As promised I already started a post about “Neuromarketing” and now I thought it could be a nice topic to conclude my time having been your guest-blogger during the past month.

This presentation was about a project McCann Erickson Madrid is working on together with another agency of research called “Leap Vision“, building up a database to deepen the knowledge about the cognitive and emotional aspects of the consumer whilst gaining efficiency in communication. This database, in the future, will help to plan and design brand image and communication.

At the end it’s sort of what marketing and research always did: try to find out how a product or message reaches the user and what reaction the brand or product gets out of it -> but now with some more geeky technology!

One goal is to be able measuring emotional reactions within a human body such as:

• MENTAL ACTIVITIES: interpreting a general index of the velocity of a consumer’s thoughts, attention, concentration, information processing and ability for imagination.
• HEARTBEAT: measuring activity, stress, attention and the consumer’s readiness towards a change of a situation.
• EYES: ability to measure emotional tension to help identify the emotional state the consumer is experiencing.
• HANDS (Sweat on palm): measuring psychological activity, interest, empathy, motivation and performance.

These four methods all together allow to create a so called “MHEH Diagnostics” (Mind Heart Eyes Hands). Thus, within the same session the consumer can be tracked simultaneously whilst interacting with a product, message, POS, Headline/Message, etc. It allows to measure the basic neurobiological reactions, which cause stimulus at those key points of the body. Later on, we can evaluate the efficiency of the stimulus considering basic mental and emotional effects caused to the consumer.

So, what’s new about it and why is it interesting including this science into future researches?

1. New technologies allow new discoveries and insights.
2. New scenarios can be drawn to get to know emotional states of our target group.

For example, did you know that..

• … almost 95% of all mental processes of the human are produced in the subconscious and that’s where the mechanisms reside which condition its decisions?
• … the memory is only capable of registering 6-8 daily stimulus but we’re bombed with 3.500, one each 15 seconds?
• … the decisions we take are relate to our emotions which we later rationalize?

A tough work for agencies to create exactly that stimulus the user is able to memorize during one ore more day.

So if we want to reach the consumer’s mind, we have to understand the role of his emotions (or emotions in general):

• Without emotions there’s no attention.
• Without emotion there’s no memory.
• Without emotion there’s no decision.

Or in other words:

“To exist, a product doesn’t need to stand in an aisle of a supermarket. To exist, a product needs to be on the consumer’s mind.” Maxim of Neuromarketing, Braidot (2006)

Let’s forget all theories for a second and go for an example: “Coca-Cola Zero” TV Spot
What happened within the consumer’s body while watching at it:

1st line “Mind”: The consumer’s mind is stable, following the spot’s plot. The two spikes represent a sudden rise of attention following the TV spot’s images. At the end, the general activity has risen, leaving the consumer in a sort of “tensed”/expectant position towards the product – a good starting point for him to remember the message or product.

2nd line “Heart”: A pretty constant heartbeat. No stress, high level of entertainment.

3rd line “Eyes”: Focussing on the end of the spot, the curve jumps up very high, reflecting the emotion intensity of the consumer and his implication with the subject.

4th line “Hands”: A very high and constant level of interest/arousal in the TV spot and its product – especially towards the end.

As you can see, the techniques of Neuromarketing open up a complete new world of research and insights. More and more this technology and the possibilities it’s offering to brands and their products will find its space within the common and more conventional ways used in the past to get to know what the consumers are thinking and feeling.

Maybe that’s why Facebook changed it’s line next to the user’s status message from “Martin is…” to “What’s on your mind?” – which could be the basal question of Neuromarketing…

Stay tuned!

Neuromarketing on Wikipedia