Thursday, 7 June 2012

A Neuromarketer on the Frontier of Buyology

A Neuromarketer on the Frontier of Buyology

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Section: Education Life Supplement
It sounds like a cross between ''Mad Men'' and ''Weird Science'': using magnetic resonance imaging to study brain waves and determine why people respond to some advertisements but not others. For a 20-year-old junior at Yale, the new field known as neuromarketing is the stuff not of sci-fi mash-ups but a potential career.
Emily Yudofsky has long been interested in behavioral science, no surprise given that both her parents are psychiatrists; her father, Dr. Stuart C. Yudofsky, is chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Back in high school, Ms. Yudofsky was participating in research into personality disorders at a Baylor medical laboratory at the same time a study was under way on neuroimaging and branding. The researchers were looking at consumer responses to brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. She watched as certain regions of the brain were activated when exposed to the familiar trappings of Coke but dormant for the Pepsi brand images. ''Branding can change the way consumers make decisions, regardless of product,'' Ms. Yudofsky concluded. ''I thought that was fascinating.''
That insight remained with her at Yale. In her sophomore year, she received an e-mail message from a new organization, the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, created through the Yale University Office of Cooperative Research to support students interested in founding businesses. Ms. Yudofsky was selected as one of 12 participants in the 2007 Summer Fellowship Program, the institute's first. She was the only woman. ''It's an interesting problem,'' she says, noting that when she returned last summer ''as a guest alum of the program, there wasn't a girl in the room.''
That is not daunting Ms. Yudofsky, who set up her neuromarketing company, Applied Resonance Research, last year as a limited liability corporation. She wants to specialize in research that involves public service advertising, the campaigns for nonprofit organizations and causes that ad agencies typically create on a pro bono basis.
Current ways to evaluate advertising are significantly flawed, Ms. Yudofsky says. ''By going directly to the brain, looking at the regions involved in decision-making, it will make a great difference'' in developing campaigns that effectively, say, curb smoking or discourage drunk driving.
With a grant from the Yale Medical School and a psychology professor as adviser, Ms. Yudofsky is beginning to study pro bono ads intended to reduce obesity; she is reviewing brain activity on M.R.I. machines to find ways to improve their message. The campaigns were provided by the Advertising Council in New York, which oversees public service efforts for Madison Avenue.
The idea that monitoring brain activity can shed light on the consumer mind is tremendously controversial. The brain is far from fully understood, scientists point out: just because a neuron fires does not mean a consumer likes Coke better than Pepsi. There are also concerns that neuromarketing is a creepy invasion of privacy, and that the very premise is to manipulate unsuspecting consumers into buying products they don't need. Those qualms have grown as neuromarketing has gained a higher profile. A new book on the subject, ''Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy,'' by Martin Lindstrom, received considerable coverage this fall in business publications.
''I can see where people might be a little hesitant in accepting'' neuromarketing because it's a new technology, acknowledges Ms. Yudofsky, who is majoring in psychology. ''I'm not concerned,'' she says, adding: she has no intention ''to brainwash people.''
PHOTOS: Emily Yudofsky's company will study consumer reaction to public-service ads. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL MARSLAND/YALE UNIVERSITY); After viewing ads on obesity, a consumer is given food choices: healthful or not. The prefrontal lobe, in crosshairs, shows new activity. Did the message get through?
Late Edition - Final
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By STUART ELLIOTT

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