快猫短视频

Why ask people what they think of a product when you can just scan their brains instead? 快猫短视频 explores the brave new world of neuromarketing

Read more: The results of our neuromarketing exercise are in

TAKE A look at the cover of this week鈥檚 快猫短视频 magazine (right). Notice anything unusual? Thought not, but behind the scenes your brain is working overtime, focusing your attention on the words and images and cranking up your emotions and memory. How do we know? Because we tested it with a brain scanner.

In what we suspect is a world first, this week鈥檚 cover was created with the help of a technique called neuromarketing, a marriage of market research and neuroscience that uses brain-imaging technology to peek into people鈥檚 heads and discover what they really want. You may find that sinister. What right does anyone have to try to read your mind? Or perhaps you are sceptical and consider the idea laughable. But neuromarketing, once dismissed as a fad, is becoming part and parcel of modern consumer society. So we decided to take a good look at it 鈥� and try it out ourselves.

That is how several 快猫短视频 readers ended up in a darkened room in London, wired up to an electroencephalograph (EEG) machine and being shown various magazine cover designs. Our aim 鈥� with the help of the European arm of neuromarketing company , based in Berkeley, California 鈥� was to observe their reactions on a level that would not normally be possible. 鈥淚鈥檝e been involved in market research for about 25 years,鈥� says Thom Noble, managing director of NeuroFocus Europe. 鈥淓very few years a new methodology comes out. Frankly, they鈥檙e incrementally different. This is transformationally different.鈥�

Market research has traditionally relied on methods such as questionnaires and focus groups to gauge how consumers will respond to new products. These tools have their strengths, but they share one fatal weakness: they depend on asking people what they think. 鈥淲hat people say and what they think is not always the same,鈥� Noble says. 鈥淐onventional research really struggles with this.鈥�

It鈥檚 not just that people are inclined to say what they think others want to hear, and to give answers that they think reflect favourably upon themselves. According to , a neuroeconomist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the problem is that much of the decision-making process happens at a subconscious level, and experiments reveal that people are generally not very good at explaining the thinking behind their choices. 鈥淪ometimes they simply don鈥檛 know why they chose things,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey concoct explanations after the fact, or make up explanations that are socially acceptable. I do think there鈥檚 loads of information contained in the brain that simply doesn鈥檛 make it out.鈥�

The great hope of neuromarketing is to extract this hidden information directly from people鈥檚 brains. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not asking questions at all 鈥� we鈥檙e recording responses at a deep subconscious level,鈥� Noble says.

The approach used by Noble and other neuromarketers originated in university labs where, for over a decade, neuroeconomists have been trying to figure out what is going on inside our heads when we make economic decisions. Using brain-imaging techniques such as fMRI 鈥� which records brain activity via changes in blood flow 鈥� they have made all kinds of surprising discoveries.

Feel the love

One of the most important is that our decisions are much less rational than traditional economics suggests. 鈥淲e find that emotions are really important,鈥� says Mirja Hubert, a consumer researcher at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany. 鈥淓ven rational decisions are not possible without emotion.鈥� Emotions are also key to the elusive concept of 鈥渂rand loyalty鈥� 鈥� the often irrational preference for one version of a product over essentially identical competitors.

In a famous study published in 2004, from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, got loyal Coke drinkers to take the 鈥淧epsi challenge鈥� inside an fMRI machine. When they didn鈥檛 know which drink they had been given, Pepsi triggered the most activity in the areas of the cortex responsible for rational thought and people said they preferred it. But when Montague told them in advance which cola was which, Coke provoked stronger activity in the emotion-related limbic system, and their stated preference switched (). By triggering positive emotions, successful brands can override our rational choices.

Further research indicates that we build long-term emotional bonds with brands. These are established and maintained by messages that constantly associate the brand with positive emotions. Think of all those feel-good ads for cellphones, drinks, airlines and any number of other products. They are not trying to sell you a phone, a soda or a flight but to woo you into a long-term relationship. And no wonder: once people have formed a relationship with one brand they are very resistant to the advances of others ().

Another key discovery of neuroeconomics is that certain products trigger activity in brain systems that usually fire in anticipation of rewarding stimuli such as food, sex and addictive drugs. A team at the University of Ulm in Germany found, for example, that pictures of sports cars produced much stronger activity in these reward centres than pictures of other cars, in research funded by DaimlerChrysler (Neuroreport, vol 13, p 2499).

Wanted: reward

Neuroeconomists now think of the amount of activity in these regions as a sort of universal currency of desirability, allowing the brain to weigh up different rewards. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of evidence that signals in these regions represent some kind of value,鈥� says Berns, 鈥渁nd that makes a lot of sense. We鈥檙e always trying to make decisions between doing things that have value but are completely different, like going to the movies, going out for dinner or spending time with loved ones.鈥�

Findings such as these have encouraged market researchers to believe that they can access the hidden desires and preferences locked away inside consumers鈥� heads. The past few years has seen a steady stream of businesses turning to companies such as NeuroFocus. Want to know if a new car design is pushing the right buttons? See if it revs the reward centres in the brain. Is this advert going to make people love our product? Measure the emotional response it generates.

Branding in particular is a marketer鈥檚 nirvana, says Noble. 鈥淎s more and more sectors become crowded, the difference between products 鈥� say, Smirnoff, Absolut and any other vodka 鈥� is frankly not that big. But the brands are completely different. It鈥檚 the emotional content of the brand that we are trying to get a grip on.鈥�

Some neuromarketing companies use fMRI, the tool of choice for neuroeconomics, which is particularly good at identifying anatomical structures in three dimensions and localising brain activity. However, consumer researchers have misgivings about this approach because of the high costs and the technical challenges. Anyone having a brain scan has to stay very still: a head movement of a few millimetres over 20 minutes can ruin the data. Time resolution is also poor, with a lag of about 5 seconds between stimulus and the visible brain activity. That makes it hard to get useful information about things like TV adverts, which unfold on a second-by-second basis.

For these reasons, most neuromarketing companies 鈥� NeuroFocus included 鈥� go for EEG, a less technically challenging technique, which eavesdrops on brain activity via electrodes placed on the scalp. As well as being easier to use, EEG has a big advantage over fMRI in that it gives you real-time information. According to NeuroFocus鈥檚 chief science adviser, neuroscientist , Berkeley, an EEG trace can reveal the three things that market researchers really need to know: 鈥淒id you pay attention? Did it elicit emotions? Was it memorable?鈥� If a product doesn鈥檛 tick these three boxes then it won鈥檛 succeed.

So does it work? With so much of what is going on in neuromarketing companies kept tightly under wraps, it is hard to say for sure, says Berns. Even so, he believes that insights from neuroeconomics will be useful, especially during product development. Tim Behrens, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, agrees, but has reservations about EEG. 鈥淚f you had someone in an fMRI scanner and showed them your advert, I can imagine it would be useful in telling you whether they would be likely to buy stuff. I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 flaky,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut do EEG measures give useful information? I鈥檓 not sure.鈥�

The trouble is that EEG cannot locate precisely where the signals are coming from. So, for example, you cannot directly see activity in the brain鈥檚 reward areas or emotional centres. However, neuroscientist Michael Smith at NeuroFocus in Berkeley says they can infer enough to get useful information by using various other measures and looking for certain characteristic patterns of neural activity (see 鈥淢ind-reading marketers鈥�).

A study done last year seems to confirm this. An international cosmetics firm tested two subtly different versions of an advert using a traditional focus group. They found that one was much preferred over the other, even though volunteers failed to notice any difference between them. This was hardly surprising as they only differed in one 4-second scene in which a female model either looked passively at the camera or touched her cheek with the back of her hand. To find out why this made such an impact, the company hired a group of neuroscientists led by Rafal Ohme of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Using EEG imaging of 45 women aged between 25 and 35, they found that the gesture produced a brief but powerful emotional uplift during the crucial scene (Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics, vol 2, p 21).

Another study more clearly indicates the commercial potential of EEG scanning. A team at the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy showed 15 volunteers a 30-minute film with three commercial breaks. They reported last year that they could successfully predict which of the adverts people would remember afterwards simply from analysing their EEG traces ().

Hidden desires

Advocates of neuromarketing believe this shows that EEG can predict what will sell in a more direct and objective way than just asking people. They also argue that you don鈥檛 need to scan the brains of many people to get a representative picture of what consumers think. Small sample sizes are standard in clinical EEG studies, according to Knight, because brains react in a remarkably uniform way to the same stimulus.

Of course, marketing will always be more art than science, and even brain-scanning cannot transform it into a properly scientific enterprise. Nevertheless, companies that make consumer products, including giants such as Procter & Gamble and the Campbell Soup Company, are increasingly adding neuromarketing to their market-research armoury. According to Darren Bridger, NeuroFocus Europe鈥檚 director of lab operations, just about every conceivable item is now being road-tested on human brains: adverts, movie trailers, snacks, gadgets, packaging, drinks, car designs and early-stage concepts for new products. Berns even suggests that it won鈥檛 be long before neuromarketing is applied to the ultimate sales pitch: political candidates ().

If you think this all sounds like the consumer society gone horribly Orwellian, you are not alone. Berns points out that introducing neuroscience into an endeavour that exists to sell more products raises ethical issues. Will it be used to entice people into buying things they don鈥檛 want, don鈥檛 need and can鈥檛 afford?

鈥淚t鈥檚 an area that should be discussed by ethicists,鈥� says Smith. 鈥淏ut the concern is giving us too much credit. We鈥檙e not designing products people don鈥檛 want and convincing them to buy 鈥� we鈥檙e helping our clients better understand what people do want, so they can address those needs. There鈥檚 no 鈥榖uy button鈥� in the brain. If people allude that there might be, it鈥檚 a gross oversimplification.鈥�

Read more: The results of our neuromarketing experiment are in