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Neuromarketing brain branding 2
Recently, a team at the Baylor College of Medicine studied the brain scans of 67 people who were asked
to do blind taste tests of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Participants were split virtually 50/50 over which soft
drink tasted better. But when the same people were tested again and told which brand of soft drink they
were drinking, 75% said they preferred Coke.
Coke vs. Pepsi
Why did the test subjects change their opinion? Why would they be split 50/50 in blind taste tests, but
prefer Coca-Cola three to one in the non-blind test? Because two different parts of the brain control taste
preference and brand preference. During blind taste tests, something called the ventrolateral prefrontal
cortex lights up, which helps drive sensory preferences such as taste. But when consumers know which
brand they’re drinking, the medial prefrontal cortex lights up, which helps drive brand preference.
In other words, because of Coke’s brand imagery, about 75% of the population thinks they prefer Coke
over Pepsi even though blind taste tests show that only about 50% do.
This is not entirely surprising. If you ask consumers what images pop into their heads when they think of
Coca-Cola, they’re likely to say Polar Bears, Santa Clause, Mean Joe Green and a whole slew of other
warmly-embraced American icons. If you ask the same consumers about Pepsi, the imagery isn’t quite
as deeply-rooted – they might indicate they link Pepsi to a pop star, but they won’t link Pepsi to the kind
of emotional American icons Coke has linked itself
Implications for marketers
As you might imagine, this study has powerful implications for Coke, Pepsi and anyone else interested
in selling more product. This budding field is called Neuromarketing and it relies on a brain-scanning
device called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI. Scientists have used fMRIs to track
which regions of the brain light up when people recognize a face, hear a song, make a decision, pay
attention or sense deception.
Neuromarketing is currently the domain of larger corporations with significant marketing research
budgets. But traditional forms of research have shown that the more emotionally charged a
commercial is, the more likely the message is to be imbedded in a consumer’s mind. That’s
because in order for a long-term memory to be created, it must first have an emotional
component to it. (This explains why most people recall the Taco Bell Chihuahua or the
Energizer Bunny -- both of which tickled our emotional funny bones -- but can’t recall the last
Tylenol commercial they saw.)
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