The term Neuromarketing is applied to the practice of measuring activity in the brain during stimulus to discover preconscious truths without cognitive 'interference'. This has been popularised by Martin Lindstrom in his first book Buyology in 2009. We prefer using the term to encompass all biometric measurement for marketing purposes. Brain scans - while being very spectacular - are only one of the biometric measures that are being deployed in market research. Not only in the classical face to face research context, but also remotely over the internet using online panels.
Why panels? Because everybody is different. People have different responses - in thresholds to response, to magnitude of response and, of course, nature of response. Biometric responses to marketing stimuli are very faint and it is difficult to isolate and tease out the measures from other influences, so the instruments have to be calibrated for each person over a period of time. The involvement of large numbers of people are also required so that statistical methods can be used to detect changes.
The single most important factor about Neuromarketing is that it has demonstrated the potential to provide much more accurate and far deeper insights than traditional methods. By using panels, these measures can be gathered much faster - even 24 hours is demonstrably possible. The cost is also dramatically reduced - a fraction of the cost of traditional research measures.
Given the ever increasing cost of marketing and escalating media fragmentation, the good news is that the ability to measure important constructs more sensitively, faster and more cheaply is welcome. This means that marketers will be very hard pressed to explain to management and shareholders why they are not more evidence based in their decision making or reporting on their cost effectiveness.
These new findings from Neuromarketing raise profound questions in the field of marketing, challenging even the core notion of target marketing. In marketing strategy terms, marketers customarily talk about target markets and enormous resources are poured into marketing segmentation. These segments are derived from behavioural, attitudinal, psychographic and many other measures, and set out to classify people into parts that will be more responsive to marketing investment.
But, what if Neuromarketing shows that peoples' biometric reactions to marketing initiatives are related more to the basic AIDA model and bear little relationship to phsycographics, motivation or attitude? A profound truth is that the best predictor of behaviour is behaviour and that attitudes are very poor predictors of behaviour. So, can we be sure that target market definitions are real? And that they work? Neuromarketing stands ready to provide an answer! With modern properly managed online panels the answers will emerge very soon.
Marketers are the most fanatically loyal customers on earth. There are companies that will not deal with other companies if their canteen, vehicles, office equipment, etc, does not reflect the loyalty that the marketer feels for his or her own brand. Neuromarketing is precociously young and has yet to show that working for one company, as opposed to a competitor, physiologically alters the human brain. If this can be shown then that will be the first evidence that demonstrates that pursuing loyalty based marketing strategies is likely to make a long term difference. The only way of measuring loyalty with unequivocal precision is through panel studies. The answer lies in the wings in the theatre of marketing practice.
Whether to spend above-the-line or BTL, or any way through or outside of 'the line' is one of the great unanswered questions of marketing.
Whether 'tis nobler for the bottom line
To suffer the slings and fortunes of outrageous agencies
Or to take on a stream of experts
And by employing profit from them .
.................................................................With apologies to William Shakespeare
In spite of simple arithmetic and a huge weight of evidence to the contrary, great deals of money are spent on interventions, initiatives, activations, experiential marketing, and so on. Cost per thousand is available for every advertisement on any measured medium. The cost of any formal advertising will be magnitudes less than these new fashionable marketing forms. They persist, and prosper, because of the ‘quality' of the experience. Yet, there is no body of evidence to suggest that this experience creates any value for the brand let alone a quantifiably ROI. Neuromarketing, together with panel methodology, shows promise in calling to account all marketing action.
Advertising, aka above-the-line, is usually the dominant investment item in a marketing budget and, therefore, commands more urgent and rigorous examination. Fortunes have been wagered on one or other 'discipline' or advertising formula. At heart there are only two dimensions to deal with - Strategy and Execution.
Strategy concerns itself with a deep understanding of the market, the brand and what advertising can do. There is abundant evidence that advertising works, yet not all advertising strategies deliver on their goals. The application and evolution of neuromarketing is likely to reveal the limitations and capabilities of advertising in a much starker light and new understanding will emerge.
Advertising works partly because it is advertising. It is the modern world's court jester. Usually entertaining, sometimes educational, often trivial, but with a very real role to play in lubricating human interaction and communication. Much of the early work in Neuromarketing is focusing on this aspect of advertising - what is working in an ad and what is not. Already Neuromarketing is leading to efficiencies by enabling the engineering of TV commercials.
Visit www.marketingscience.co.za to register for the Neuromarketing Conference 2009.
