• Fast Company, Tuesday, February 9, 2010 10:34 AM

Buyology author Martin Lindstrom says its time to rethink the 50-year-old formula of commercials showing perfect brands in perfect environments. "Nothing is ever perfect, and even when it appears to be so, we are subconsciously looking for the flaw," he writes.

Lindstrom offers an anecdote to illustrate. A European cosmetics brand forced by the economy to cut the length of its traditional 90-second commercials used a neuro-scientific tool based on EEGs to analyze which scenes viewers found the most emotionally engaging. The most powerful scene turned out to be one that all the senior executives had wanted to cut -- a shot of one woman touching another woman's cheeks as she is crying. As it turns out, consumers were not only more substantially engaged by a shortened commercial containing the scene, they "bought" 35% more of the brand in a simulated retail store.

"Please don't misunderstand me," Lindstrom pleads. "I'm not asking the ad agencies to focus on the negative aspects of a brand. What I'm suggesting is to show how life really looks. Babies do not stay clean when eating their pureed food, and apples are never all the exact shape and size and color."

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