They know what you want
31 July 2004 by Emily Singer
WHY DO people who prefer the taste of Pepsi faithfully buy Coke? Will the
Catwoman movie trailer make you want to see the film? And are women
subconsciously drawn to the sight of a bikini-clad model hawking beer on
television?
Scientists and ad execs hope to unravel advertising mysteries like these
with neuromarketing - a new spin on market research, which shuns
customer surveys and focus groups in favour of technologies such as
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to peer directly into
consumers' brains. Though the technique has still to prove its credentials
with journal publications, a handful of consultants and companies have
already started spending their marketing budgets on scanner time.
The idea is to watch what goes on in people's brains when they see or
think about desirable and undesirable goods - a pair of Armani jeans
versus a supermarket's own brand, for example. Researchers hope to
learn about our hidden desires and preferences, and how to manipulate
them so companies can flog us more of their products. It conjures up
Orwellian images of commercials targeted to inflame our most secret
desires. Yet some analysts believe neuromarketing is a form of advertising
snake oil, a ploy to make marketers shell out millions for the latest bunch of
bells and whistles. Can neuromarketing truly see into the mind of the
consumer, or is it just a con?
Neuromarketing caught public attention by recreating a famous soda
pop conundrum inside a brain scanner: why is Coke more popular than
Pepsi when more people pick Pepsi in blind taste tests? Neuroimaging
expert Read Montague from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston,
Texas, scanned people's brains using fMRI as they blindly drank either
Coke or Pepsi and reported which tasted best. He found that a region
called the ventral putamen within the striatum lit up most strongly when
people drank their favourite soda. This area is known to be associated
with seeking reward. More people preferred Pepsi, just as the decades-old
challenge said.
But when people were told which soda they were drinking, their
preferences changed: more people chose Coke. And this time the brain
area that showed most activity was the medial prefrontal cortex, a spot
associated with higher cognitive processes. The results - which Montague
hopes to publish soon - showed that people make decisions based on
their memories or impressions of a particular soda, as well as taste. In the
advertising world, this "brand recognition" is one of the most sought-after
qualities advertisers attempt to engender.
While the experiment hasn't really thrown up any new marketing insights
yet, researchers hope this new approach might help them pin down what
this elusive brand recognition is all about. Clinton Kilts, a neuroscientist at
Emory University in Atlanta, says it's about making a person identify with an
object. He found the same prefrontal region that Montague identified lit
up whenever people look at pictures of things they love. He says the area
is associated with self-referential thinking. He now hopes to learn what sets
up these personal associations. "Say you love Ford Mustangs. Maybe that
comes from your family upbringing around Detroit, or the fact that it was
your first car," he says.
According to Steven Quartz, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, neuromarketing could also uncover
predilections we are unaware of. "Surveys are based on the assumption
that we accurately probe our own preferences," says Quartz. "But basic
science says that a lot of what underlies our preferences is unconscious."
From the advertisers' point of view, neuromarketing's strength is that it may
hit on subconscious biases that traditional advertising methods, such as
focus groups fail to uncover.
He is designing a neuroimaging package that will help movie studios
measure the success of their trailers. For example, he showed women a
trailer starring wrestler-turned-action hero "The Rock". In traditional surveys
women generally rate The Rock as unattractive, but their brain activity
says otherwise: areas associated with facial attractiveness light up when
women watch him on screen. Studios could use this information to try to
tweak the movie pitch towards women, Quartz says.
But while Quartz believes his technique will predict blockbusters much
better than surveys do, he still has to prove it. His group plans to test
neuromarketing against traditional questionnaires, as well as against
physiological measures that are much cheaper and easier to monitor
than brain responses, such as the galvanic skin response, which gives an
overall measure of arousal.
While scientists may be excited about the possibilities, neuromarketing has
many critics. Douglas Rushkoff, a New York author who often writes about
the advertising industry, doubts the technique will catch on. He describes
neuromarketing as an elaborate ploy. "I don't see success beyond their
ability to con marketers into giving them money," he says.
But others find the very idea frightening. Gary Ruskin, who runs consumer
champion Ralph Nader's Commercial Alert group based in Portland,
Oregon, says: "Even a small increase in advertising efficiency could boost
advertising-related diseases such as obesity." Ruskin has protested against
Kilts's work, which he did in collaboration with BrightHouse, a marketing
consultancy firm based in Atlanta and one of neuromarketing's leading
lights.
Making companies more moral
Caught between sceptics and downright opponents, Kilts and Joey
Reiman, BrightHouse's founder and CEO, claim that rather than predicting
an individual's shopping behaviour, neuromarketing will help them to
understand how people develop preferences. "Our goal is to change
company, not consumer, behaviour," says Reiman. He adds that this
philosophy could improve advertising ethics. "What if you could, for
example, show a company that their moral and ethical behaviour has a
bigger influence on consumer preference than the colour of their
packaging or current tag line?"
This responsible spin on neuromarketing may be more a reaction to
negative press than a genuine hope for a more moral advertising industry,
however. BrightHouse has recently changed its gung-ho approach,
erasing the term neuromarketing from their website and replacing it with
the blander "neurostrategies". And it has swapped an Orwellian logo of
two eyes piercing a brain with an innocuous picture of the BrightHouse
building.
The bottom line is that neuromarketing still has some way to go before it
can prove itself effective - either by uncovering our secret wishes or by
convincing companies that good behaviour sells. In the end, the
controversy may amount to nothing. In April, Montague tried to capitalise
on the neuromarketing buzz by organising a conference geared towards
marketing professionals. It was cancelled due to lack of interest.
Perhaps this is because the neuromarketers have yet to find what the
industry would really love: a signature brain pattern that predicts
consumer behaviour. Maybe they never will. "I don't think we have a buy
button," says Kilts. Quartz is perhaps nearest, with a plan to compare the
brain activity of people who liked a movie trailer and went to see the film
with those who liked it but stayed home. But even if such a thing is found,
Kilts doesn't think advertisers could manipulate it. "We're not that good
and the human brain isn't that stupid," he says.
31 July 2004 by Emily Singer
WHY DO people who prefer the taste of Pepsi faithfully buy Coke? Will the
Catwoman movie trailer make you want to see the film? And are women
subconsciously drawn to the sight of a bikini-clad model hawking beer on
television?
Scientists and ad execs hope to unravel advertising mysteries like these
with neuromarketing - a new spin on market research, which shuns
customer surveys and focus groups in favour of technologies such as
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to peer directly into
consumers' brains. Though the technique has still to prove its credentials
with journal publications, a handful of consultants and companies have
already started spending their marketing budgets on scanner time.
The idea is to watch what goes on in people's brains when they see or
think about desirable and undesirable goods - a pair of Armani jeans
versus a supermarket's own brand, for example. Researchers hope to
learn about our hidden desires and preferences, and how to manipulate
them so companies can flog us more of their products. It conjures up
Orwellian images of commercials targeted to inflame our most secret
desires. Yet some analysts believe neuromarketing is a form of advertising
snake oil, a ploy to make marketers shell out millions for the latest bunch of
bells and whistles. Can neuromarketing truly see into the mind of the
consumer, or is it just a con?
Neuromarketing caught public attention by recreating a famous soda
pop conundrum inside a brain scanner: why is Coke more popular than
Pepsi when more people pick Pepsi in blind taste tests? Neuroimaging
expert Read Montague from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston,
Texas, scanned people's brains using fMRI as they blindly drank either
Coke or Pepsi and reported which tasted best. He found that a region
called the ventral putamen within the striatum lit up most strongly when
people drank their favourite soda. This area is known to be associated
with seeking reward. More people preferred Pepsi, just as the decades-old
challenge said.
But when people were told which soda they were drinking, their
preferences changed: more people chose Coke. And this time the brain
area that showed most activity was the medial prefrontal cortex, a spot
associated with higher cognitive processes. The results - which Montague
hopes to publish soon - showed that people make decisions based on
their memories or impressions of a particular soda, as well as taste. In the
advertising world, this "brand recognition" is one of the most sought-after
qualities advertisers attempt to engender.
While the experiment hasn't really thrown up any new marketing insights
yet, researchers hope this new approach might help them pin down what
this elusive brand recognition is all about. Clinton Kilts, a neuroscientist at
Emory University in Atlanta, says it's about making a person identify with an
object. He found the same prefrontal region that Montague identified lit
up whenever people look at pictures of things they love. He says the area
is associated with self-referential thinking. He now hopes to learn what sets
up these personal associations. "Say you love Ford Mustangs. Maybe that
comes from your family upbringing around Detroit, or the fact that it was
your first car," he says.
According to Steven Quartz, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, neuromarketing could also uncover
predilections we are unaware of. "Surveys are based on the assumption
that we accurately probe our own preferences," says Quartz. "But basic
science says that a lot of what underlies our preferences is unconscious."
From the advertisers' point of view, neuromarketing's strength is that it may
hit on subconscious biases that traditional advertising methods, such as
focus groups fail to uncover.
He is designing a neuroimaging package that will help movie studios
measure the success of their trailers. For example, he showed women a
trailer starring wrestler-turned-action hero "The Rock". In traditional surveys
women generally rate The Rock as unattractive, but their brain activity
says otherwise: areas associated with facial attractiveness light up when
women watch him on screen. Studios could use this information to try to
tweak the movie pitch towards women, Quartz says.
But while Quartz believes his technique will predict blockbusters much
better than surveys do, he still has to prove it. His group plans to test
neuromarketing against traditional questionnaires, as well as against
physiological measures that are much cheaper and easier to monitor
than brain responses, such as the galvanic skin response, which gives an
overall measure of arousal.
While scientists may be excited about the possibilities, neuromarketing has
many critics. Douglas Rushkoff, a New York author who often writes about
the advertising industry, doubts the technique will catch on. He describes
neuromarketing as an elaborate ploy. "I don't see success beyond their
ability to con marketers into giving them money," he says.
But others find the very idea frightening. Gary Ruskin, who runs consumer
champion Ralph Nader's Commercial Alert group based in Portland,
Oregon, says: "Even a small increase in advertising efficiency could boost
advertising-related diseases such as obesity." Ruskin has protested against
Kilts's work, which he did in collaboration with BrightHouse, a marketing
consultancy firm based in Atlanta and one of neuromarketing's leading
lights.
Making companies more moral
Caught between sceptics and downright opponents, Kilts and Joey
Reiman, BrightHouse's founder and CEO, claim that rather than predicting
an individual's shopping behaviour, neuromarketing will help them to
understand how people develop preferences. "Our goal is to change
company, not consumer, behaviour," says Reiman. He adds that this
philosophy could improve advertising ethics. "What if you could, for
example, show a company that their moral and ethical behaviour has a
bigger influence on consumer preference than the colour of their
packaging or current tag line?"
This responsible spin on neuromarketing may be more a reaction to
negative press than a genuine hope for a more moral advertising industry,
however. BrightHouse has recently changed its gung-ho approach,
erasing the term neuromarketing from their website and replacing it with
the blander "neurostrategies". And it has swapped an Orwellian logo of
two eyes piercing a brain with an innocuous picture of the BrightHouse
building.
The bottom line is that neuromarketing still has some way to go before it
can prove itself effective - either by uncovering our secret wishes or by
convincing companies that good behaviour sells. In the end, the
controversy may amount to nothing. In April, Montague tried to capitalise
on the neuromarketing buzz by organising a conference geared towards
marketing professionals. It was cancelled due to lack of interest.
Perhaps this is because the neuromarketers have yet to find what the
industry would really love: a signature brain pattern that predicts
consumer behaviour. Maybe they never will. "I don't think we have a buy
button," says Kilts. Quartz is perhaps nearest, with a plan to compare the
brain activity of people who liked a movie trailer and went to see the film
with those who liked it but stayed home. But even if such a thing is found,
Kilts doesn't think advertisers could manipulate it. "We're not that good
and the human brain isn't that stupid," he says.
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