Why We Smoke

Just finished Martin Lindstrom's Buy-ology: Truth and Lies About What we Buy. Very readable, personal exploration of Lindstrom's exploration of biometric technologies to understand how we really react to all those marketing messages. A video and a book excerpt is here.

Notable, and what is getting most of the publicity, is the work he did with those warning messages on cigarette packs. Have never been a smoker, but I always thought that those messages would at least make sure people understand what they were risking, and as a result would decrease smoking. In the US the pack messages are increasingly large text warnings, in other countries they are often graphic images of disease.

Counter-intuitively, Lindstrom discovered that the brain reaction of smokers to such messages, even the most graphic, were not negative. The pleasure centers and 'craving spots' of the brain were still being lit up, the smokers were not reacting rationally to the messages, no matter if they were being delivered textually or graphically. The package of cigarettes, despite how adorned, was still an overall pleasurable message. He even suggests that these messages, now expected and part of the cognitive package, could increase smoking.

No exploration of if the messages might be effective for young people who were considering or just starting smoking. I would further like to understand how the findings from the brain scans might predict specific buying decisions.

Roger Dooley explores this further, asking if these warnings are ads.