. It’s part of the
reason I went into advertising, because I expected more
psychology. A discipline where you’re looking at
influencing people’s decision making surely must be
underpinned by some sort of theory. But when you
get into an agency you realise that’s not the case at
all,” says Ed Gardiner, a former accounts exec who
took some psychology classes as an undergraduate
and has since returned to academia to study cognition
and decision sciences.
But while the creative process may not be explicitly
informed by scientific theories, that doesn’t mean that
creatives don’t have their own intuitive grasp of human
“A discipline where you’re looking at influencing people’s decision
making surely must be underpinned by some sort of theory. But
when you get into an agency you realise that’s not the case at all.”
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 32 13/07/2011 11:47
psychology in advertising | Insight 33
behaviour. Advertising is as much a
psychological pursuit as it is strategic
or creative. Empathy with and
understanding of the motivations
of other people is crucial. As far
as creatives are concerned, the
same imagination that fuels the
originality, aesthetics and artistry
of the industry can also help project
itself into the minds of the target
demographic. Indeed the best creative work is that
which demonstrates an intuitive grasp of
psychology, gathered through experience.
Sean Ehringer, a director with Tool of North
America, majored in psychology at university but
reckons he rarely, if ever, refers to theory in his
work. “I think creative people are generally
observers, they’re informed by what they see,” he
muses. “If you look at a campaign like Skittles –
say the Midas Touch spot or Piñata Man – it works
because whoever wrote them understands people.
There’s a sadness to the work, an understanding
that too much of what you love can be horrible, an
understanding of what it’s like to feel different.”
The age of neuromanticism
In any case, a solid piece of research or
psychological theory alone will not automatically
result in effective advertising – it’s when paired
with the natural insight of good creative that
magic happens. Such was the case with the gold
Lion-winning Transport for London 2007 viral
Moonwalking Bear. The spot features two teams of
basketball players who divert viewer attention
away from a dancing bear. It reproduces an
experiment by psychologists Daniel Simons and
Christopher Chabris who were researching a
cognitive phenomenon known as inattentional
blindness – our inability to perceive things that
are right in front of us. An online video of the
original experiment had been shared round the
creative team’s office. It was the perfect piece of
insight into a brief they were working on to alert
drivers to the dangers of unseen cyclists.
However it was thanks to the team’s
understanding of human nature that this science
was transformed into an effective piece of work.
“It doesn’t ever apportion blame,” explains
creative Simon Aldridge. “The one thing we
wanted to avoid was saying ‘you’re a bad driver’.
As soon as you start blaming people they stop
Where does psychology
fit within advertising?
If you look at the ‘golden age’ of advertising
in the United States, the three giants –
Bernbach, Ogilvy and Howard Gossage –
were fascinated by adjacent academic
areas of study, partly for a need for
respectability and partly due to their
absolutely sincere pursuit of knowledge. In
that era, there were all sorts of people
looking at psychological theories and how
they might be applied – you might even say
it got a little excessive.
However the pendulum then swung too
far the other way. We developed a model
that was very simplistic, incomplete and in
some cases diametrically wrong. One way
you can give commercial advantage to a
brand is to have better consumer
understanding than the next guy.
What sort of insights can psychology
and behavioural economics give
that we are missing out on?
The persuasion/argument model used in
most briefs today has certain assumptions.
For example it assumes that attitudinal
change precedes behavioural change,
whereas a lot of studies show that it is the
other way round. If a man says ‘my wife
doesn’t understand me’ he isn’t going to
have an affair, it means he’s already had
one. What happens is that a person gets
drunk at a party, and in a desperate effort
to make sense of their incongruous actions,
they concoct a case against their wife.
Changes in behaviour comes before
changes in attitudes.
We also have to understand the kind of
shortcuts we use when making decisions.
You can’t fully understand a brand until you
understand satisficing – that is settling for
something that’s ‘good enough’. In most
decisions most of the time in most
categories, we don’t try to get the very
best result that we can, we want to make
sure that we’re not getting ripped off.
Unless we’re very anal,
we don’t spend six weeks
researching technological
minutiae when choosing a flat screen
TV. We just want a good TV that won’t
break. What brands do is they generally
provide a good degree of predictability.
McDonald’s have realised that people don’t
want the best burger in the world, they
want one just like the one they had last
time. People like predictability as it helps
avoid disappointment – and fear works
twice as acutely than hope.
How do you see the relationship
between psychological research
and creativity?
One of the things that a lot of behavioural
science shows is that the creative instinct
is quite good. I’ve become more respectful
of creative people and creative awards
since studying behavioural economics. You
realise that the emotional effect of
advertising is more important than the
argumentative component. But creatives
have to sell their work to people who don’t
have these instincts. To a CEO brought up
in a finance or engineering culture it’s near
impossible to believe that advertising that is
likeable can be more effective than
advertising that is persuasive. You need to
have a good vocabulary and scientific
understanding to explain why it will work.
I think creatives would feel less neurotic
if they understood it not only instinctively
but also scientifically. They suffer a kind of
neurosis because they know that they are
right but they can’t always explain why – it’s
a Cassandra complex.
In the battle between good creativity
and bad science, bad science often wins.
Creatives are fearful – they’ve been beaten
up with shit science so often that they have
a completely unwarranted aversion to
science as a whole. We’ll never beat bad
science with creativity alone, but we’ll beat
it with better science and good creativity.
Rory Sutherland, IPA president and vice-president
of Ogilvy Group UK on ‘satisficing’ punters and
nervy creatives getting beaten up by bad science
The insider’s guide to changing minds
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 33 13/07/2011 11:47
34 Insight | the big issue
Tomorrow’s world today
How did you come across the idea of combining
experimental psychology with advertising?
In the 1980s I was lecturing in clinical psychology and
psychopathology at Sussex University and I started using a very
early form of EEG (electro encephalography) machine for
measuring electrical activity in the brain. I needed some stimuli
that had to fulfil certain criteria: they had to be short because the
processing capacity of computers in those days was fairly limited
and so I happened across the idea of using television commercials
– not because I was particularly interested in advertising but
because they were a very good 15-30 second stimuli designed by
highly creative people. I wrote to agencies to ask for VHS copies
of unaired commercials. The trade magazines became interested
and in 1990 the BBC science programme Tomorrow’s World ran
a feature on it. But I had no interest in the commercial sphere and
focussed on the academic sphere until about 2004.
What can neuroscience tell us?
We like to think of ourselves as rational, conscious beings but
most of our judgements are made below the level of
consciousness. Even the most willing participant in the most
expertly-run focus group doesn’t have access to that data. We
look at measures of attention, emotion and comprehension.
People can be paying attention but not be very engaged, and if
they’re not engaged they’re less likely to act on it.
Neuromarketing is a term I don’t really like – it was coined in
2002 by Al Schmidt at Rotterdam business school. It suggests
that we can throw out the methodologies and the science and
stick some electrodes on someone’s head and know what they’re
thinking – well that’s just not true.
You started off working with traditional TV spots –
what about more recent advertising innovations?
Recently we’ve been exploring permission advertising. We worked
with the people behind the TV show Come Dine With Me, and we
wrote a programme which allowed people to click on items
contestants were using, allowing them to find out more. We tested
it out and found that when people had this control, it was way
more powerful than traditional advertising, both in terms of
immediate purchasing intent and subsequent recall.
These days people tend to fast-forward ads – but our work
shows that even if you see a commercial at speed you can still
pick up the message. It’s not a complete waste of money. Digital
natives (young people who have grown up using computers) tend
to be visually literate and able to understand visual information at
a far faster rate. You’ll find that programmes designed for young
people have shorter average shot lengths, with rapid cuts that can
be almost subliminal. Older people find it very hard to process.
listening. It’s just human nature.” Despite working on this spot – and the
follow-up, which explored the phenomenon of change blindness (our inability
to perceive gradual change) – Aldridge reckons that while psychology can
provide handy insights, advertising and creativity are not generally exercises
in mind control and manipulation. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and at
no point have I thought ‘here’s how we can sneakily get inside people’s
heads’. We just know that if you make something amusing, interesting and
worth engaging with, people will like it.”
The art beyond the empirical
But while it’s possible for art and psychological research to co-exist and even
spark off each other, it’s not always the case. Creatives worry that using
empirical research restricts creativity and undermines the power and validity
of art. When applied to a freshly completed piece of work, a critical research
report can feel punitive and undermining – but this may be an argument for a
change in the way that advertising and psychology interact rather than a
wholesale rejection of psychology. Instead of using psychology and
neuroscience to promote ‘effectiveness’ it might be more liberating to
incorporate them earlier on in the process – when writing briefs, for example.
The insights can then serve as springboards rather than straightjackets.
Dr David Lewis, of Mindlab, a neuromarketing company based at the
University of Sussex, has been pioneering neuromarketing since the 80s and
argues that the science may help refine the creativity but it will never replace
it. “No one wants to homogenise things. The great thing about advertising is
the creativity behind it, the way it looks at things in a different way,” he says.
“I think advertising is a highly creative industry
and always will be. We’re never going to be
in a position where a computer can
come up with adverts. The human
brain will always be superior in its
ability to make associations. We
should rejoice in our creativity
and not feel restrained.”
The creativity of science
Neuromarketers and psychologists are
thinking scientifically about advertising creativity – but perhaps its time to
turn the tables and start thinking creatively about science. David Schwarz of
creative outfit Hush feels that, given the prevalence of technology in modern
design and advertising, creatives should not be fearing or avoiding
neuroscience. “We’re not all from artsy backgrounds; we have an interesting
mix of people from computer science and economics. There’s a lot of
empirical and statistical mathematics in what we do by nature. The tools of
today’s advertising are not a brush and canvas. They’re interesting, complex
tools that require a bit of objective thinking. Using coding to generate
abstract images is a complex thing. I don’t think designers or creators or
advertisers should be scared.”
It’s a fair point. Advertising has embraced digital technology and taken it
in all kinds of unexpected, creative directions, so we can’t be completely
technophobic. Ingenuity and inventiveness is what the industry does best, so
perhaps its time to start thinking creatively about psychology. S
Mind Lab’s Dr David Lewis, neuromarketing
pioneer, on how it all began and where it’s going
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 34 13/07/2011 11:47
Advertising
on the
couch
It’s up there with art versus science, Richard Dawkins versus the Pope,
Man United versus Everyone Else… when it comes to enduring rivalries, you
don’t get much bigger than Creatives versus Research. It’s undeniably
irritating to have your work picked apart by whitecoats with clipboards. But
fields such as psychology and neuroscience are exploding with new insights
into human behaviour and clients are increasingly interested in finding
reliable ways to quantify their marketing spend. Is it time for creatives to get
to grips with psychology and the sciences of human behaviour, and can it be
done without losing the originality and emotional impact that makes their
work so powerful?
Wake up to Nudge Theory
Psychology and neuroscience are vast fields – inevitably as complex as the
human brain. There are many different angles and perspectives, from social
psychology, which considers our interpersonal relationships, to biological
psychology, which looks at the chemical and electrical systems in the brain,
or even evolutionary psychology, which attempts to draw links between
current human behaviour and our prehistoric past. And any of these
sub-fields potentially has many valid insights for advertising. Currently the
ideas gaining most traction in the industry are behavioural economics,
neuromarketing and a bit of old-fashioned psychoanalysis.
So-called ‘Nudge Theory’, or behavioural economics, is an idea that has
found favour with everyone from Barack Obama to outgoing IPA president
Rory Sutherland. It’s the idea that our economic decisions are informed by
social, cognitive and emotional factors. People don’t exist in a vacuum, we
don’t always make decisions based on logic and we use stereotypes and
assumptions to frame or skew our understanding of the world.
Understanding these quirks of behaviour – so the theory goes – helps us
understand quirks in the market. In terms of advertising, by understanding
the mental short cuts that we use to make decisions, we should be able to
create advertising that fits better with the way we think. It’s an idea that’s
been gaining currency over the last few years. In the UK, the IPA (Institute
of Practitioners in Advertising) set up a Behavioural Economics Think Tank
and Task Force, bringing together leading psychologists and industry
figures. “What’s interesting is that it’s taken seed more wildly than I dared
hope. Planners have really taken to it and a large number of creative people
find it fascinating, “ says IPA president, Rory Sutherland.
So what the hell is neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing is another area with a growing presence – though it has
not been greeted with a universally enthusiastic response from the ad
industry. Also known as neurometrics, it’s an approach that combines
various brain-scanning techniques with measures such as heart rate, skin
conductance (that’s what the experts call ‘sweatiness’) or memory, to establish
the emotional impact and effectiveness of a campaign.
But while these neuroscience methods can provide useful insight and
feedback if implemented well, it’s important to bear in mind exactly what
these techniques cannot tell us about advertising. They can show
approximately which brain areas are activated by a spot or a brand, but they
can’t read minds and they can’t tell us why something is happening.
While large multinationals such as P&G have in-house neuroscientists
to undertake this sort of research and many brands work directly with
illustration: kenneth andersson / eyecandy.co.uk
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 30 13/07/2011 11:47
psychology in advertising | Insight 31
The great
divide between
creatives and
whitecoats is
narrowing
as new
advances in
neuroscience
are attracting
clients to ‘the
science bit’ like
bees are attracted
to pollen. But
what does the
neuroscience of
advertising have
in store for those
on the creative
front line? Laura
Swinton scans the
latest brainwaves
neuromarketing companies, ad agencies have, by and large, remained
tentative, if not downright sceptical. It’s understandable – using science and
objective measures to assess a piece of creative work can seem reductive and
miss the subtleties of a spot.
Agency planners and creatives I spoke with shared many similar horror
stories about dodgy research. Take, for example, the spot that was judged to
have zero emotional impact despite eliciting extreme fear and enjoyment
over the course of the story – researchers simply subtracted the negative
emotional responses from the positives and came out with a big fat nothing.
But the odd experience of poor research should not discredit a whole
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 31 13/07/2011 11:47
32 Insight | the big issue
field. While there
certainly are a few
snakeoil merchants
out there, promising
the earth, the credible companies tend
to be run by university academics who are more
liable to be open about their methods and honest
about both the strengths and flaws of their approach. Most will focus on small
tweaks rather than a wholesale overhaul.
Moreover neuromarketing techniques seem to provide the most exciting
and usable insight not when picking apart completed work but when
carrying out completely new research.
Heather Andrew of Neuro-Insight recalls one project for Thinkbox, the
commercial TV marketing organisation. “We wanted to look at people’s
neurostates when watching TV advertising versus online. We found that
watching TV involved lower levels of attention but higher levels of memory
encoding. Online, memory and emotional response was lower, but attention
was much higher. More interestingly, we found that if people saw an ad on
TV first, the TV exposure primed them to be more responsive when they
encountered the brand online. But seeing something online did not enhance
reception to the TV ad. It makes sense, because TV advertising is more about
creating a brand feeling, whereas people go online to find more specific
messages and information.”
No more Oedipus Schmoedipus
Neuro-marketing and behavioural economics is a far cry from many people’s
idea of psychology. It’s all oestrogen and EEG instead of Oedipus complexes
and existential crises – reflecting shifts within the discipline which is keen to
portray itself as a hard science.
Running parallel to the brain scans and hard science is a more subjective
approach to psychological advertising research that draws from counselling
techniques, psycho-analysis and art therapy. Lindsay Zaltman is the
managing director of Olson Zaltman, a firm that uses deep, metaphor-based
interview techniques to draw consumer insights from the participants’
unconscious minds.
Interviewees bring in images that metaphorically represent a particular
product or brand and are invited to talk around these images to gain deeper
insight. Zaltman most recently appeared in Morgan Spurlock’s documentary
on branding, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, as the
adventurous filmmaker underwent a session to uncover the personality
of Brand Spurlock. It’s a far cry from the ‘objective’ science of the
neuromarketers or nudgers but Zaltman reckons traditional
psychoanalysis can provide a useful counterbalance.
“There is some really sexy research out there measuring all sorts
of metrics. For example they can tell you that a pleasure area of the
brain has lit up but they can’t tell you what type of pleasure it is. Is
it an indulgent pleasure? A contented pleasure? An excited
pleasure? A more qualitative approach can tell you that.”
Indeed, emotional (or affective) neuroscience suggests
that, biologically, there are only a limited number of emotions
with distinct patterns of brain activation and bodily responses.
Nuances of emotion are more subjective, created by language and learning
and can’t be detected by biological measures alone.
The expansion of possible psychological and neuroscientific methods to
be used with advertising is impressive, but potentially confusing. With the
current popularity of the likes of Malcolm Gladwell, who drew huge crowds at
this year’s Cannes Lions festival, and the growth of neuromarketing over the
past decade, it seems our appetite for understanding the human mind and
applying that understanding to advertising has never been greater.
You don’t have to be mad men to work here
The relationship between creatives and psychology is nothing new, and
comes with its own set of Daddy Issues.
As early as 1896, experimental psychologists were trying to peer inside
the minds of consumers. These early researchers came up with a theory that
should gladden the heart of any megalomaniacal creative director – they
thought that advertising worked as a form of hypnotism, with the copywriter
pulling the puppet strings.
The relationship between the disciplines was cemented in 1920 when
John B Watson, the influential father of behavioural psychology was
unceremoniously kicked out of John Hopkins University following a
scandalous, headline-hitting affair with a student – and he found refuge with
a certain J Walter Thompson. Watson, who is famous for his work on phobia
(in particular training a small toddler to fear fluffy white bunnies), quickly
rose through the ranks of the agency and became a vice president. He was
part of the agency’s drive to legitimise advertising by demonstrating a
scientific rationale behind the work.
By the 50s, psychologists were a well-established part of the agency
landscape. Vance Packard released Hidden Persuaders, a squillion-selling
book on the psychological techniques deployed by advertisers and
politicians to manipulate the public.
But despite the history – and the shiny new modern techniques clogging
up the aisles at ad festivals – these days psychology and its cousin,
neuroscience, don’t enjoy the same privileged position within the industry.
Intuition versus theory
The common perception among psychology students and academics is that
advertisers deliberately use well-established theories in order to manipulate
and persuade – but the truth of the creative process is more intuitive and
organic. “I was always interested in psychology at university. It’s part of the
reason I went into advertising, because I expected more
psychology. A discipline where you’re looking at
influencing people’s decision making surely must be
underpinned by some sort of theory. But when you
get into an agency you realise that’s not the case at
all,” says Ed Gardiner, a former accounts exec who
took some psychology classes as an undergraduate
and has since returned to academia to study cognition
and decision sciences.
But while the creative process may not be explicitly
informed by scientific theories, that doesn’t mean that
creatives don’t have their own intuitive grasp of human
“A discipline where you’re looking at influencing people’s decision
making surely must be underpinned by some sort of theory. But
when you get into an agency you realise that’s not the case at all.”
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 32 13/07/2011 11:47
psychology in advertising | Insight 33
behaviour. Advertising is as much a
psychological pursuit as it is strategic
or creative. Empathy with and
understanding of the motivations
of other people is crucial. As far
as creatives are concerned, the
same imagination that fuels the
originality, aesthetics and artistry
of the industry can also help project
itself into the minds of the target
demographic. Indeed the best creative work is that
which demonstrates an intuitive grasp of
psychology, gathered through experience.
Sean Ehringer, a director with Tool of North
America, majored in psychology at university but
reckons he rarely, if ever, refers to theory in his
work. “I think creative people are generally
observers, they’re informed by what they see,” he
muses. “If you look at a campaign like Skittles –
say the Midas Touch spot or Piñata Man – it works
because whoever wrote them understands people.
There’s a sadness to the work, an understanding
that too much of what you love can be horrible, an
understanding of what it’s like to feel different.”
The age of neuromanticism
In any case, a solid piece of research or
psychological theory alone will not automatically
result in effective advertising – it’s when paired
with the natural insight of good creative that
magic happens. Such was the case with the gold
Lion-winning Transport for London 2007 viral
Moonwalking Bear. The spot features two teams of
basketball players who divert viewer attention
away from a dancing bear. It reproduces an
experiment by psychologists Daniel Simons and
Christopher Chabris who were researching a
cognitive phenomenon known as inattentional
blindness – our inability to perceive things that
are right in front of us. An online video of the
original experiment had been shared round the
creative team’s office. It was the perfect piece of
insight into a brief they were working on to alert
drivers to the dangers of unseen cyclists.
However it was thanks to the team’s
understanding of human nature that this science
was transformed into an effective piece of work.
“It doesn’t ever apportion blame,” explains
creative Simon Aldridge. “The one thing we
wanted to avoid was saying ‘you’re a bad driver’.
As soon as you start blaming people they stop
Where does psychology
fit within advertising?
If you look at the ‘golden age’ of advertising
in the United States, the three giants –
Bernbach, Ogilvy and Howard Gossage –
were fascinated by adjacent academic
areas of study, partly for a need for
respectability and partly due to their
absolutely sincere pursuit of knowledge. In
that era, there were all sorts of people
looking at psychological theories and how
they might be applied – you might even say
it got a little excessive.
However the pendulum then swung too
far the other way. We developed a model
that was very simplistic, incomplete and in
some cases diametrically wrong. One way
you can give commercial advantage to a
brand is to have better consumer
understanding than the next guy.
What sort of insights can psychology
and behavioural economics give
that we are missing out on?
The persuasion/argument model used in
most briefs today has certain assumptions.
For example it assumes that attitudinal
change precedes behavioural change,
whereas a lot of studies show that it is the
other way round. If a man says ‘my wife
doesn’t understand me’ he isn’t going to
have an affair, it means he’s already had
one. What happens is that a person gets
drunk at a party, and in a desperate effort
to make sense of their incongruous actions,
they concoct a case against their wife.
Changes in behaviour comes before
changes in attitudes.
We also have to understand the kind of
shortcuts we use when making decisions.
You can’t fully understand a brand until you
understand satisficing – that is settling for
something that’s ‘good enough’. In most
decisions most of the time in most
categories, we don’t try to get the very
best result that we can, we want to make
sure that we’re not getting ripped off.
Unless we’re very anal,
we don’t spend six weeks
researching technological
minutiae when choosing a flat screen
TV. We just want a good TV that won’t
break. What brands do is they generally
provide a good degree of predictability.
McDonald’s have realised that people don’t
want the best burger in the world, they
want one just like the one they had last
time. People like predictability as it helps
avoid disappointment – and fear works
twice as acutely than hope.
How do you see the relationship
between psychological research
and creativity?
One of the things that a lot of behavioural
science shows is that the creative instinct
is quite good. I’ve become more respectful
of creative people and creative awards
since studying behavioural economics. You
realise that the emotional effect of
advertising is more important than the
argumentative component. But creatives
have to sell their work to people who don’t
have these instincts. To a CEO brought up
in a finance or engineering culture it’s near
impossible to believe that advertising that is
likeable can be more effective than
advertising that is persuasive. You need to
have a good vocabulary and scientific
understanding to explain why it will work.
I think creatives would feel less neurotic
if they understood it not only instinctively
but also scientifically. They suffer a kind of
neurosis because they know that they are
right but they can’t always explain why – it’s
a Cassandra complex.
In the battle between good creativity
and bad science, bad science often wins.
Creatives are fearful – they’ve been beaten
up with shit science so often that they have
a completely unwarranted aversion to
science as a whole. We’ll never beat bad
science with creativity alone, but we’ll beat
it with better science and good creativity.
Rory Sutherland, IPA president and vice-president
of Ogilvy Group UK on ‘satisficing’ punters and
nervy creatives getting beaten up by bad science
The insider’s guide to changing minds
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 33 13/07/2011 11:47
34 Insight | the big issue
Tomorrow’s world today
How did you come across the idea of combining
experimental psychology with advertising?
In the 1980s I was lecturing in clinical psychology and
psychopathology at Sussex University and I started using a very
early form of EEG (electro encephalography) machine for
measuring electrical activity in the brain. I needed some stimuli
that had to fulfil certain criteria: they had to be short because the
processing capacity of computers in those days was fairly limited
and so I happened across the idea of using television commercials
– not because I was particularly interested in advertising but
because they were a very good 15-30 second stimuli designed by
highly creative people. I wrote to agencies to ask for VHS copies
of unaired commercials. The trade magazines became interested
and in 1990 the BBC science programme Tomorrow’s World ran
a feature on it. But I had no interest in the commercial sphere and
focussed on the academic sphere until about 2004.
What can neuroscience tell us?
We like to think of ourselves as rational, conscious beings but
most of our judgements are made below the level of
consciousness. Even the most willing participant in the most
expertly-run focus group doesn’t have access to that data. We
look at measures of attention, emotion and comprehension.
People can be paying attention but not be very engaged, and if
they’re not engaged they’re less likely to act on it.
Neuromarketing is a term I don’t really like – it was coined in
2002 by Al Schmidt at Rotterdam business school. It suggests
that we can throw out the methodologies and the science and
stick some electrodes on someone’s head and know what they’re
thinking – well that’s just not true.
You started off working with traditional TV spots –
what about more recent advertising innovations?
Recently we’ve been exploring permission advertising. We worked
with the people behind the TV show Come Dine With Me, and we
wrote a programme which allowed people to click on items
contestants were using, allowing them to find out more. We tested
it out and found that when people had this control, it was way
more powerful than traditional advertising, both in terms of
immediate purchasing intent and subsequent recall.
These days people tend to fast-forward ads – but our work
shows that even if you see a commercial at speed you can still
pick up the message. It’s not a complete waste of money. Digital
natives (young people who have grown up using computers) tend
to be visually literate and able to understand visual information at
a far faster rate. You’ll find that programmes designed for young
people have shorter average shot lengths, with rapid cuts that can
be almost subliminal. Older people find it very hard to process.
listening. It’s just human nature.” Despite working on this spot – and the
follow-up, which explored the phenomenon of change blindness (our inability
to perceive gradual change) – Aldridge reckons that while psychology can
provide handy insights, advertising and creativity are not generally exercises
in mind control and manipulation. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and at
no point have I thought ‘here’s how we can sneakily get inside people’s
heads’. We just know that if you make something amusing, interesting and
worth engaging with, people will like it.”
The art beyond the empirical
But while it’s possible for art and psychological research to co-exist and even
spark off each other, it’s not always the case. Creatives worry that using
empirical research restricts creativity and undermines the power and validity
of art. When applied to a freshly completed piece of work, a critical research
report can feel punitive and undermining – but this may be an argument for a
change in the way that advertising and psychology interact rather than a
wholesale rejection of psychology. Instead of using psychology and
neuroscience to promote ‘effectiveness’ it might be more liberating to
incorporate them earlier on in the process – when writing briefs, for example.
The insights can then serve as springboards rather than straightjackets.
Dr David Lewis, of Mindlab, a neuromarketing company based at the
University of Sussex, has been pioneering neuromarketing since the 80s and
argues that the science may help refine the creativity but it will never replace
it. “No one wants to homogenise things. The great thing about advertising is
the creativity behind it, the way it looks at things in a different way,” he says.
“I think advertising is a highly creative industry
and always will be. We’re never going to be
in a position where a computer can
come up with adverts. The human
brain will always be superior in its
ability to make associations. We
should rejoice in our creativity
and not feel restrained.”
The creativity of science
Neuromarketers and psychologists are
thinking scientifically about advertising creativity – but perhaps its time to
turn the tables and start thinking creatively about science. David Schwarz of
creative outfit Hush feels that, given the prevalence of technology in modern
design and advertising, creatives should not be fearing or avoiding
neuroscience. “We’re not all from artsy backgrounds; we have an interesting
mix of people from computer science and economics. There’s a lot of
empirical and statistical mathematics in what we do by nature. The tools of
today’s advertising are not a brush and canvas. They’re interesting, complex
tools that require a bit of objective thinking. Using coding to generate
abstract images is a complex thing. I don’t think designers or creators or
advertisers should be scared.”
It’s a fair point. Advertising has embraced digital technology and taken it
in all kinds of unexpected, creative directions, so we can’t be completely
technophobic. Ingenuity and inventiveness is what the industry does best, so
perhaps its time to start thinking creatively about psychology. S
Mind Lab’s Dr David Lewis, neuromarketing
pioneer, on how it all began and where it’s going
SH130_p30-36_psychology.indd 34 13/07/2011 11:47
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