Nancy Pekala is the AMA's Director of Online Content and the Editor of Marketing Matters
It’s been more than 35 years since Wilson Bryan Key alerted consumers that the word sex was printed on Ritz crackers and was embedded in the ice cubes of a drink shown in a popular Gilbey’s Gin ad. In his signature book, Subliminal Seduction, Key claimed that while the embedded words are not consciously perceived, they are unconsciously perceived and can elicit sexual arousal which in turn makes the products more attractive to consumers.
Since then, both the marketing and science industries have come a long way in learning how consumers’ unconscious minds influence how they buy. Martin Lindstrom, a marketing expert who advises senior executives at Fortune 100 companies, partnered with Oxford University researchers and launched a major neuromarketing study. The three-year effort costing more than $7,000,000 and using the fMRI and SST neuro-imaging technologies involved scientists scanning the brains of more than 2,000 people as they were exposed to various marketing and advertising strategies including product placements, subliminal messaging, iconic brand logos, health and safety warnings and provocative product packaging.
Lindstrom revealed the results of the study and its impact on the future of marketing and advertising in his new book Buy●ology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. During a recent AMA Radio Show, Lindstrom explained that nearly 90% of consumer purchasing decisions take place at the unconscious level. Neuromarketing aims to understand what directs consumers buying decisions by examining their brain responses.
“When we walk down an aisle in a grocery store, our purchasing decisions are made in less than 4 seconds,” Lindstrom said. “There is no way we can think about that in a complete way. Those decisions take place in the subconscious part of the brain.”
Mirror Neurons at Work
One key concept driving neuromarketing is a function in the brain known as “mirror neurons”. Referred to as the DNA for psychology, the mirror neuron sheds new light on consumer behaviors—from why a smile from a salesperson can compel us to spend more money to why we’re driven to shop ‘til we drop.
Mirror neurons fire in our brains when an action is being performed and when that same action is being observed. This “monkey see, monkey do” behavior explains why people unwittingly imitate others’ behaviors.
Lindstrom related a real-world example of mirror neurons at work. One day in 2004, Steve Jobs was walking down Madison Avenue and noticed that everywhere people were sporting the white, signature earphones of his recently launched iPod. They were dangling from people’s ears, hanging out of backpacks and peeking out of pockets and purses. Jobs is quoted as saying, “Oh, my God, it’s starting to happen.”
“When we see a pair of unusual earphones sticking out of someone else’s ears, our mirror neurons trigger a desire in us to have those same cool-looking accessories too,” Lindstrom explained.
According to Lindstrom, advertisers and marketers would do well to take advantage of the insights gained from neuromarketing. He offered the following suggestions for putting mirror neurons to work during these challenging economic times:
●Be Provocative “Corporations are so afraid of being provocative,” Lindstrom noted. “The more you dare to say things as they are, the more consumers will remember you. Dare to stand out.”
●Be Flexible Lindstrom suggested that small businesses, in particular, possess a key advantage due to their flexibility. “Small businesses can turn around their strategy in days instead of years. Take advantage of that flexibility.”
●Be timely. Building campaigns around what’s happening at this moment is also important for businesses today, Lindstrom said.
Debunking Some Myths
The neuromarketing research Lindstrom conducted also debunked some popular advertising myths. Perhaps the most surprising insight was that, contrary to popular opinion, sex does not sell. “What we learned was that as we are watching all those (provocative) images, our brain remembers the sex part but totally forgets the brand,” Lindstrom explained. “We are hard wired to remember sex and fear. What we do remember is that the images caused a lot of controversy. The problem is that today sex is available everywhere so controversy is almost nonexistent.”
Lindstrom also suggested that all those advertising dollars being spent in an effort to curb smoking are really having the opposite effect. “We learned the health warnings have the reverse effect,” he said. “They encourage us to smoke even more. The research really shows how well the (tobacco) industry understands the triggers of how to make us smoke and how our unconscious mind is at play.”
He also suggested that unlike the subliminal advertising techniques of a few decades ago, today’s focus in on product placement within the right context. For example, he noted that both Coca-Cola and Ford are substantial sponsors of the popular American Idol show, yet they are achieving very different results. Coke is gaining far more benefit because it is part of the story line. It capitalized on key elements of the show by imbedding them in its messaging, such as the red background of its logo. Ford, on the other hand, didn’t place its sponsorship in the context of the show. “What does a Ford car have to do with a singing contest?” Lindstrom suggested. “It didn’t work well. The $26M sponsorship was a total waste of money. The brain deletes the image of the Ford car likening it to visual wallpaper.”
Future Predictions
How will marketers and advertisers use neuromarketing to their advantage to communicate their message more effectively and drive consumer buying behaviors? Lindstrom offered the following predictions:
●More marketing will be based on targeting consumers’ fear.
In the near future, Lindstrom predicted advertising will be based more and more on fear-driven somatic markers, as advertisers attempt to scare us into believing that not buying their product will make us feel less safe, less happy, less free and less in control of our lives.
“The more stress we’re under in our world and the more fearful we are, the more we seek out solid foundations,” Lindstrom explained. “The more we seek out solid foundations, the more we become dependent on dopamine. And the more dopamine surges through our brains, the more we want stuff.”
●The 24-hour human brand will continue to emerge.
Branding, including the 24-hour human brand, will be on the rise in coming years. “When we brand things, our brains perceive them as more special and valuable than they actually are,” Lindstrom said. “Companies will embrace personal brands more, creating real characters in order to get more exposure, and in turn sell more stuff.”
●Sex in advertising will be more subtle.
Sex in advertising will soon move from extreme to subtle. “Eventually, sex in advertising will go underground. Sexual ads in the future will get sneakier, subtler. They’ll suggest but they won’t complete. The future of sex in ads will be to kick-start a journey into our own heads.”
●Neuromarketing strategies will gradually supplement traditional research techniques.
Companies will increasingly turn to neuromarketing to better understand how consumers feel about their products. Microsoft plans to use EEGs to record the electrical activity in people’s brains to see what emotions they experience as they interact with their computers. Using brain-scanning technology, Unilever discovered not only why consumers enjoyed their best-selling Eskimo ice cream bars, but also that eating ice cream creates even greater visceral pleasure than either chocolate or yogurt.
“Soon, more and more companies will be trading in their pencils for SST caps,” Lindstrom predicted. Traditional market research—questionnaires, surveys, focus groups and so on---will gradually take on a smaller and smaller role, and neuromarketing will become the primary tool companies use to predict the success or failure of their products. As neuromarketing becomes more popular and more in demand, it will become cheaper, easier and more available to companies than ever before.”