Neuromarketing: What's it all about?

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Take, as an example, a study by Knutson et al published in late 2007.10 It pointed to the insula as an area that registers price-pain. People given $20 to spend were shown products in a scanner that they could choose to buy. One part of the brain was activated when they saw brands they liked but then the higher the brand’s price, the more it triggered activity in another part of their brain, the insula. The study concluded that this is a center that registers price-pain. Within weeks however, a broader neuroscience study discovered that addicted smokers who suffered damage to this area (from car accidents etc) were suddenly able to give up their long standing addiction to smoking.11 It emerged that this part of the brain, the insula relates somehow to our ability to exercise control over addictive behaviors. Now, just how price-pain and addiction might be related, if at all, awaits further research. The message is that ‘knowledge’ about these so called ‘known centers’ is embryonic, and still developing rapidly, so this type of interpretation in terms of ‘functional centers’ needs to be taken with a good dose of caution.

It is not that long since phrenologists pointed to individual bumps on the outside of the head and made serious inferences about that person’s personality and abilities. Phrenology is of course, now totally discredited. Skeptics of neuroscience argue that it is just a form of 21st century internal phrenology. That is not my view but it is important to keep a realistic perspective as to how embryonic the field is. We really don’t know yet how to fully interpret many of these things and we are still in a very early stage.

To follow the field of neuromarketing, it is important to look at neuroscience generally and not just studies labeled neuromarketing. Studies relevant to neuromarketing appear in various neuroscience journals. If neuromarketing comes under regulatory pressure, we can expect that more of these studies will be ‘repositioned’ and re-labeled something other than ‘neuromarketing’. Neuro-aesthetics and neuroeconomics are especially relevant.

Like Drinking From a Fire-hose

The problem is that keeping up with the neuroscience literature is like trying to drink from a fire-hose. As the noted neurobiologist Steven Rose said: “The world-wide effort being poured into the neurosciences is producing an indigestible mass of facts at all levels.”

It is becoming extraordinarily difficult for full time neuroscientists to keep up - let alone businesses. Let’s face it… marketing is not interested in science or complexity. The truth is that marketing clients want ‘KIS’ not complexity. They want simplicity - an easy to understand, single number solution that says ‘this ad (or pack, or scene) ... is good/bad ….and says whether it will work or won’t work. Rather than try to drink from that fire-hose, there is a temptation for marketing to oversimplify and over-claim.

Threat

So as this bandwagon called neuromarketing picks up speed, some of the same threats that killed off previous technologies are re-emerging. A key one is over-claiming. It is an unfortunate fact that the sale of ‘smoke & mirrors’ often outsells substance. At least in the short term.

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