ormal children don’t spend hours watching videotapes exclusively
of television commercials. Most children wouldn’t know anything about
trademarks—or trademark infringement, for that matter—and very few would
have the wherewithal to start an ad agency before they hit their teen years. Let’s
just say that Martin Lindstrom was a unique child. “Or a screwed-up child. One of
the two,” Lindstrom says.
Now 38, having written ve books and helped launch seven advertising, branding
and digital companies, Lindstrom has set out to conquer one of the few frontiers
le in marketing research: the consumer’s subconscious mind. e Copenhagen,
Denmark, native published his latest book last year called Buyology: Truth and
Lies About Why We Buy in which he outlines the ndings from a global neuromarketing
study. He spent four years on this project, traveling the world to seek
out experts in brain science. He employed two forms of brain scan technology—
fMRI and SST—to get a more complete view of the brain. And then he wrote a very
simple book about a very complex topic.
“I’m not an expert in the brain and I’ll never be an expert in the brain. … at’s
really important for me to stress,” Lindstrom says. “But what I do know about is
people’s behavior, and that there are a lot of black holes in what we observe people
are doing, why they are doing it and what’s going on in the brain, and those are
some of the links I would like to draw.”
Lindstrom has become a bit of a media darling, appearing on NPR, BBC, and
NBC’s Today show, and in articles in e New York Times, e Washington Post and
Women’s Wear Daily, to name a few. And he already has signed on with publisher
Doubleday to write another book.
He now spends about 300 days each year traveling the world, giving speeches,
conducting studies and consulting with companies such as Disney, GlaxoSmith-
Kline, McDonald’s, Microso and Procter & Gamble. When Marketing News
caught up with him, he had just le Chicago for London and was departing for
Tokyo the next day—having spent not much more than a day at each stop. He took
a few hours out of his very hectic schedule to chat about neuromarketing and how
he thinks it will make marketers smarter and marketing budgets more e cient,
which will lead to fewer, better—and better-targeted—marketing messages.
Q: To start, let’s de ne neuromarketing in simple terms.
A: Neuromarketing, in my mind, is to use the latest brain science to better understand
the consumer’s behavior. … e general principle is discovering the uses of
technology in order to understand what is going on in our subconscious mind.
Q: With so much of marketing research being about deciphering what goes into
the rational and irrational choices we make, what’s the relationship between
neuromarketing and behavioral economics?
A: I think they’re very interlinked. When Christopher Columbus was discovering
America in 1492, he drew a map and the map was sort of inaccurate. But he did
discover that the planet was round … and he got on his way.
And that is, in principle, the way I see neuromarketing. It does shed some light
on the subconscious mind, which I estimate to [direct] about 85% of our daily
activities. … No matter if it is 90, 80 or 70% or even 50% for that matter, it is a heck
of a lot compared to the fact that today [advertisers] are communicating to no
more than 15 to 20% of our minds.
Now we have some tools, some highly advanced tools, that are enabling us not
only to observe people, but also to understand why people are doing what they’re
doing and to put some numbers behind it. … I think at the end of the day, maybe
10 years from now, we will have highly advanced experts who are basically just
asking what your problem is and then directing you in the right direction for the
tools you want to use.
Q: Beyond, sort of, broad-stroke ndings—like ‘product placements don’t work,’ as
you say in your book—what’s the practical application for marketers?
A: e rst step marketers should take is to realize that, most likely, most of the
research studies they’re doing right now are insu cient because the subconscious
mind is what’s driving [consumer behavior]. And then, if I were them, I’d rst look
into the media spend.
We did a fascinating study the other day where a beer commercial was placed
in three di erent TV programs—a soap opera, a documentary and a movie. When
it was placed in a soap opera, it gained an e ect that was double in comparison to
when it was in a documentary. We learned that context matters much more than
we thought in the past. … I think a little [investment in neuromarketing research]
to optimize your media spend is a very good start. …
I think the second thing they should go into is the R&D of new products.
irdly, they should look at the whole theory I have that the logo is not really that
important anymore. You need to hone indirect signals instead. en I would probably
look into messaging.
Q: Even though neuromarketing research could prevent costly mistakes, do
you think companies would be willing to make such a large investment in their
upfront research?
cover story
10
marketingnews 03.15.09
Mar tin Lindst rom
explores the last front ier
of marketing research:
the consumer’s
subconscious mind
BY ELISABETH A. SULLIVAN//STAFF WRITER
cover story
11
marketingnews 03.15.09
A: I think so. I work with 17 of the largest brands in the world today, and out of
those 17, 12 of them are using neuromarketing. … Of course, when it comes to
two blokes down the road, [the technology] is very far from their reach, right?
But one of the things I’m trying to do now is to say, ‘What intelligent insights
can we capture from the bigger studies conducted among the bigger brands and
then systemize them into some predictive data for smaller companies?’ … It may
be that your smaller company has certain challenges that we now have mapped
out as a classic situation, and just by understanding those, we can give you some
advice based on what we learned [through] neuromarketing without even starting
on the scanner. … And I think the technology is becoming incredibly cheap. It
may be that within two years from now, you can conduct some pretty nice studies
for $20,000 or $30,000.
Q: Some of the criticism that has been stirred up by your book centers around
whether or not it’s possible to connect how consumers react to an ad with their
subsequent purchase intent. In other words, can we really draw connections
between how someone perceives an ad and what purchase decisions she makes an
hour, a day or a week later?
A: It is, and we’ve actually done an experiment for this. I’ve opened a company in
New York called Buyology Inc. headed up by the former head of global strategy at
McKinsey, Gary Singer. At Buyology Inc., we have developed a range of di erent
experiments, and one of the experiments has been to link the purchase intent into
[the brain’s response to an ad].
For a major cosmetic product category, [the company] developed … a
45-second commercial. We then had a copy test attached to it, and the test was that
a er [subjects viewed the ad], we said to people: ‘Listen, hey, thank you so much
for your help. We actually want to give you a gi , so you’re going to a store where
we’ve put up a lot of product and you can choose whatever you want.’ It happened
to be that all of the products were in the cosmetic industry and, of course, the
brand we were testing was among those products. And there was an incredibly
strong correlation between the commercial and people’s choice of product. In fact,
[compared with the control group, the consumers who viewed the ad] were,
I think, 46% [more likely to buy the product].
Q: But let’s say there’s a delay. You see the ad, and then an hour later you get in
your car and drive to the mall, and you’re then faced with the purchase decision.
A: Would this have worked? Well, who knows? e only comment I would say is
that if people are likely to take the product, let’s say, half an hour a er they’ve done
this test, then I would say there is a good chance that some actually may also do
that a er two days. How big of a percentage is it? Well, I don’t know. But, certainly,
if you see an indication there, I don’t think it would totally disappear and people
would go into minus mode a er two days. … I can come up with a lot of arguments
as to why this wouldn’t hold now, but as I said, Christopher Columbus did
not draw the best world, but he realized the world was round.
Q: What do you think of the criticism that neuromarketing research is manipulative
because you’re learning too much about how consumers approach their buying
decisions? You’re probing into the last frontier of personal space.
A: Neuromarketing is [about] what is going on [in the brain], but you don’t nd
out why it’s going on. Do you learn too much? No, you don’t. at’s one of the
reasons why I wanted to write Buyology. at’s one of the reasons why I wanted to
do this experiment to nd out how far you can—and, most importantly, how far
you should—go.
Can you nd the buy button in consumers’ brains? Because that was the claim
that was put out in 2004 [when neuromarketing rst rose to the fore] and one of
the reasons why there’s so much ethical debate around this topic. And I learned
very quickly, no, you can’t do that. Not at all. …
Of course, there will be downsides for the consumer, but that’s also the reason
why I decided not to be that sneaky to write a book just for the marketing community,
but to write a book so even my mom can read it. My intention was to write
a book so, hopefully, the whole world could engage in a debate and say: ‘Are we
Marketers as
Mind Readers
Martin Lindstrom’s book, Buyology: Truth
and Lies About Why We Buy, raises some
interesting—and controversial—points about
how and why some marketing messages
succeed. Here are a few of the highlights:
• Product placements don’t work, unless the products in question
play an integral role in the storyline of a movie or television
show. “It has to be a lot slyer and more sophisticated
than simply plunking a series of random products on a screen
and expecting us to respond,” Lindstrom writes in Buyology.
For example, in the movie E.T., “Elliott didn’t just pop those
Reese’s Pieces into his mouth during a thoughtless bike ride
with his buddies; they were an essential part of the storyline
because they were used to lure E.T. from the woods.”
• Logos are far less powerful than more subtle—or subliminal—
messages. “The logo is regarded as king, the be-all and endall
of advertising,” Lindstrom writes. But in a study conducted
with smokers regarding smoking advertising, Lindstrom found
that logo-free images associated with the feeling and “coolness”
of smoking were much more powerful than explicit
smoking ads. One explanation is that “since the subliminal
images didn’t show any visible logos, the smokers weren’t
consciously aware that they were viewing an advertising
message, and as a result, they let their guard down,” he writes.
• Strong brands can inspire memories and emotion as powerfully
as religious symbols do. “When people viewed images
associated with the strong brands—the iPod, the Harley-
Davidson, the Ferrari and others—their brains registered the
exact same patterns of activity as they did when they viewed
the religious images,” Lindstrom writes of one study. “Bottom
line, there was no discernable difference between the way the
subjects’ brains reacted to powerful brands and the way they
reacted to religious icons and fi gures.”
“ I work with 17 of the largest
brands in the world today, and
out of those 17, 12 of them are
using neuromarketing.”
cover story marketingnews 03.15.09
12
going too far? And if we’re going too far, should we have regulations around this?’
Now, here’s the bad news on this one. e ethical debate has not appeared so far.
… ere’s been quite a lot of writing about it [but] I think about 6 to 6.5% has been
critical. … I’m deeply surprised about why there’s not more ethical debate around
this—and slightly disappointed about that, too.
I really want governments to take a stand on this, I want marketers to take a
stand on it and I want researchers to take a stand on it, and de ne how far we could
and should go. Should the tobacco industry be allowed to do this? Should certain
other product categories be allowed to do it? Should we be able to scan kids that
are under the age of 18? Should we be able to scan people who have a religious
purpose? How far do we go here?
Q: But did you overtly begin that debate in your book? I read the book, and I got
the impression that it was more about explaining the amazing power of neuromarketing
and all that marketers could accomplish by employing it.
A: Yeah, well, I [set up the debate] in the rst chapter, in the introduction.
Honestly, if you nd a Fortune, a Newsweek, a Business Week, a Wall Street Journal,
a New York Times, those types of publications raising the ethical issue as a
re ection on this, then I’d love to see it because I haven’t seen it. … I welcome
that [debate] a lot. And I would be the rst to stand up for a hearing and give my
view on how far I think people should go because, two reasons: First of all, I’m a
consumer, too, and I hate to be manipulated, believe me. And the second reason is
if I don’t take a stand on this, I’ll be caught at the end of the day.
Q: How far do you think marketers should go with this?
A: If you go into areas like politics, where suddenly politicians are going to use
[neuromarketing to sway opinions], I think that would be too much. If you start
communicating to kids and creating peer pressure—that whole psychology about,
‘I’m feeling le out if I’m not using this brand’—that’s where we’re going too far. It
has to be reevaluated from time to time, and I think you need to have an ethical
panel overseeing that.
Q: We’re just at the tip of the iceberg with neuromarketing. Do you think that its
adoption will be slowed because of the recession?
A: at’s a good question. You know, I don’t know. I’m a little bit biased here
because Buyology has created so much attention that I can’t feel that slowdown at
all. I feel exactly the opposite.
Right now, because of the recession, one of the most important tools to turn
your situation around is to understand consumer behavior—which several economists
have said is one of the key tricks. And to understand consumers better—
in particular, in a recession where you are highly irrational—is to understand the
subconscious mind.
So that’s the argument, and that’s the reason why the largest so drink manufacturers
and largest online sites and whatever are coming to us right now. It may
be that the smaller companies would be more hesitant because, in general, they
would not have a lot of funds to do research and so, for now, they are really sort
of skipping it. But certainly, the P&Gs of the world are seeing this totally
opposite. Certainly, the largest CPG companies—almost all of them—have
increased their budgets in neuromarketing over the last half year.
Q: What’s next for you? Do you plan to continue on with neuromarketing, or do
you have another move planned?
A: First of all, I’ve signed [on to write] my next book, so that will come out in
2011. … I have to be very honest with you right now: e problem is that I actually
signed the contract without knowing what the book is going to be about. …
And, actually, I was asked by a scientist the other day, ‘ is neuromarketing
thing, is it just a fad?’ I will promise you that everything I’ll do for the rest of my
life will use neuroscience because this is incredibly big. … is is not just another
tool. is is, I would claim, revolutionary in the research world.
Q: So, you think neuromarketing will change marketing and marketing research
as we know it. But if certain emotional triggers are shown to prompt certain
consumer behaviors, will marketing and advertising become more formulaic,
if everyone is turning to neuromarketing data as support?
A: I hope not, but I think there will be a trend of that, as there is with everyone
else. I think it will become a ‘ avor of the month’ [situation] because that’s how
we are as human beings.
But if you, for example, learn that storytelling is the No. 1 tool to engage people
and create a memory in our brain, which is exactly the case … that will probably
mean that there will be a lot of stories out there in the future. Is that formula?
Yeah, probably it is. Is that bad that suddenly there are more stories around things,
rather than just, ‘It’s 25% o !’ o ers? Well, you decide. I’d rather have the stories, to
be honest. …
I remember there were some people saying that every brand that had the ‘k’
sound like Kodak and Coke was a success so you needed to make sure there was a
‘k’ sound in your brand. And I’m sure you will hear that type of thing coming out
from some stupid person who suddenly creates the 16 rules of thumb you have to
follow. But that’s too bad.
Q: People will become very rich issuing those lists.
A: Yeah, you can imagine it. ‘16 Quick Tips to Create a Killer Marketing Budget
Based on Neuromarketing.’ at’s the title of my next book, right? Doubleday
will love it.
Want to hear more from Martin Lindstrom? Visit www.MarketingPower.com/
radio22509 to listen to is recent appearance on Marketing News Radio. m
“ I’m deeply surprised
about why there’s not more
ethical debate around this—
and slightly disappointed
about that, too.”
marketingnews 03.15.09 cover story
13
of television commercials. Most children wouldn’t know anything about
trademarks—or trademark infringement, for that matter—and very few would
have the wherewithal to start an ad agency before they hit their teen years. Let’s
just say that Martin Lindstrom was a unique child. “Or a screwed-up child. One of
the two,” Lindstrom says.
Now 38, having written ve books and helped launch seven advertising, branding
and digital companies, Lindstrom has set out to conquer one of the few frontiers
le in marketing research: the consumer’s subconscious mind. e Copenhagen,
Denmark, native published his latest book last year called Buyology: Truth and
Lies About Why We Buy in which he outlines the ndings from a global neuromarketing
study. He spent four years on this project, traveling the world to seek
out experts in brain science. He employed two forms of brain scan technology—
fMRI and SST—to get a more complete view of the brain. And then he wrote a very
simple book about a very complex topic.
“I’m not an expert in the brain and I’ll never be an expert in the brain. … at’s
really important for me to stress,” Lindstrom says. “But what I do know about is
people’s behavior, and that there are a lot of black holes in what we observe people
are doing, why they are doing it and what’s going on in the brain, and those are
some of the links I would like to draw.”
Lindstrom has become a bit of a media darling, appearing on NPR, BBC, and
NBC’s Today show, and in articles in e New York Times, e Washington Post and
Women’s Wear Daily, to name a few. And he already has signed on with publisher
Doubleday to write another book.
He now spends about 300 days each year traveling the world, giving speeches,
conducting studies and consulting with companies such as Disney, GlaxoSmith-
Kline, McDonald’s, Microso and Procter & Gamble. When Marketing News
caught up with him, he had just le Chicago for London and was departing for
Tokyo the next day—having spent not much more than a day at each stop. He took
a few hours out of his very hectic schedule to chat about neuromarketing and how
he thinks it will make marketers smarter and marketing budgets more e cient,
which will lead to fewer, better—and better-targeted—marketing messages.
Q: To start, let’s de ne neuromarketing in simple terms.
A: Neuromarketing, in my mind, is to use the latest brain science to better understand
the consumer’s behavior. … e general principle is discovering the uses of
technology in order to understand what is going on in our subconscious mind.
Q: With so much of marketing research being about deciphering what goes into
the rational and irrational choices we make, what’s the relationship between
neuromarketing and behavioral economics?
A: I think they’re very interlinked. When Christopher Columbus was discovering
America in 1492, he drew a map and the map was sort of inaccurate. But he did
discover that the planet was round … and he got on his way.
And that is, in principle, the way I see neuromarketing. It does shed some light
on the subconscious mind, which I estimate to [direct] about 85% of our daily
activities. … No matter if it is 90, 80 or 70% or even 50% for that matter, it is a heck
of a lot compared to the fact that today [advertisers] are communicating to no
more than 15 to 20% of our minds.
Now we have some tools, some highly advanced tools, that are enabling us not
only to observe people, but also to understand why people are doing what they’re
doing and to put some numbers behind it. … I think at the end of the day, maybe
10 years from now, we will have highly advanced experts who are basically just
asking what your problem is and then directing you in the right direction for the
tools you want to use.
Q: Beyond, sort of, broad-stroke ndings—like ‘product placements don’t work,’ as
you say in your book—what’s the practical application for marketers?
A: e rst step marketers should take is to realize that, most likely, most of the
research studies they’re doing right now are insu cient because the subconscious
mind is what’s driving [consumer behavior]. And then, if I were them, I’d rst look
into the media spend.
We did a fascinating study the other day where a beer commercial was placed
in three di erent TV programs—a soap opera, a documentary and a movie. When
it was placed in a soap opera, it gained an e ect that was double in comparison to
when it was in a documentary. We learned that context matters much more than
we thought in the past. … I think a little [investment in neuromarketing research]
to optimize your media spend is a very good start. …
I think the second thing they should go into is the R&D of new products.
irdly, they should look at the whole theory I have that the logo is not really that
important anymore. You need to hone indirect signals instead. en I would probably
look into messaging.
Q: Even though neuromarketing research could prevent costly mistakes, do
you think companies would be willing to make such a large investment in their
upfront research?
cover story
10
marketingnews 03.15.09
Mar tin Lindst rom
explores the last front ier
of marketing research:
the consumer’s
subconscious mind
BY ELISABETH A. SULLIVAN//STAFF WRITER
cover story
11
marketingnews 03.15.09
A: I think so. I work with 17 of the largest brands in the world today, and out of
those 17, 12 of them are using neuromarketing. … Of course, when it comes to
two blokes down the road, [the technology] is very far from their reach, right?
But one of the things I’m trying to do now is to say, ‘What intelligent insights
can we capture from the bigger studies conducted among the bigger brands and
then systemize them into some predictive data for smaller companies?’ … It may
be that your smaller company has certain challenges that we now have mapped
out as a classic situation, and just by understanding those, we can give you some
advice based on what we learned [through] neuromarketing without even starting
on the scanner. … And I think the technology is becoming incredibly cheap. It
may be that within two years from now, you can conduct some pretty nice studies
for $20,000 or $30,000.
Q: Some of the criticism that has been stirred up by your book centers around
whether or not it’s possible to connect how consumers react to an ad with their
subsequent purchase intent. In other words, can we really draw connections
between how someone perceives an ad and what purchase decisions she makes an
hour, a day or a week later?
A: It is, and we’ve actually done an experiment for this. I’ve opened a company in
New York called Buyology Inc. headed up by the former head of global strategy at
McKinsey, Gary Singer. At Buyology Inc., we have developed a range of di erent
experiments, and one of the experiments has been to link the purchase intent into
[the brain’s response to an ad].
For a major cosmetic product category, [the company] developed … a
45-second commercial. We then had a copy test attached to it, and the test was that
a er [subjects viewed the ad], we said to people: ‘Listen, hey, thank you so much
for your help. We actually want to give you a gi , so you’re going to a store where
we’ve put up a lot of product and you can choose whatever you want.’ It happened
to be that all of the products were in the cosmetic industry and, of course, the
brand we were testing was among those products. And there was an incredibly
strong correlation between the commercial and people’s choice of product. In fact,
[compared with the control group, the consumers who viewed the ad] were,
I think, 46% [more likely to buy the product].
Q: But let’s say there’s a delay. You see the ad, and then an hour later you get in
your car and drive to the mall, and you’re then faced with the purchase decision.
A: Would this have worked? Well, who knows? e only comment I would say is
that if people are likely to take the product, let’s say, half an hour a er they’ve done
this test, then I would say there is a good chance that some actually may also do
that a er two days. How big of a percentage is it? Well, I don’t know. But, certainly,
if you see an indication there, I don’t think it would totally disappear and people
would go into minus mode a er two days. … I can come up with a lot of arguments
as to why this wouldn’t hold now, but as I said, Christopher Columbus did
not draw the best world, but he realized the world was round.
Q: What do you think of the criticism that neuromarketing research is manipulative
because you’re learning too much about how consumers approach their buying
decisions? You’re probing into the last frontier of personal space.
A: Neuromarketing is [about] what is going on [in the brain], but you don’t nd
out why it’s going on. Do you learn too much? No, you don’t. at’s one of the
reasons why I wanted to write Buyology. at’s one of the reasons why I wanted to
do this experiment to nd out how far you can—and, most importantly, how far
you should—go.
Can you nd the buy button in consumers’ brains? Because that was the claim
that was put out in 2004 [when neuromarketing rst rose to the fore] and one of
the reasons why there’s so much ethical debate around this topic. And I learned
very quickly, no, you can’t do that. Not at all. …
Of course, there will be downsides for the consumer, but that’s also the reason
why I decided not to be that sneaky to write a book just for the marketing community,
but to write a book so even my mom can read it. My intention was to write
a book so, hopefully, the whole world could engage in a debate and say: ‘Are we
Marketers as
Mind Readers
Martin Lindstrom’s book, Buyology: Truth
and Lies About Why We Buy, raises some
interesting—and controversial—points about
how and why some marketing messages
succeed. Here are a few of the highlights:
• Product placements don’t work, unless the products in question
play an integral role in the storyline of a movie or television
show. “It has to be a lot slyer and more sophisticated
than simply plunking a series of random products on a screen
and expecting us to respond,” Lindstrom writes in Buyology.
For example, in the movie E.T., “Elliott didn’t just pop those
Reese’s Pieces into his mouth during a thoughtless bike ride
with his buddies; they were an essential part of the storyline
because they were used to lure E.T. from the woods.”
• Logos are far less powerful than more subtle—or subliminal—
messages. “The logo is regarded as king, the be-all and endall
of advertising,” Lindstrom writes. But in a study conducted
with smokers regarding smoking advertising, Lindstrom found
that logo-free images associated with the feeling and “coolness”
of smoking were much more powerful than explicit
smoking ads. One explanation is that “since the subliminal
images didn’t show any visible logos, the smokers weren’t
consciously aware that they were viewing an advertising
message, and as a result, they let their guard down,” he writes.
• Strong brands can inspire memories and emotion as powerfully
as religious symbols do. “When people viewed images
associated with the strong brands—the iPod, the Harley-
Davidson, the Ferrari and others—their brains registered the
exact same patterns of activity as they did when they viewed
the religious images,” Lindstrom writes of one study. “Bottom
line, there was no discernable difference between the way the
subjects’ brains reacted to powerful brands and the way they
reacted to religious icons and fi gures.”
“ I work with 17 of the largest
brands in the world today, and
out of those 17, 12 of them are
using neuromarketing.”
cover story marketingnews 03.15.09
12
going too far? And if we’re going too far, should we have regulations around this?’
Now, here’s the bad news on this one. e ethical debate has not appeared so far.
… ere’s been quite a lot of writing about it [but] I think about 6 to 6.5% has been
critical. … I’m deeply surprised about why there’s not more ethical debate around
this—and slightly disappointed about that, too.
I really want governments to take a stand on this, I want marketers to take a
stand on it and I want researchers to take a stand on it, and de ne how far we could
and should go. Should the tobacco industry be allowed to do this? Should certain
other product categories be allowed to do it? Should we be able to scan kids that
are under the age of 18? Should we be able to scan people who have a religious
purpose? How far do we go here?
Q: But did you overtly begin that debate in your book? I read the book, and I got
the impression that it was more about explaining the amazing power of neuromarketing
and all that marketers could accomplish by employing it.
A: Yeah, well, I [set up the debate] in the rst chapter, in the introduction.
Honestly, if you nd a Fortune, a Newsweek, a Business Week, a Wall Street Journal,
a New York Times, those types of publications raising the ethical issue as a
re ection on this, then I’d love to see it because I haven’t seen it. … I welcome
that [debate] a lot. And I would be the rst to stand up for a hearing and give my
view on how far I think people should go because, two reasons: First of all, I’m a
consumer, too, and I hate to be manipulated, believe me. And the second reason is
if I don’t take a stand on this, I’ll be caught at the end of the day.
Q: How far do you think marketers should go with this?
A: If you go into areas like politics, where suddenly politicians are going to use
[neuromarketing to sway opinions], I think that would be too much. If you start
communicating to kids and creating peer pressure—that whole psychology about,
‘I’m feeling le out if I’m not using this brand’—that’s where we’re going too far. It
has to be reevaluated from time to time, and I think you need to have an ethical
panel overseeing that.
Q: We’re just at the tip of the iceberg with neuromarketing. Do you think that its
adoption will be slowed because of the recession?
A: at’s a good question. You know, I don’t know. I’m a little bit biased here
because Buyology has created so much attention that I can’t feel that slowdown at
all. I feel exactly the opposite.
Right now, because of the recession, one of the most important tools to turn
your situation around is to understand consumer behavior—which several economists
have said is one of the key tricks. And to understand consumers better—
in particular, in a recession where you are highly irrational—is to understand the
subconscious mind.
So that’s the argument, and that’s the reason why the largest so drink manufacturers
and largest online sites and whatever are coming to us right now. It may
be that the smaller companies would be more hesitant because, in general, they
would not have a lot of funds to do research and so, for now, they are really sort
of skipping it. But certainly, the P&Gs of the world are seeing this totally
opposite. Certainly, the largest CPG companies—almost all of them—have
increased their budgets in neuromarketing over the last half year.
Q: What’s next for you? Do you plan to continue on with neuromarketing, or do
you have another move planned?
A: First of all, I’ve signed [on to write] my next book, so that will come out in
2011. … I have to be very honest with you right now: e problem is that I actually
signed the contract without knowing what the book is going to be about. …
And, actually, I was asked by a scientist the other day, ‘ is neuromarketing
thing, is it just a fad?’ I will promise you that everything I’ll do for the rest of my
life will use neuroscience because this is incredibly big. … is is not just another
tool. is is, I would claim, revolutionary in the research world.
Q: So, you think neuromarketing will change marketing and marketing research
as we know it. But if certain emotional triggers are shown to prompt certain
consumer behaviors, will marketing and advertising become more formulaic,
if everyone is turning to neuromarketing data as support?
A: I hope not, but I think there will be a trend of that, as there is with everyone
else. I think it will become a ‘ avor of the month’ [situation] because that’s how
we are as human beings.
But if you, for example, learn that storytelling is the No. 1 tool to engage people
and create a memory in our brain, which is exactly the case … that will probably
mean that there will be a lot of stories out there in the future. Is that formula?
Yeah, probably it is. Is that bad that suddenly there are more stories around things,
rather than just, ‘It’s 25% o !’ o ers? Well, you decide. I’d rather have the stories, to
be honest. …
I remember there were some people saying that every brand that had the ‘k’
sound like Kodak and Coke was a success so you needed to make sure there was a
‘k’ sound in your brand. And I’m sure you will hear that type of thing coming out
from some stupid person who suddenly creates the 16 rules of thumb you have to
follow. But that’s too bad.
Q: People will become very rich issuing those lists.
A: Yeah, you can imagine it. ‘16 Quick Tips to Create a Killer Marketing Budget
Based on Neuromarketing.’ at’s the title of my next book, right? Doubleday
will love it.
Want to hear more from Martin Lindstrom? Visit www.MarketingPower.com/
radio22509 to listen to is recent appearance on Marketing News Radio. m
“ I’m deeply surprised
about why there’s not more
ethical debate around this—
and slightly disappointed
about that, too.”
marketingnews 03.15.09 cover story
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