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Researchers have already plotted a few hot spots. The ventral putamen is a rewards center
of the brain; activity there indicates that something is pleasing, such as if the subject
enjoys the taste of a soft drink or food. The somatosensory cortex will light up if a subject
is mentally emulating a sensory experience, if she’s “trying it out” in her head. And
then there’s the bulls-eye  the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain center associated with
personal identity. If you think about a Hummer and your medial prefrontal cortex fires,
neuromarketing scientists say this means that Hummer jibes with your sense of who you
are. It’s “so you.” You want it. It’s a sell, way down to the level of instinct. No wonder big
corporations Kellogg and Proctor & Gamble among them are willing to try their
hands at this admittedly controversial technology.

Scrutinizing the Pepsi Challenge

The Pepsi Challenge of the 1980s and 90s was a bit of a paradox. When blindfolded
people were asked which of two soft drink samples they preferred, Pepsi emerged as the
clear winner. Yet year after year, Coke outsells Pepsi. Why? This sort of puzzle was ripe for
investigation by neuromarketing.

In 2003, Read Montague, a Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist, recreated the
Challenge with subjects in MRI machines. The first round of tests confirmed the findings
of the original Challenge: in blind taste tests, the subjects’ ventral putamens (the rewards
centers) were stimulated more when the subjects were drinking Pepsi than when they were
drinking Coke. This indicated that objectively, Pepsi does indeed taste better.

Next, Montague repeated the experiment with one change: he told the subjects which
samples were Coke. This time, the MRI showed activity in the medial prefrontal cortex,
which governs higher-level cognition in addition to being associated with personal identity.
And the taste test results? Astonishingly, when subjects knew what they were drinking,
almost everyone voted in favor of the Coke samples.

If the subjects preferred Pepsi on a pure-reaction level, what was happening? Montague’s
conclusion was that the subjects were cogitating before deciding, recalling and weighing
their impressions about Coke. Even though Pepsi wins on taste, Coke wins in terms of its
impression, its appearance within the culture. In other words, Coke owes its success not
only to its taste, but more to its image. To its brand.

Attention and the filing cabinet

While MRI studies provide objective insights into customers’ perceptions, they are also
very expensive. Smart neuromarketing (not to mention smart budgeting) means applying
some of neurology’s less expensive tools before booking a suite at the local imaging center.
It pays to have some knowledge of how the brain works ahead of time.

The brain likes to keep things simple. It doesn’t like to work harder than it needs to, so it
arranges memories using similarity and association. One popular metaphor is that of the
brain as a filing cabinet, with similar or associated items filed together in the same folder.
Similarity helps the brain to learn and to group things together. For instance, you can
memorize a phone number by repeating it rote until it sinks in, but you’ll remember it
immediately if it happens to be very similar to your own. Associations allow the brain to
link one thing to another. Pavlov’s dogs associated the ringing of a bell with food, making
the bell a trigger that would call up the many associations the dogs already had to food.
Successful marketing uses knowledge about the way minds work to make messages more
attractive, and to trigger stored impressions. A solid marketing initiative will capture
people’s attention because it stands out (the main purpose of attention is to help filter out
extraneous information) and because the message is clear (unambiguous) and consistent.
Coke’s marketing efforts thus far have, as Montague’s Pepsi Challenge suggests, done a fair
job of planting positive associations in the minds of the public. The public also knows that
Coke’s colors are red and white. If Coke wants to capture people’s attention and access
those already-stored positive impressions, it should continue to use red and white, and its
familiar wave graphic. That’s consistent, it’s clear, and it harnesses Coke’s pre-established
clout when it comes to capturing attention.

The brain likes to simplify and to lump related items together and all the better if
this lump can be summed up under one key thought. This is how brands grow; all of
the impressions of a company and its products are stored together, with the brand (an
image, colors, a style of presentation) as the trigger. If a company packs as many positive
associations as has Nike into the minds of the public (Michael Jordan, you’ll be able
to play like a pro, you can fly, you’ll “Just Do It”), the associated brand holds almost
talismanic power. While Nike was planting thoughts in the minds of the public, the image
that accompanied them was always the Nike Swoosh. Plant an association, show the
Swoosh. Over and over again, until the Swoosh became a trigger for all of those stored
impressions. The company name isn’t even used much in advertising anymore. It’s just the
Swoosh. It’s just like Pavlov ringing the bell for his dogs, recalling all that Nike has already
sown in the consumer’s mind.

Source:hoeck.net

 

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