reviewed by BarbTX
Just read a book, Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom. I heard about the book from the “Today Show” and went over to Amazon.com to check out the reviews. The reviews (“too many I statements….we already know this stuff, etc.“) were not all that impressive but decided to give the book a quick read anyway. It is very similar to other such books about buying behavior but this one upped the ante quite a bit: Brain Scans. He calls this line of research neuromarketing..” There is an organization trying to put a stop to this type of intrusive (VERY) market research (link below), which uses fMRIs and SSTs to peer into the functions of the brain when presented with different marketing stimuli.
Of particular interest to readers is the concept of “mirror neurons” which
explains why I feel cold while reading Drowning Ruth, for example=Empathy. That is, when we read a book , specialized neurons in our brain respond as though we are doing what the character in the book is doing. He goes on to cover particular behaviors such as hoarding and selling by product placement, etc. Although I do not watch “American Idol,” I found it very interesting reading that though Coke and Ford Motors are both sponsors, Coke gets a much bigger bang for its buck. Why? Because Simon and other judges have Coke in front of them, the desk and chairs are formed to look bottle-like, and a wall is red. All of these things are below the conscious level of the viewer and act as continuous commercials. Ford, on the other hand, cannot have the actors driving around onstage and must rely on standard commercials which many people tune out or TIVO over.
This research is not conducted just to sell us stuff. More and more attention is being paid to the selling of politicians and others. What will hit our hot
buttons? He says “ fear.” He also says it is no accident some large corporations have stores which look like they could be churches. The example given was the APPLE flagship store in NY. When brain scans were done on some APPLE customers, the same part of the brain that lights up when experiencing a religious experience lit up when presented with an APPLE product.
Apparently, brands have discovered logos don’t move us very much anymore; that is unless we want other people to see the logo on our designer bag and be envious.… He believes the future of marketing will be “sensory branding,” particularly in regard to smell. Most everyone knows car dealers spray that new car leather smell into their inventory but I, for one, did not know that cheeseburger smell wafting in the air at the burger joint comes from a can/vents, not the grill. If this comes to pass, a lot of us with allergies are going to have runny noses everywhere we go from the infusion of artificial fragrances into the air. Oh, sneeze!
Here is the link to the organization trying to stop some of this:
http://www.commercialalert.org/issues/culture/neuromarketing
Good luck.
