"What it really does is give unprecedented insight into the consumer mind. And it will actually result in higher product sales or in brand preference or in getting customers to behave the way they want them to behave," --- BrightHouse executive, Adam Koval, in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company.
Should we be worried? Are "neuromarketers" looking for some hidden "on" switch that will turn us all into mindless consumer zombies? The exact shade of blue at the exact number of oscillations per second that induces an uncontrollable response, akin to that one Magic Spot on a dog's butt that, when scratched, starts its hind leg twitching spasmodically? Are they looking for our Magic Spot? Let's hear what Bill Miller, President of Brighthouse, has to say:
""There is no magic area of the brain that is the 'buy button." We are not in the business of using this to tweak products or advertising so people will be drawn in. Our business is to understand consumers, to give businesses a better relationship with consumers, to supply better products and brands for the consumer."
If it seems a bit strange for the President of an ad agency saying they are not in the business of tweaking products or advertising to make them more desirable, allow me to translate this statement from business-ese:
"We have not, as yet, discovered the "buy button," but it sure as hell ain't from lack of trying. And you can bet your sweet ass that if we do find it, we ain't be holding a freakin' press conference about it, especially after that that moron Koval's CBC interview debacle! You wanna know if we've found the buy button? Go look in your cupboard! Is it full of Southern Comfort, Coca-Cola, Pepperidge Farms cookies and Jack Daniels bottles that you DON'T REMEMBER BUYING? That would be a pretty good indication that we've found the motherf***ing buy button!"
At least that's how I hear what he's saying. And I'm inclined to believe him. Could these people use their brain scanning technology and preference studies to create ad campaigns that you would find irresistable? Well, probably, provided A: You willingly let them perform a battery of tests on you to determine your unconscious preferences, and B: Companies could afford to roll out multi-million dollar ad campaigns aimed solely at you. Because the thing is, the Magic Spot is in a slightly different place on every dog. And it takes millions of wildly twitching hind legs to make an advertising campaign worthwhile.
Neuromarketing is basically just a further refinement of a process that's been going on for a long time, and the goal of this process has always been to craft persuasive messages that, to adopt the parlance of the neuromarketers, bypass the skeptical filters in the prefrontal cortex and go right for the hot-headed amygdala. Researchers now know that if the amygdala is lighting up like a Christmas tree then it probably means that the subject is going to react more or less like a monkey would in the same situation.
Since the prefrontal cortex is undeveloped in children and tends to atrophy in the elderly, this makes those groups particularly sensitive to emotional manipulation. So if your ad campaign targets children, the senile and monkeys, you're in business. Otherwise you may have to work a little harder. After all, thousands of other ad campaigns are competing for the attention of that same senile infant monkey that lives inside all of us.
A lot of people have pointed out that having a media that is owned and operated by corporations with a vested interest in getting viewers to react like monkeys may not always be in the public's best interest. Like when that public is relying on said media to provide it with the information necessary to make informed choices:
"...subjects from both parties tend to show emotional reactions to all the candidates, indicated in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain above the nose associated with reflexive reactions ... but when they see the other party's candidate, there is more activity in the rational part of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It seems as if they're really identifying with their own candidate, whereas when they see the opponent, they're using their rational apparatus to argue against him, Iacoboni said."
---From a New York Times Article about FKF Research, a company doing research on the effectiveness of political ads using neural imaging technology, entitled "Using M.R.I.'s To See Politics On the Brain"
By John Tierney, reprinted here
A friend told me recently of a conversation he had with a co-worker. The man was an immigrant from Germany, well-educated and, by my friend's account, extremely fluent in English. The man was expressing doubts about John Kerry's fitness for office:
"I don't know. He seems like a flip-flopper."
My friend then asked him if he had ever used that expression in any other context. He responded that no, he had not.
Jackpot!
Posted by flamingbanjo at October 29, 2004 11:19 AM