Criticizing Neuromarketing

I have been connected to two startups in the neuromarketing domain.  Is the hype fading for non conscious interaction applications of the neural kind?   Have seen large enterprises making investments. Interesting research results, but not definitive. A critical overview of the status in CWorld.

Reinventing the Hospital, The Game

From my long time favorite collaborative future consulting group:   Insititute for the Future (IFTF).  A favorite topic, reinventing health care.  I know of a number of related trials underway, lets do more.

It's Official: Over 4,500 Ideas for Reinventing the Hospital
On January 8—9, IFTF ran the 24-hour Future of the Hospital game on Foresight Engine, our collaborative forecasting platform, to help reinvent the community hospital. .... "

Leaders Make the Future

Bob Johansen
IFTF Distinguished Fellow
Institute for the Future
124 University Avenue, 2nd Floor
Palo Alto, CA 94301

Author of Leaders Make the Future, Second Edition  Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World.

At Procter & Gamble we worked with Institute for the Future starting shortly after its founding.  They often came in to give talks to our executives, and we used their training and brainstorming methods to understand new ideas.  They were also instrumental in introducing to key Silicon Valley companies and entrepreneurs.  Bob Johansen was their CEO during many of the years we used them.  A great experience.   I just reconnected with him, and I note the second edition of his book.. More information and pointers to it above.  I will follow with more on his book.

Brands American Women and Men Desire Most

In Forbes:   From a study by Buyology Inc, a former collaboration of mine:
" ... According to the second-annual study just released by Buyology, a strategic neuromarketing firm, and uSamp, a provider of technology and survey respondents used to obtain consumer and business insights, women and men have the strongest affinity for the low-cost airline among all major brands.

“The brands at the top of the Most Desired report have the strongest ties with the consumers we measured, and therefore, they have the ability to be more effective and efficient than their competitors,” says Gary Singer, Buyology’s chief executive and founding partner.... " 

The Second Economy: a Neural Model

Aspen Root Systems and a neural system for a second economy.   By W Brian Arthur, who we worked with at the Santa Fe Institute and applied in the enterprise.   It is all about better understanding complexity.   Many real world systems are very complex and in the early days we started with industrial simulations as models to find patterns. Many new techniques, by Arthur and others, are helping us to simplify these sim  models enough to make them usable.  Thanks to colleague Delaine Hampton for pointing me to this.

-  W Brian Arthur is a visiting researcher with the Intelligent System Lab at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is an economist and technology thinker and a pioneer in the science of complexity. His 1994 book, Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (University of Michigan Press, December 1994), contains several of his seminal papers. More recently, Arthur was the author of The Nature of Technology: What it is and How it Evolves (Free Press, August 2009).

Buyology is Forbes #71

I see that a company I have worked with,  Buyology Inc, is in Forbes as one of the 100 most promising companies.   It is at #71.  " ... Founded in 2008, this marketing consultancy digs into the unconscious motivations that ultimately drive consumer purchasing decisions. One of its research techniques—called latency response—limits a respondent's time to questions in order to gauge gut reactions to products. Time magazine declared co-founder and chairman Lindstrom one of the "World's 100 Most Influential People" in 2009.... "

Beauty Brands and Emotions

Former colleague Donna Sturgess, president of Buyology Inc.   Talks about the large emotional component of beauty brands.   " ... Donna Sturgess, president of Buyology Inc., also talked about conscious versus non-conscious buying during HBA Global, stating only 15 percent of decision making is done consciously ... "

Brandwashed Videos

A couple of videos sent to me that illustrate the topics in Martin Lindstrom's forthcoming book: Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy I have finished a review copy and it is a useful and rollicking read for everyone that buys or hopes to convince someone to buy.  See also my previous posts on Brandwashed.




Have we been Brandwashed? The question is posed by Martin Lindstrom; a 2009 recipient of TIME Magazine's  "World  s 100 Most Influential People" and author of Buyology - Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Doubleday, New York), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best - seller ...  "

IFTF Releases their 2020 Future Map

I blogged for the Institute for the Future for several years.  They consulted with our C-suite and we were often asked to follow up.   They are always saying some interesting things.  We followed their future map each time it was published.  Here is the latest: Public Release: The Future of Science, Technology, and Well-being 2020 Forecast Map

Brandwashed Read and Reviewed

Just completed a review copy of : Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade us to Buy by Martin Lindstrom.   To be available September 20.  Have enjoyed Lindstrom's earlier books such as Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy.

I will be posting some review snippets of this book here.  I highly recommend every marketer and consumer read it.  It is very much an updated version of Vance Packard's 1958 book: Hidden Persuaders.  Completely updated and containing lots of interesting examples of how marketing manipulates.   In many, but not all cases, he names specific companies and agencies.  Of course today, unlike in the 50s, we have many more marketing channels than just  TV, Radio, Billboards and Print.  The Internet is now here as well.  Shoppers are armed with their own mobile devices, and data about their activities is being recorded at a furious rate.

People who work in marketing or merchandising will know many of the examples mentioned, but I found some I had not heard of.  Lindstrom also commissions some specific studies for the book, such as in the final chapter where he constructs a test of human influencers, using the Morgenson family.   He also mentions  commissioned studies using brain study methods like fMRI.

Since I worked with the design and use of  mock retail innovation centers,  I will start by quoting the book on just such a concept:

" ... Very few people know this, but most major consumer goods companies, including Unilever, Kraft, Pepsico and Coca-Cola have set up 'fake supermarkets' ...  They stock the shelves with their own products and those of their competitors, then late at night  ... they invite people to come and shop.  While they are browsing the aisle, cameras and brain-scanning equipment are measuring what happens in real time while they select and reject various brands and items.  Not unlike in the film  'Minority Report', these supermarkets generally have a control room lined with TV screens on which reps can actually measure the changes in consumers brain waves as they encounter different positioning of products.  Based on this data, the company develops what in the business is called a Planogram, a model showing where each product should be placed to generate the highest sales .... "  

This is mostly correct, and looks ahead as we further seek to understand the conscious and especially non-conscious interactions of shoppers with the shelf and packaging,  using all of their senses.  The store laboratory allows for new retail designs to be both virtually and  physically examined.  The future is here today.

See also Martin Lindstrom's site.  As one review suggests, Lindstrom is very much an insider, and that makes this book all the more telling and interesting.  In today's world, unlike in Packard's, the industry changes very  quickly.  Advances like Neuromarketing, interactive signage, and electronic shelf labels, mentioned in the book, are changing quickly.  The book provides great examples of their use, but cannot hope to keep up with them.  Go to Lindstrom's site, and follow others like this site to keep up to date.

Brandwashed

Just starting to read: Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade us to Buy by Martin Lindstrom.   To be available September 20.  Have enjoyed Lindstrom's earlier books such as Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy.  His books are story telling and inspirational rather than either technical or 'how to' .    He tells a good story and leads you to results in a way similar to someone giving an excellent presentation.   It does remind me of Vance Packard's 1950s book Hidden Persuaders, showing the level and details of exploitation that are ultimately used by marketers and merchandisers.  A kind of expose'   Thus this book is more B to C than B to B, and may be more interesting to the consumer than marketer.  A bigger market.   I will follow up with a complete review when I am done with the book. So far it is an enjoyable and quick read.  See also Lindstrom's site for background information.

Lindstrom and Graphic US Cigarette Packaging

In the news this week word that the US is changing its Cigarette packaging to remove the text health warning and replacing them with graphic scare images.  I was interested about how brand innovator Martin Lindstrom would react to this, since one of his claims to fame, published in his book Buyology: Truth and Lies About How We Buy, were that a similar approach, used in other countries for years, was not effective. I asked him, and he has published his response on Facebook.  An early alert to the integration of neuroscience and marketing,  driving non-conscious effect.

Apple Causes Spiritual Reaction In Brains

Another post on spiritual/religious reactions seen in brain scans.  The subject of a recent BBC documentary.   This reminds me of work mentioned in Martin Lindstrom's provocative book on religion and branding in his book: Buyology: Truth and Lies About What We Buy.  I had a conversation with him on the supporting work that he used for his conclusions.  And you only have to look at a brand like Apple, and read some of the comments about them online, to understand that there is something spiritual going on there.  More about Lindstrom and the brain.

Buyology Inc's New Website

I see that neuromarketing company: BuyologyInc has a new website.  I have done consulting work with them in the past.  Much better done and more informative site than the previous one.  Included is more on their First Annual Most Desired Brands in the U.S. Report.  Previously also mentioned here.  Also interesting they describe their Neurotypes classification methodology at the site.

Buyology Inc Releases NeuroTypes

I see that the neuromarketing firm Buyology Inc has released their Neurotype approach, applying it to determine the ranking of the most desired brands for men and women in the US.   For full disclosure, I have done consulting work for Buyology Inc in the past.   They are positioning this as a first annual analysis, so like the Sands superbowl ad study, are positioning this as a yearly splash event.  The classification is described broadly:

" ... Neurotypes™ (non-conscious relationships) quantitatively determine which of sixteen relationships a brand or business currently has for a given target audience and the relative strength of the relationship, or signal strength, relative to competitors and other, beacon brands who, although they may be outside the category, have successfully established similar relationships ... ".

I agree that a number of rankings presented are non intuitive, to put it lightly.   Yet the approach, based on methods like electroencephalography and eye tracking, can be thought of as a way to understand the relationship between people and brands in an entirely new way, based on non conscious interactions.  Many companies are today examining these ideas seriously.

I also like the idea of constructing a classification that can be tracked over time to determine changes in brands and how to consequently adapt marketing messages. I do wish it could be standardized more broadly, so that many companies could use the method and add to the data gathering. 

Another good overview of this is in Neuroscience Marketing. Also a related article in Forbes on the rankings.  I plan to follow with more comments here.

Why of Buy, How of Buy

IMedia Connections interviews Donna Sturgess of Buyology Inc. about what her company does to understand the non conscious interactions of consumer to media and marketing.  Very nicely put discussion of the issues involved.  This interview is a good place to start if you seek to concisely understand how marketing methods that seek to use brain and psych based methods are evolving.  I have done consulting work for Buyology Inc.

Big Green Boxes

An interesting idea via IFTF: Take unused warehouse space in a city and use it to implement aquaponics ... a combination of soil-less growing of plants, and using fish to provide manure to fertilize the plants in a closed system. In particular they mention growing herbs at lower cost. Herbs are notoriously expensive and they make the economic case that this would be cheaper and more sustainable than traditional agriculture. Distribution of the product nearby would be emphasized.

Very interesting idea, though I am skeptical. The required infrastructure ... heat, light and plumbing would be considerable. Energy costs high. Hydroponics (soil-less growing) are done today with crops like tomatoes, but are done primarily with high end and high cost crops. It adds to distribution costs and managing a 'just local' sales approach loses any economy of scale. Although this sounds very 'green', it is much more complex than doing it the old way ... also done for thousands of years. Maybe if you can get a big government grant?

On Localization and Globalization

Colleague Donna Sturgess in Am Marketing Assoc Journal, Via Melissa Hobley at Buyology Inc:

" .... a great article attached in the new Amerian Marketing Association journal titled "The State of Localization and Globalization" featuring some great advice from Donna Sturgess. Donna is in great company next to Mary Garrett, vice president of marketing communications, global sales and distribution at IBM, and Alexander Schlaubitz, director of marketing strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Intel. The AMA journal (Marketing Power) goes to AMAs 100,000 members in marketing.

The roundtable is also available as a podcast with Part 1 available below (part 2 will be posted Sept 27) ... "

Ferrari Quits Barcode Logo

It was one of the major claims in Martin Lindstrom's book: Buyology that the tobacco industry was using subliminal triggers in ads, even when explicit brand logos had been removed. In his latest newsletter he reports:

" ..Here’s one for the books. Ferrari racing, for many years emblazoned with Marlboro livery, has succumbed to significant pressure and removed the subliminal and highly controversial bar-code logo from its Formula One cars. As this WSJ article reveals, Lindstrom’s best-seller Buyology played a major role in Ferrari’s decision. Based on the findings from the book, which inexorably linked Ferrari to subliminal cigarette advertising, the European Public Health Commission launched their own investigation, ultimately creating enough pressure to force Phillip Morris and Ferrari to mutually agree to complete removal of the barcode ... '

Deeper Motives

This article quotes Gary Singer, CEO of Buyology Inc.

Deeper Motives: Getting Beyond Targeting
by Steve Smith, Friday, July 30, 2010, 2:45 PM

Behavioral targeting generally hunts for affinities. You read this -- so you must be interested in that. You did this online, so it is likely you are in market for that. You are friendly with her, so you must like similar things.

But what about the deeper motives that may drive purchase decisions? Is behavioral targeting even close to tracking the desires and values that drive people to certain brands?

The recent book "Buyology" by Martin Lindstrom, and the company of the same name started by Lindstrom and partner Gary Singer, CEO, Buyology, Inc., explore the "non-conscious" or non-cognitive drivers of decision-making. I spoke with Singer recently about the kinds of insight the company brings to brands, and how this maps against the approaches online ad targeting employs.

The original research on which the Buyology approach is based involved over 2,000 people whose brain patterns were studied as they responded to different kinds of messaging and symbols to determine the key drivers that moved them towards brands ... '