Podcast: Synaptic Branding 002: You Put a Spell on Me
Making too much of neuroscience in marketing?
“John,” Charlie said, leaning toward me over his Smithwick’s ale, “beware of making too much of neuroscience and marketing.”
I dropped an onion ring in my lap, missing my napkin and greasing my pants. I cursed. Charlie Butter is an old friend, but more to the point he is emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan. He knows what he is talking about in matters of the mind.
“So, like, is my blog invalid?” I asked, dabbing at my leg.
“Well,” he said with a smile, “not yet.”
Why marketers love neuroscience
Much of the reason for marketing’s interest in neuroscience lies with ƒMRIs, or functional magnetic resonance imaging. ƒMRIs are done by a machine that looks like a giant toilet turned on its side. It measures the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain. Their images and the studies based on them are a revealing window into the brain. In many ways they are more trustworthy than the conventional marketing tool for gathering information, focus groups. Focus groups have their place, but opinions can be influenced by group dynamics, and people don’t always tell the truth. A man in a focus group might say he is not interested in the photo of a woman in a bikini, but an ƒMRI following his blood flow, as it were, might show otherwise.
So what’s the problem?
Charlie thinks that people are too often seduced by the colorized mind maps generated by fMRIs, and are making too much of them. When a region of the brain lights up at the sight of Coca-Cola it could just mean the person is thirsty, and not that they like or don’t like the brand, explains Paul Zak of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies at Claremont Graduate University. And Yale’s Paul Bloom agrees. The issue hit a new high this year with MIT’s Ed Vul et. al.’s paper “Puzzlingly High Correlations in ƒMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition”, better known as “voodoo correlations.” The authors of some of the studies they criticized were not happy. Some offered rebuttals. Vul et. al. re-rebutted, and so on.
Vul et. al. were not just concerned about spurious data-reading on behalf of other scientists, but were also worried about how the media interprets their data. There is concern that neuroscience is powerful enough to lead to mind control; that is the ultimate, long-standing fear about the marriage of marketing and science. Earlier this year, as the voodoo correlations debate was heating up, CBS’s 60 Minutes did a piece called “Reading Your Mind.” Watchdog group Commercial Alert is concerned that science-savvy marketers are close to discovering the brain’s “buy” button, the result of which would be mass consumer addiction.
It’s not mind control, but still useful
Yet the truth is that marketers only dream of having such domination. For all of marketers’ “sophistication, subtlety, vast resources, and ubiquity, advertising faces enormous challenges to the objective of influencing sales,” reports the Journal of Advertising in “Ad skepticism: the consequences of disbelief.” In the end, marketers are still persuaders, not controllers.
But they can be better persuaders. Tim Ambler, senior fellow in marketing at London Business School, reviews the fundamental cautions surrounding neuroscience and marketing (for instance, that marketers keep trying to create rational plans about purchasing, which is inherently not rational), and reminds us that neuroscience is doing a great job of understanding consumers better and of revamping traditional research models. The American Marketing Association article “Using fMRI to Inform Research” notes that cognitive market research is best when paired with other data, such as purchasing behavior and eye tracking.
In truth, there is some danger in making too much of neuroscience in marketing, but the “voodoo correlation” debate will not change that. Neuroscience is too interesting and promising. There will be plenty to blog about, and more pints with Charlie.
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You Put a Spell on Me
Podcast: Synaptic Branding 002: You Put a Spell on Me
Making too much of neuroscience in marketing?
I dropped an onion ring in my lap, missing my napkin and greasing my pants. I cursed. Charlie Butter is an old friend, but more to the point he is emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan. He knows what he is talking about in matters of the mind.
“So, like, is my blog invalid?” I asked, dabbing at my leg.
“Well,” he said with a smile, “not yet.”
Why marketers love neuroscience
Much of the reason for marketing’s interest in neuroscience lies with ƒMRIs, or functional magnetic resonance imaging. ƒMRIs are done by a machine that looks like a giant toilet turned on its side. It measures the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain. Their images and the studies based on them are a revealing window into the brain. In many ways they are more trustworthy than the conventional marketing tool for gathering information, focus groups. Focus groups have their place, but opinions can be influenced by group dynamics, and people don’t always tell the truth. A man in a focus group might say he is not interested in the photo of a woman in a bikini, but an ƒMRI following his blood flow, as it were, might show otherwise.
So what’s the problem?
Charlie thinks that people are too often seduced by the colorized mind maps generated by fMRIs, and are making too much of them. When a region of the brain lights up at the sight of Coca-Cola it could just mean the person is thirsty, and not that they like or don’t like the brand, explains Paul Zak of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies at Claremont Graduate University. And Yale’s Paul Bloom agrees. The issue hit a new high this year with MIT’s Ed Vul et. al.’s paper “Puzzlingly High Correlations in ƒMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition”, better known as “voodoo correlations.” The authors of some of the studies they criticized were not happy. Some offered rebuttals. Vul et. al. re-rebutted, and so on.
Vul et. al. were not just concerned about spurious data-reading on behalf of other scientists, but were also worried about how the media interprets their data. There is concern that neuroscience is powerful enough to lead to mind control; that is the ultimate, long-standing fear about the marriage of marketing and science. Earlier this year, as the voodoo correlations debate was heating up, CBS’s 60 Minutes did a piece called “Reading Your Mind.” Watchdog group Commercial Alert is concerned that science-savvy marketers are close to discovering the brain’s “buy” button, the result of which would be mass consumer addiction.
It’s not mind control, but still useful
Yet the truth is that marketers only dream of having such domination. For all of marketers’ “sophistication, subtlety, vast resources, and ubiquity, advertising faces enormous challenges to the objective of influencing sales,” reports the Journal of Advertising in “Ad skepticism: the consequences of disbelief.” In the end, marketers are still persuaders, not controllers.
But they can be better persuaders. Tim Ambler, senior fellow in marketing at London Business School, reviews the fundamental cautions surrounding neuroscience and marketing (for instance, that marketers keep trying to create rational plans about purchasing, which is inherently not rational), and reminds us that neuroscience is doing a great job of understanding consumers better and of revamping traditional research models. The American Marketing Association article “Using fMRI to Inform Research” notes that cognitive market research is best when paired with other data, such as purchasing behavior and eye tracking.
In truth, there is some danger in making too much of neuroscience in marketing, but the “voodoo correlation” debate will not change that. Neuroscience is too interesting and promising. There will be plenty to blog about, and more pints with Charlie.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download