NeuroFocus' Andrew Pohlmann: Neuromarketing Study Provides Direct Marketers Insight on Consumers

April 28, 2010 By Heather Fletcher

multipage

It's time for marketers to put on their thinking caps, because members of the newest study from NeuroFocus have already donned theirs. And what researchers found while monitoring the subjects' brainwaves may interest marketers who are trying to decide how to allocate their marketing spend between brand and direct.

Social media is giving mass market television advertising a run for its money in terms of purchase intent and emotional engagement, says Andrew Pohlmann, managing partner in charge of the consulting practice for NeuroFocus, a Berkeley, Calif.-based neuromarketing research and services company. On April 6, NeuroFocus announced findings from its study Ski Lift to Brand Lift: How Olympics Sponsor Gains Neuromarketing Gold.

While wearing an arguably fashionable blue-trimmed brown cap containing 64 sensors, study subjects watched a commercial in three forms—on television, on a branded website and on the brand's Facebook page. NeuroFocus then measured, 2,000 times a second, activity across all brain regions and monitored eye movement across the advertisement. NeuroFocus used Visa's "Trip for Life," an ad in the credit card company's "Go World" campaign about the 2010 Winter Olympics. (NeuroFocus says neither Visa nor its vendors commissioned the study.)

Here's Pohlmann's take on how direct marketers can apply the study findings to their campaigns.

Target Marketing: What aspects of direct marketing strategy did the study explore?
Andrew Pohlmann: We didn't set out explicitly to study direct marketing in this research project, but there are clear conclusions and implications for direct marketers that can be drawn from the results.

For example, we know that the brain is strongly attracted to images of human faces. We rely on being able to see faces clearly, in order to be able to figure out what someone's intentions are. This dates all the way back to our caveman days. Are you a friend or a foe? I rely a lot on your expression to tell me.

But with the rise of mobile marketing today, screen sizes—like the typical cell phone, for example—don't let me see facial features very well. So here's what these brain facts mean to marketers: You need to accomplish three basic things in order to sell:

• You need to capture the consumer's attention;
• you need to engage their emotions; and
• you need to trigger their subconscious to retain your message in their memory.

But if I can't see someone's face very well on a mobile device, I'm not likely to become emotionally engaged. If I'm not emotionally engaged, neuroscience teaches that I'm less likely to remember your message. And obviously, if I don't remember your message, I'm less inclined to buy your product or your service.