Mind reading- neuroscience and advertising

Advertisers have long been searching for the answer to what makes their consumers tick and how to get their message to be the most memorable and attractive. An article in Forbes by Melanie Wells called In Search of the Buy Button takes a look at the use of neuroscience by advertisers and market researchers.

Exerpt from the article: "So far, researchers are figuring out which brain states facilitate product recognition and choice; they're related to primal urges like those for power, sex and sustenance. As for brand loyalty, it turns out that memory and emotion play a big role.

'In the not-too-distant future, firms will be able to tell precisely if an advertising campaign or product redesign triggers the brain activity and neurochemical release associated with memory and action,' predicts James Bailey, professor of organizational behavior at George Washington University."

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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Dabitch's picture

Ew! Icky wires and electrodes, dark rooms and men in labcoats - just what we don't need, how about some actual common sense?
Will this end in the same way as James M. Vicarys Tachistoscope Subliminal advertising machine and simply pad the reseraches bank account before he takes off in a puff of myth? No it must be true, they use something called a electroencephalograph - it's gotta be good! :))

oooh, and look When researchers zero in on electrical activity in yet another area, they can tell which parts of commercial messages, if any, are encoded in the experimental subjects' long-term memories. - I bet this wil bring us leaps forward in curing memory dysfunction since they know so well where it resides and what it "records".

Oooops, I must have put sarcasm instead of sugar in my coffee. I'll try and read the article with a straight face now. Note that my prefrontal cortex is getting jumpy, it indicates instinctive revulsion to the idea. Must have woken up o the wrong side of my head.

Sport's picture

EEG?? They're using EEG for this and not a more accurate PET scan or something?

"People who are more likely to purchase a product show significantly higher memory encoding than those who are less likely"

well, that's pretty obvious innit? I'm glad they found use for those tools with the blinking lights - it produces results much like some regular common sense.

This takes the cake: "So far, researchers are figuring out which brain states facilitate product recognition and choice; they're related to primal urges like those for power, sex and sustenance." That statement said; nothing - in neuroscience speak. In laymans terms it's called bullshit.

Dabitch's picture

Creepy.