Neuromarketing: A Brave New (Branding) World

From the people-are-puppets school of marketing we get:

Emory University professor Clinton Kilts started using fMRI technology to get in consumer's heads when "we became aware of frustration from the consumer about what business is not doing -- that is, finding out who the consumer is and what the consumer wants," he explained in an interview with Dean Schabner of ABCnews.com. Kilts told Schabner he is mainly interested in studying preferences. For instance: Why, when a person prefers Pepsi's taste during a blind taste test, do they still buy Coca-Cola? - A Brave New Branding, Utne.com, March 3, 2005

I'm astonished how one can twist the obvious need bellowing from "we became aware of frustration from the consumer about what business is not doing - that is, finding out who the consumer is and what the consumer wants." H-e-l-l-o, that was a simple statement: we just want to be listened to as if we are actually humans by another human, not probed and shoved down an MRI. Purely listening is the most vital part of the equation. And hear the words behind my spoken words.

The rest of the Utne Reader article is just as dreary. Does the ethics group protesting neuromarketing know they also agree that yep, people are puppets? If you read further you'll see they also assume, oh, my god, that humans actually have a "buy button" installed somewhere within us - and then, we'll be at the beck and call of marketers when they finally discover where it is and push it. It just doesn't work that way; biochemistry is nuanced.

Needless to say, we actually aren't that conscious of our choices. But don't freak out, we'll always buy from someone whom we instinctively feel actually likes people, including us, rather than anyone who thinks they'd just cracked the code on the jackpot "buy" button. We instinctly recoil, thinking: Push this. Intent matters more than one would think - and it screams out loudly in everything you do.

If you are still worried that you are more reactive than you should be, that's great. I'd be totally interested in having some of that neuromarketing research done on the Tibetan monks in Dr. Ekman's and Dr. Davidson's studies. Their whole aim is to get rid of every single one of their "buttons." Biochemical, neurological triggers and buttons and patterns can be unhooked. Here's some food for thought to ponder about how often we are reactive rather than responsive.

Harvard social psychologist Dan Wegner in his book The Illusion of Conscious Will argued that brain chemistry, and therefore the self in its truest sense [whoa, that last part is arguable], indeed dictates behavior. What we call conscious experience, and the feeling of willing an action or intentionally doing something, is an illusion. Wegner's experiments reveal a disconnect between behavior and the conscious feeling of choice and control. People can be fooled into believing that they control something that is entirely out of their hands. And the feeling of having made a conscious choice can spring to mind well after behavior favoring that choice has started (you feel like you want a Pepsi a fraction of a second after your arm starts reaching for the Pepsi). For Wegner, making choices is certainly something that brains do, and so we are all ultimately responsible for our actions. But the special feeling of deciding may well be a subsequent, secondhand attempt of our conscious mind to explain what the deeper recesses of our brain have already chosen. - If Only: How to Turn Regret into Opportunity, by Neal Roesse, Ph.D.

[M]ost emotional triggers are learned [and thus can be unlearned]. The smell of newly mowed hay will conjure up different emotions in someone who spent idyllic childhood summers in the country and someone who was forced to work long hours on a farm. Once such an emotional association is made, it is difficult, if not impossible, to unmake it.

"Emotion is the least plastic part of our brain," says [psychologist Paul] Ekman. But we can learn to manage our emotions better. For instance, the shorter the time between the onset of an emotion and when we become consciously aware of it - what Ekman calls the refractory period - the more likely we are to double-check to see if the emotion is appropriate eto the situation. One way to shorten the refractory period is be aware of what triggers our emotions. - "Beyond the Brain: In Your Face", National Geographic, March 2005

The act of simply witnessing our emotions and feelings - I'd add without judgment, including judging judgments - as Ekman suggests is very powerful. In the same National Geographic issue:

Spurred by the cascade of new evidence for the brain's plasticity, Western neuroscientists have taken a keen interest. Can meditation literally change the mind?

..."You don't have to become a Buddhist," says the Dalai Lama himself, who is closely following the work of Western cognitive scientists like [Richard] Davidson. "Everybody has the potential to lead a peaceful, meaningful life."