NEUROMARKETING

Alex Bulloch

What is it?

Tech

Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing that studies consumers’ neurological response to marketing stimuli. Researchers use technologies such as fMRI to measure changes in activity in parts of the brain, EEG and Steady state topography (SST) to measure activity in specific regional spectra of the brain response, and/or sensors to measure changes in one’s physiological state (heart rate, respiratory rate, galvanic skin response) to learn why consumers make the decisions they do, and what part of the brain is telling them to do it.

It is a deep look into the consumer’s subconscious so that commercials can be tailor made for specific groups of people to better sell a product or idea. You may not like Coca Cola, but in a Coke commercial the imagery is so compelling that you’re dopamine receptors and reward-related neurons fire off and give you a craving for a soda.

FMRI - functional magnetic resonance imaging: a form of magnetic resonance imaging of the brain that registers blood flow to functioning areas of the brain.

EEG - Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp.

SST - Steady State Topography measures variations in the delay (latency) between the stimulus and the person’s response over extended periods of time.

The base of neuromarketing is the “meme.” The meme is a unit of information stored in the brain. These units are effective influencing human who is making choices and decisions within 2.6 seconds. If the “meme” is chosen properly we remember the good joke or song and will share it.

Examples of memes: Aromas of fresh bread, sweets, grandmother’s pie; Characters in fairy tales, melodies that cannot be out of head. Thus neuromarketers examine people (brain scan, revealing subconscious motives) and manipulate them.

How is this Translated?

LimitationsThe equipment used has very accurate readings on brain activity, but it is not a mind-reader.

EEGs, for example, can be used to determine whether a person is engaged, but not to decipher the nuances of that engagement. That means that neuromarketing may distinguish whether a person’s emotional response is positive or negative, but not whether the positive response is awe or amusement.

Nature vs Nurture Psychology

Many of our characteristics are traits we inherited through our DNA. Many other characteristics, however, are learned as we grow up. Because of the vastly different cultures around the world and the specific unique experiences each of us has, our response to an image or idea will vary.

• 67 people had their brains scanned while being given the “Pepsi Challenge”, a blind taste test of Coca Cola and Pepsi.

• Pepsi produced a stronger response than Coke in the brain’s ventromedial prefrontal cortex for over half of the subjects. This part of the brain is a region that processes feelings of reward.

Then they did the test again - this time telling the subjects which soda they were drinking

• When the subjects were told they were drinking Coke three quarters said that Coke tasted better. Their brain activity had also changed.

• The lateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that scientists say governs high level cognitive powers, and the hippocampus, an area related to memory, were now being used, indicating that the consumers were thinking about Coke and relating it to memories and other impressions.

• The results demonstrated that Pepsi should have half the market share, but in reality consumers are buying Coke for reasons related less to their taste preferences and more to their experience with the Coke brand.

This study confirmed that through neuromarketing we can start to understand how brand loyalty is developed and how to stimulate parts of the brain related to decision making. Coca Cola did not create a better product than pepsi, rather they accessed more sophisticated parts of the brain in their campaigns.

Coke vs Pepsi

Google’s Ad “Parisian Love” http://youtu.be/nnsSUqgkDwU

Reptilian

Occipital

The Reptilian lobes have no sense of space. They exert more influance over the brain than the “logical cortexes” because they are in charge of survival instincts.

The occipital is in charge of visual memory. We have all clicked a link on google before, and seeing it happen causes us to link what we see to the memory of doing it ourselves.

TemporalThe temporal lobes are in charge of audio recognition and linking that audio to an emotion. In Google’s ad, the music rises and dips in volume with the story, Causing us to connect emotionally to the story.

By the end of the ad, each part of our subconscious has been activated. The subconscious is where brand loyalty is developed and where 90% of our decision-making happens. Whether you know it or not, by the end of this comemrcial, you’ve “bought in” to the product.

Conscious Subconscious

Feedback

What’s Next?

So far the feedback I have gotten from fellow students has been generally the same. In the initial stages of my thesis, the project was very heavy on research and information. When presenting the project to classmates the general consensus was that it was an “information overload.”

In order to alleviate some of the strain on the “logical cortexes” that are in charge of processing information, I started to work on illustrations that would visually describe the science of neuromarketing. Here you can see I began to break down a Google ad which used neuromarketing and I described each step with an illustration.

After I complete my illustrations and have them edited and refined to a point where they are both aesthetically pleasing and communicate the information concisely, I will begin the next stage of the project. For the next stage I plan on working more on the format of how I will present my thesis. Currently I am considering a video format, a slideshow format, a book format, or a combination of the three.

In the later stages of this project I hope to analyze more ads like Google’s “Parisian Love” ad and ideally I hope to be able to gather enough information to construct my own “neuromarketing ad.”