Podcast: Episode_001: Neuromarketing 101

You wanted an overview—here it is.

Neuromarketing—using scientific measurements of brain and nervous system activity to encourage consumers to buy specific things—is still in its infancy (the term was coined around 2002).

So why give a hoot about neuromarketing, and what the hell do I have to contribute? One question at a time.

Neuromarketing Rocks

You should care because neuromarketing is the biggest thing to hit marketing research and development since focus groups. It may be a toddler, but it is an unrivaled prodigy. Books on or related to the topic are top sellers, and neuromarketing expert and author Martin Lindstrom was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 influential people in the world for 2009.

Most marketers know squat about neuromarketing.

Why me? Because you can’t afford Martin. Because I’m in marketing, and I know that neuromarketing is becoming a critical tool in our work. Because I believe in providing helpful information to clients (and non-clients). And because I search for ways that neuromarketing might help all of us, and not just the folk who can afford to hire the big guns.

Also, there are some serious ethical concerns surrounding this young field. These fears, usually centered on the idea that marketers will be able to subliminally control buyers, are like a teenager’s bedroom: they need to be aired.

Neuromarketing tools

With the explosion of neuroscience, or the scientific study of the brain and nervous system, has come a better idea of how the mind works, and why we humans behave as we do. Neuroscience measures not what we say, which is notoriously unreliable, but on our body’s reactions—what we actually do.

Neuroscience’s measuring tools include:

• ƒMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), which measures changes in brain activity

• EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraphy), which measures activity in specific parts of the brain

• Sensors measuring heart rate, respiratory rate, the skin’s response to stimuli, and tracking eye movement

The goal of neuromarketing is the same as that of all other marketing efforts: to create products and services, and accompanying communications tools, that best motivate people to do certain things. What’s new is that, with neuromarketing tools, we get a much more reliable idea of what works and what doesn’t than was previously possible.

These tools offer insights, such as why we prefer Coke over Pepsi for example, and allow us to understand more fully why we do what we actually do, which is often different from what we say we will do. (That has been the primary pitfall of marketing’s traditional research tool, focus groups.)

Neuromarketing’s Cousin, Neuroeconomics

Neuroscience is being applied to lots of studies that have to do with human decision-making and behavior, especially in economics. As a result, a rich crossover between economics and marketing is growing. Wonderful book examples of this include Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner; and Predictably Irrational by Duke University professor of behavioral economics Dan Ariely. As you can guess, these insights into what people decide to do with their resources (money, time, and energy) are helpful for modern marketers.

Neuromarketing is big and getting bigger, which is to say it will become a standard in our business. It is already being used by the big boys and girls such as Frito-Lay, Google, Daimler, and the Weather Channel. But the real question to ponder is: when are you going to get on board?

The Explosion of Neurological Knowledge

I finished Descartes Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto on the same day that I banged heads with my standard poodle Dudley. I was left dazed and my eyebrow swollen and bloodied. From Dudley, I mean, but the book and bump left me thinking of Phineas Gage.

Back in 1848, Gage was tamping gunpowder into rock when the explosive ignited, sending all 3-feet and 7-inches of tamping rod through his left cheek and out the top of his head (children, don’t try this at home). Gage was taken to a doctor, where he coughed out some brain (honest) and set to healing. He lived another eleven years.

Gage probably hacked up his left frontal lobe, a portion of the brain that is involved with personality and behavior. Friends soon described him as “no longer Gage,” meaning amiable Phineas was replaced by unmannered Gage, though he did appear to improve over time. The case got 19th-century thinkers pondering if brain functions were localized. They are, and so Gage became a fixture in the obscure curricula of neurology.

Just as the saga of Descartes’ skeletal remains are a metaphor for the debate over dualism, so Gage becomes a metaphor for the popularization of neurology. In Descartes case, his skull was stolen. It became separated from the rest of his remains, eerily paralleling dualism’s mind-body split.

In neurology, the last decade has been an explosion of discovery. The next will prove even more mind expanding. Just one example: Henry Markram, Director of the Project Blue Brain reports today that “we are 10 Years Away From a Functioning Artificial Human Brain.” It blows the top off, so to speak, of what was known before, creating popular layperson interest—like with this blog.

Thus, it only seems fateful and fitting, that collectors Jack and Beverly Wilgus discovered this year, and announced just this month, that they possess the first ever verified photographic image of Gage (above). The birth of neurology now has a face.

I’m not sure what you can take from this vis-à-vis branding and marketing. I just love the story and the metaphor. I’m still trying to discover, though, if my tête-à-tête with Dudley might mean more than met the eye.