"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!
Part 1 Pachinko
"BrightHouse Neurostrategies™ Group was founded in 2001 to develop the next important evolution in market research by harnessing the power of modern scientific approaches in ways that can deliver unprecedented consumer insights.
Our team is uniquely positioned to integrate marketing expertise with the most advanced neuroscientific research capabilities and understanding of how the brain thinks, feels and motivates behavior."*
*From their Website
It was not Damasio’s contention that emotion played a much greater role in decisions than was generally supposed that was revolutionary (after all, philosophers and cynics have been pointing this out at least as far back as Socrates,) but rather the development of methods for observing and quantifying these responses. The idea of using MRI (or fMRI, for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) technology to correlate data gathered in psychological tests with data on brain activity allowed researchers to bypass the most unreliable aspects of psychological testing.
MRI works by using magnetic pulses to track the flow of blood inside the brain. By noting which areas show increased blood flow researchers can infer which parts of the brain are active at a given moment. Parallel advances in computer 3D imaging have resulted in modern MRI devices being able to track these changes in real time, allowing them to be used in standard interview-type testing.
For example, researchers at Caltech in Pasadena conducted a two-person experiment that involved playing an investment game. Both players were given $10 at the beginning of the game. Over ten rounds, one player made all decisions about investing. The other player’s only role was to decide how the money was to be divided. The investor could kill the whole deal at any time if they felt the money was being divided unfairly.
This experiment is designed to illustrate how emotions can override reason; From a coldly logical perspective, the investor knows that walking away from the game with any money is a net gain. Yet many subjects will actually walk away with nothing to spite a greedy partner. The researchers have been able to predict with %70 accuracy what the outcome will be based on the MRI data. Lots of activity in the prefrontal cortex indicates that the subject is evaluating the situation logically and is therefore likely to accept an unfair deal that is better than nothing at all. Conversely, activity in the anterior insula, where feelings of disgust and nausea are believed to originate, usually signals that the subject is ready to walk rather than accept an unfair deal.
"Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a safe, non-invasive technique that allows us to locate and quantify brain activity associated with thoughts, feelings and action. It can also be carried out rapidly (an experiment typically lasts only a few minutes and a whole session less than an hour). Subjects lie in an MRI scanner and are then exposed to sensory stimuli (e.g. pictures of different brand extensions, or different combinations of tastes and smells) or might be asked to carry out a task (e.g. rate how happy you feel after each trial; try and remember as many of these images as possible). When a part of the brain becomes active, the brightness of the images changes. By analysing the images using sophisticated computer programmes, we can quantify and localise brain activity in areas involved in emotion, attention, memory and decision-making. The excellent spatial and temporal resolution of fMRI also helps us to determine to what extent the pleasure centres in the brain are activated when consumers interact with particular products, ads and packaging. "*
*From the Neurosense Website
So why would someone lose money rather than accept a raw deal? Apparently the need for fairness is primal, and very strong in primates (such as humans) with a strong evolutionary bent towards social behavior. Similar experiments performed on monkeys, in which the monkeys were offered a reward while witnessing other monkeys receiving more desirable rewards, showed the monkeys reacting in much the same way as the investors who walked away; The monkeys refused the inferior reward rather than accept an unfair exchange. Researchers relate this behavior to a deep-seated fear of a loss in social status.
Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas performed it themselves, and found that a majority of subjects preferred Pepsi in a blind taste test. When they were informed beforehand which drink they were being given, a large majority preferred Coke. In the first instance, brain activity was concentrated in the ventral putamen, believed to be one of the brain's "reward centers." In the second, when subjects were ostensibly considering the "brand identity" of the beverage, activity occurred in the hippocampus (associated with memory) and the medial prefrontal cortex, which is associated with one's sense of self. It is the medial prefrontal cortex that lights up when subjects are asked if words like "courageous" or "trustworthy" apply to them.
"…Kilts stabbed his finger at another glowing yellow dot near the top of the brain. It was the magic spot -- the medial prefrontal cortex. If that area is firing, a consumer isn't deliberating, he said: he's itching to buy. "At that point, it's intuitive. You say: 'I'm going to do it. I want it.' "
Dr. Clinton Kilts, Brighthouse Luminary and Director of Emory University's Center for Neuroimaging Research, quoted in
this New York Times Article, reprinted on Cognitive Liberty's site.
....Cherry!
The token comes in through the slot and the steel balls start their journey down the chute...
I once took a class on marketing that stated that a person must hear a brand name an average of four times to remember it and nine times to act on it. Nine repetitions before that little ball pachinkos down into the subconscious and starts to do its work. I think about this a lot.
Because people don't act on the information in advertising while they're still conscious of having heard it. The idea is that one day you'll be walking through the store and you'll see the product on the shelf and somehow, without knowing exactly why, a tiny hidden urge will prompt you to reach out for the product and put it in your cart. Advertising works best when you don't realize that it's working.
Down the chute and into the pins they travel. The house and gravity always win.
Back in the early nineties, a neurologist named Antonio Damasio was doing research at the University of Iowa performing tests on patients who had suffered damage to different areas of their brains. Thanks to recent advances in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) detailed mapping of different brain areas and their functions was available, and diagnoses of which areas were damaged could be made with a high degree of accuracy. What Damasio did was perform psychological tests on patients with various types of brain damage to try to determine what role different areas of the brain played in decision-making. What he uncovered was something that con men have known for millennia: The "feeling" parts of the brain play a central role in even the simplest decisions.
A little background: There are parts of the brain that humans have in common with all other vertebrates. Generally speaking, the later evolutionary additions to the brain are on the outer layers of the physical structure; the cerebral cortex or neocortex. In the ice cream sundae of the brain, the cortex is the whipped cream and cherry on top. This is the part of the brain most associated with reasoning and the so-called "higher" functions. While other mammals may have neocortices, humans (and, oddly, certain marine mammals) have extraordinarily large and well developed ones, and this big fancy cortex has been credited with the things humans are good at and animals aren’t, things like language, tool manipulation, logic and reasoning.
The functions performed here also constitute the bulk of the mental processes that people ordinarily have conscious access to, that is to say we know what we are thinking and can, with effort, follow a line of thought from beginning to end. Which is why interview-style psychological testing tends to overemphasize the role these areas play in ordinary decision-making. People tend to attribute their decisions to reasoned processes when questioned after the fact, but Damasio’s research told a different story.
What he found was that feelings acted as a shortcut in the process. Long before any kind of rational weighing of the options could occur , feelings associated with prior experiences informed the outcome. Damasio called these "somatic markers," emotions such as fear, delight or dread that often manifested as physical sensations – a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, a giddy excitement , a cold shiver of anticipation. Through these visceral reactions, subjects were able to make decisions based on their "gut instinct." Patients who had suffered damage to feeling centers of the brain such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortices, near the brain stem, found decision-making extremely difficult. Having to rationally address every decision down to the "paper or plastic" level of minutia proved to be debilitating.
Damasio suggests the example of Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer (who described killing as "a career") as an extreme example of what a completely cold and calculating mind is capable of, absent any of the feelings that mitigate such antisocial tendencies in most people.
What Damasio had also done, without realizing it, was opened the door to a novel method for studying human behavior. Others with various goals would soon pick this up and run with it.
Against all odds, a ball finds its way into a bonus slot and Bells! Are! Ringing! The display lights up: Cherry! Cherry!…..
So on the first weekend of October the theatre met over here and as usual, when they left there were lots of leftovers. Which is generally a good thing, except that that it often leads to a situation like the one I find myself in right now, where there is very little actual food in the fridge, but there are two tupperware containers filled with these sort of circus-colored cupcakes. They are extremely festive but have that sort of too-pretty-to-actually-be-food kind of look about them. Which is probably why they've survived until now.
When there's no real food in the house and I find myself contemplating a nine-day-old cupcake that looks like the carousel at Coney Island it starts to feel like possibly I've gone insane. Like I'm a little kid who has been left to fend for himself and decided to live on nothing but cupcakes and root beer.
Sometime I think I can hear the cupcakes calling to me, imploring me in their plaintive little cupcake voices to please eat them. It ain't right, I tell you.
From the Beginning
Part 4:
After something like five hours of cumulative browsing time at Powell's Books, all I have to show for it is a book on guitar technique that I could have bought anywhere. The fact is, I’m really more of a browser than a buyer. The kind of customer that drives shopkeepers crazy.
This might apply to more than just shopping, now that I think about it.
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I have the afternoon to kill in Portland so after the aforementioned trip to Powell’s and lots of just wandering around the Pearl district (yes, there really is a Chinese restaurant called Hung Far Lo!) I decide to check in to the festival’s artist liaison center ( or whatever the hell they call it) for some free internet access. I check my email, send some quick replies and then decide to mosey on over to the blog, only to find that , thanks to a posting on Joshua's blog, a bunch of his regular commenters have come over to argue about politics. I realize that I have neither the time nor energy at this current juncture to debate somebody who thinks that the economy hasn’t gotten any worse over the last four years. I start trying to do some research to back up my points before it occurs to me that A:Unless I can find statistics from the Heritage Foundation’s website saying that employment is at an all-time low, and B: somehow, in the next twenty to thirty minutes (my calculation of how long I can stay at this borrowed computer station without being a terminal hog), work it into a carefully nuanced argument of such unimpeachable logic that it will convince a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who has known for at least the last four years who he was going to support for president that maybe he should reconsider, I am really just wasting everybody’s time. And "logout" is just one button click away.
So much for politics. . How does Josh have the patience for this?
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In Union Station, waiting for the 6:15 train back to Seattle, sitting on a long wooden bench that looks like nothing so much as a church pew, I am admiring the early twentieth century architecture of the place, marble columns and high corniced atrium and false arches and such, while trying to not stare at the girl sitting on the bench just perpendicular to me. She is waifish, shoulder-length dark hair and big dark eyes, dark blue jacket, black jeans and black Converse high tops. Art student? Plainly way too young for any real-world romance, but this is just a train station crush. This is just a way to pass the time while waiting for trains or buses or airplanes to arrive.
She is either drawing in her sketchbook or writing in her journal, much like I am. I find myself wondering if some description of me will find its way into whatever document she is creating of this experience, and if so whether it will contain the word "creepy."
The train ride home is not nearly as interesting as the ride to Portland, given that it’s dark outside for most of its duration and this time there is no Diabolical Mr. J to help pass the time. There is another lovely young college student sitting directly opposite me, but she really eliminates her suitability for train-ride crush with the cell phone conversation in which I overhear her describe a friend’s attempt to set her up with a man several years my junior as "gross." I hate cell phones.
The movie(!) on this trip is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and even though I decline to purchase the headphones, I watch it almost in its entirety (minus one trip to the Bar Car) without sound. Apparently it features werewolves of some sort.
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The train lets me off in what I now realize is, at night, probably Seattle’s scariest neighborhood. I put on my best "don’t fuck with me" demeanor, which I have no doubt is pretty hilarious to any outside observer, and make my way across six blocks of outdoor homeless encampments and open-air drug markets to my bus stop. For years when I lived in sketchy neighborhoods my defense mechanism was looking like I didn’t have anything worth taking, which works surprisingly well. I would frequently leave my hoopty car unlocked on the street, so crackheads didn’t have to break a window to find out that the stereo wasn’t worth stealing.
But carrying the guitar sort of punctures this, as people on the street can’t seem to resist asking either A: "Can I play your guitar?" (which sounds, to my ear, suspiciously like "Can I hold your guitar hostage while I annoy the hell out of everyone within earshot?"), B: "Can I see your guitar?"(which sounds like "Can I hold your wallet?") or C: "Hey! Play us a tune!" (Which isn’t so bad, I guess, but really people: If you see a carpenter walking down the street with his toolbelt on, do you ask him if he wants to stop and hammer in a few nails just for the hell of it?)