|
|
Neuromarketing CONSUMERS’ ATTITUDES
U.S. advertisers spent nearly $500 per American last year. But what makes one ad
persuasive and another a dud? Two Bay Area firms have adapted brain scanning
technology to gain insight into the science of spending.
"We can't read your mind, I assure you," said A.K. Pradeep, chief executive of
NeuroFocus. But his Berkeley firm can do the next best thing - scan your brain to map
the electrochemical spikes thought to signify attention, emotion and memory.
"This is the next generation in market research," said Hans Lee, chief technology officer
for EmSense Corp. The San Francisco startup also is using electro encephalograph, or
EEG, technology to correlate brain activity with physiological cues such as skin
temperature or eye movement to gauge how people react to ads, computer games, even
presidential candidates.
EmSense and NeuroFocus are
leaders in neuro-marketing, a
field that aspires to create
objective measures of the
effectiveness of the $149 billion
that U.S. firms spent last year on
advertising, according to TNS
Media Intelligence, to reach 300
million Americans.
UC Berkeley neuroscientist
Robert Knight, a scientific adviser
to NeuroFocus, said neuromarketing
has arisen at the
confluence of three trends: a better understanding of the regions of the brain; precise
sensors to measure when, say, the memory center is active; and software to infer from
these telltale signs whether a given message resonated with men or women of different
ages.
"Neuroscience today is where physics was at the turn of the last century," Knight said.
"We've had the groundbreaking thoughts and theories. Now we are measuring and
testing."
Science laid the foundation for neuro-marketing by studying conditions such as attention
deficit disorder, which taught researchers how to recognize the electrical signals of
alertness, and Alzheimer's disease, which required an understanding of how we form
memories. Such studies have revealed which areas of the brain become active when we
see a tiger leap across a screen or watch a baby smile - signals captured using
instruments such as sensitive EEGs.
Both NeuroFocus and EmSense base their systems around devices that measure brain
activity on the surface of the scalp. NeuroFocus uses a skull cap studded with electrodes.
EmSense engineered its sensor into a headband that slips on and off easily. Both firms
also track other physiological data - eye motion, for instance - to know what the person is
watching.
In practice, the firms pay test subjects to watch commercials. Subjects are wired with the
appropriate sensors, which record their reactions. The technology can measure how men
and women, for example, perceive scenes differently.
Lee showed one television commercial that depicts a pregnant woman eating a dish of ice
cream. Some drops on her belly,
soiling her clothes. The ad goes on to
show how machine washing with Tide
lifts the stain. When women watched
that scene, their brain scans indicated
concern when the ice cream dropped
and relief when the clothing emerged
stain-free. Men showed little or no
emotional response, suggesting the
commercial didn't work for them.
"Some of the men laughed," Lee said.
Some are skeptical
Skeptics say despite its scientific aura, neuro-marketing doesn't do much more than
confirm what common sense would tell us anyway - don't advertise detergent to men.
"Guess what: Babies and puppies do a lot better to sell things than toothless old men,"
said Jim Meskauskas, vice president for online media with ICON International and
advertising industry pundit.
Neuro-marketers say advertisers validate their technology by paying for it.
"Nobody says no," said Lee.
EmSense has focused its brain scans on voters watching both the Democratic and
Republican primary races to determine how they react to various candidates. That
generated stories - and questions about whether such techniques were appropriate.
Unlike its San Francisco rival, Berkeley's NeuroFocus will not use its brain scanning
technology in politics.
more here: http://www.neurofocus.com/pdfs/SFChronicle.pdf
|
