As more firms begin to explore commercial applications of neuromarketing, the lessons learned from these early experiments are being applied online as well - even as the space itself continues to develop.
Yet even as firms make $100 million campaign decisions based in part on these experiments, the industry itself is still very early days. There is no one standardized method to interpret and apply the results of these experiments - as well as the techniques themselves.
Two New Entrants
Bark Group Inc. in Denmark, for example, runs experiments in which videos are shown to participants and then their reactions gauged by tracing eye movements, detecting responses in the skin, and measuring reactions in the cortical region of the brain, thus enabling marketers to zero in on exactly which images, colors, sounds, and words elicit which emotional reactions in consumers.
Another firm that is pushing into this space is Buyology Inc., which draws insights from such analysis techniques as EMG, fMRI, eye tracking, galvanic skin response, EEG and reaction time. Their analysis also draws upon Buyology's database of more than 2,500 brain scans from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and China - the largest such database in the world it claims.
The companies agree on the fundamental premise underlying neuromarketing: that it helps uncover the subconscious role in marking a purchase. "Marketers have long known that thoughts and feelings drive consumer behavior," says CEO for Bark, Anders Hageskov. "With this advanced neurotechnology, we are leveraging science to target the emotional reactions that advertisers wish to arise in their consumers."
"The majority of purchase decisions are made at the non-conscious level, some 85%, but traditional marketing analysis depends upon research that focuses on the cognitive 15%," says Gary I. Singer, CEO and founding partner. "Traditional research alone does not yield the insights needed to understand how to segment consumers to brands, because these insights can only be realized by analyzing this non-conscious decision making process.
The Limits
There are limits to neuromarketing's ability to impact on advertising creativity, argues Bob Deutsch, cognitive anthropologist and founder of consulting firm Brain Sells. Neuromarketing technology can help to minimize the negative, he says.
"Fear and anxiety are what neuro-marketing technology is perfectly suited to measure, because it's hard-wired. However, it cannot help to maximize the positive."
Deutsch tells of a client that asked him to work with a company using brain wave activity, or measures of blood flow in the brain, to assess central nervous system response to certain advertisements and products - the idea being to bypass consumers' language and rational thought in the name of metrics, and its lookalike, objectivity.
"What I discovered was that no matter how good the scientists were at designing stimuli and reading fMRI results, the very best they could do for our client was to warn them what to eliminate from their ads. The advice garnered from peering under the consumer's skull could only suggest what not to do. Unfortunately, the data from their procedure could not help us to determine what to do to enhance an advertisement's effectiveness."
There is also a certain fear factor that has been overhyped in the media, according to a blog post at Neurosciencemarketing.com. "If it was possible to create a 30 second TV spot that would turn consumers into mindless drones, that feat would have been accomplished long ago. Neuromarketing studies may help tweak the appeal of some ads, and perhaps eliminate some totally ineffective ads, but simply aren’t going to turn ads into mind control devices."
Applied Online
Despite the varying opinions on the discipline's approach and efficacy, companies are forging ahead in using neuromarketing not only for discrete activities such as product development, but integrated campaigns that also reach online.
Yahoo, for example, tested a 60-second television commercial and online spot that featured happy, dancing people around the world with neuromarketers. The ad, part of Yahoo's new $100 million branding campaign, was aimed at enticing more users to use its search engine. (via Forbes).
Microsoft used neuromarketing data to measure how engaged gamers are when using an Xbox in order to sell more 30-second spots on Xbox games, Forbes also reported. Its experiments tracked which parts of the brain were stimulated by the ads. When several parts of the brain were excited, viewers were judged as more likely to go out and buy the product advertised.
