Secrets of neuromarketing
Neuromarketing is science applied to marketing. It includes the direct use of brain imaging, scanning, or other brain activity measurement technology to measure subject’s responses to specific products, packaging, advertising or other marketing elements. There are two basic methods of tracking brain activity: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). To measure changes and activity in parts of the brain and to learn why consumers make the decision they do, and what part of the brain is telling them to do it. A. K. Pradeep in his book ‘The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind’ shows different implications to neuromarketing. Here are some of them:
· The soft scent of lemon increases sales in seafood restaurants
· In luxury luggage stores the rich, deep scent of polished leather calls to mind luxury, relaxation and reward
· In clothing stores, the scent of the sea or mix of roses and violets spread the mind of the experience and makes purchasing a product associated with powerful memories
· Realtors know that baking cookies seduces buyers into considering a „property“ a home.
Whenever we look at something, whether it is a logo, product package or poster, it activates a range of asociated ideas inour mind. Neuroscientists call this effect priming. Some of those ideas trigger in us goals, often without conscious awareness. For example, your desire to treat yourself to something expensive may be triggered early in the day by seeing an ad for a luxury brand.
Neuromarketing has been on the market for a couple of years and you have probably read or heard about some of the insights marketers have learned from it. With warp speed developing technology you can not know if neuromarketing is replacing traditional marketing research or if it is just a passing fad?
On the one hand, traditional marketing research methods involve consumer surveys, focus groups and external observation to gather data about what people think, feel and believe. These traditional methods are better at revealing conscious decision-making processes.
On the other hand, the goal of neuromarketing is to better understand consumer behavior by gaining insight into the reactions and decision-making happening at the subconscious level. Neuroscience methods are better at revealing subconscious decision-making processes, gives us valuable insight into automatic human responses that influence consumer behavior.
Our brains aren’t interested in brands, they are interested in stories and puzzles. If you can create communication where the brand is the inner stimulus to the story, at the same moment the brain is gonna follow because our brain wants to know what is going on. Like in every attempt, there is a catch. First, you can leave the brand at the end of the story and that could be highly successful, but there is no guarantee that your brain is gonna stay absolutely engaged to the end. Second, if you create a piece of communication that creates a fantastic amount of response, but doesn’t encode to the memory, what you’ve made is fantastic piece of entertainment and not a great piece of brand communication.
So, the main thing what we need to be focused on are memories. There are three key things that drive memory:
1. Narrative - our brain likes to follow stories and puzzles and you’re sure that that’s going into memory.
2. Personal relevance - if our brain senses that something is relevant to us on a personal level, it’s more likely to get stored to memory.
3. Emotional response - a strong emotional response tells the brain that something big is going on and it’s more likely to get inscribed into our memory.
Neuro-Insight companies are world leaders in neuroscience-based market research, delivering high quality projects in brand communication and media strategy. They are researching how the brain responds subconsciously throughout all sorts of market communications, from brand advertising to product packaging.
Heather Andrews, CEO of Neuro-Insight UK, answered some questions for us:
· Is neuromarketing enabling a more efficient marketing? Why?
Done properly, yes. It gives more information to marketers on which to base their decisions. In particular, it helps to get at emotional or sub-conscious bases for decision-making as mentioned above, and can help marketers better understand the way people think and respond. This can help contribute to more effective communication — not just through paid-for media, but also through packaging, point of sale etc.
· Would you recommend the use of neuromarketing to FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) companies? Why?
Of course! But only used in the right way. There’s no point using neuro-research to find out about straightforward issues that people can just tell you about, or that you can discover through observations or audits. Key uses for me would be:
- Optimising communication effectiveness through developing better understanding of how people are responding (different to simple ad testing, where usually the output is a simple “Yes” or “no” verdict)
- Help plan media better, by looking at the impact of context on how people respond to communication
- Help understand the impact of subtle things like sponsorship or product placement
- Help understand which aspects of a brand are really driving people’s perceptions — what are the key brand properties that can act as “triggers” across different media?
· What is the average cost of a neuromarketing study? (for example in the case of a new product launch)
It varies enormously depending on the methodology used. FmRI (Functional magnetic resonance imaging) is more expensive than technologies based on measuring electrical brain activity. For Neuro-Insight (using a technology called SST (Steady-State Topography), based on electrical measures) a typical study cost would be around £40,000.
· In general, what percentage of a product launch budget should be attributed to neuromarketing studies?
I personally wouldn’t allocate any product development budget to neuro-marketing. When you talk about the launch budget, I assume you’re really talking about research spending (not, for example, media spending, or trade discounts). If you were looking at research, I’d put a percentage into neuro to use alongside other forms of research — maybe 25–30%.
· Do neuromarketing studies (vs traditional market research studies) offer a higher ROI? (avoid costly mistake vs investment)
Used properly they have the best chance of success for certain sorts of research (e.g. brain measures offer one of the best ways of assessing advertising effectiveness). For these types of studies, the cost is only slightly more than conventional research and the results are potentially more valuable, so I’d answer YES in those circumstances.
· While using neuromarketing to test advertising, is it possible to link the reaction of the consumers to this advertising and their purchase intention? How?
Yes, using a measure of long-term memory encoding (i.e. looking at what is laid down into memory). The brain encodes information that it thinks may be useful at a later date — so if, even subconsciously, we decide to act on an ad (by buying the product) memory encoding will be high at points where branding and key messages are delivered. This isn’t cause and effect — we don’t put things into memory and then decide to act — we put things into memory because our brains have already determined that they have some relevance for us. Studies have proven the correlation between what goes into memory and subsequent purchases.
· Are there some parameters easier to measure than others? Which ones?
Depends on the methodology. For approaches that measure electrical response, it’s easier to measure responses near the surface of the brain rather than deep inside.
But more important than measuring is interpreting. Some brain functions are better understood than others — so in some parts of the brain you might measure a response very accurately without being sure of the significance of it, whilst in other areas the significance would be well understood.
· Some authors or journalists qualify neuromarketing as being manipulative, what is your opinion on this?
It’s only manipulative if misused. Any research can be manipulative if the results are used to in some way steer the respondent in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise have chosen to go. But neuro-marketing doesn’t mean we can read minds or put anything into people’s minds — it just gives us a better understanding of cognitive responses.
· According to you, what will be the future of neuromarketing?
A big question…. I think it will grow slowly for a while as knowledge gradually grows. I think there’s a need for better regulation of the industry to make sure that all those offering neuromarketing are truly offering good science. Only then do I think it might really take off — but, it will always be one of several types of research; not a replacement for other approaches.
In conclusion, both traditional and neuromarketing research can give us valuable insight for better understanding consumer behavior and planning market communications, we just need to know what type of research we need in that specific moment.
