Commentary

Brand Electrodes?

By implanting electrodes directly into a part of participants' brains, scientists at UC Berkeley (where else) have found a way to reconstruct words someone hears based on their brain waves. When patients were given words to think about, the team was able to guess which word the participants had chosen. They were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound with a computer model that deduced what the waves meant. In the BBC report I read, this was positioned as a potential breakthrough for people who have speech disorders, leading to a prosthetic device for folks who can't speak but who can simply imagine what they want,  and thus be understood.

But I can see ad researchers just dying to fire up their own electrodes to see if brand messages resonate with audiences for their commercials. After all, they have already tried galvanic skin response and measured just about every other part of the brain to see if anybody gets excited by an aging Matthew Broderick reprising Ferris Bueller in order to sell some cars. In fact, if the public had any idea the extent to which Adland has probed their emotions, bodily reactions and brain activity in order to grab another .01% of market share, they would have an even lower opinion of our industry than they already do (which is almost impossible, since admen are pretty near the bottom now).

So what? Every industry uses "science" to research how to better sell to their customers with surveys, focus groups, monitoring social media or the Net in general for negative/positive product mentions, mall intercepts, etc. All this may become unnecessary, since as cyber time goes by we leave more and more collectable data about the things we really buy. Sooner or later researchers will be able to draw a pretty straight line between an ad exposure and a purchase (the fight over attribution notwithstanding). Or not.

While most of those marketers who sprang up to $3.5 million per 30-second spot in Sunday's You-Know-What, will see all sorts of response to their ads from tweets, to web traffic, ad trade reviews, and increased retail sales in the days that follow, there will be still be lingering doubt about the ROI of such a spend -- as there is about all advertising.

The prompt to interact with a brand (including actually buying it) for me comes from all over the place, including nearly every form of advertising from direct mail to newspapers to TV, online and outdoor, but also from direct recommendations from friends and relatives ("influencers" as they are called in the biz, I guess), savvy store clerks, online specialists, end-aisle displays, shelf hangers, truck panels, almost anywhere except phone calls and radio.

Like you, I do everything humanly possible to avoid ads. I hardly ever watch anything live on TV anymore so I can skip the endless spots in each pod. I pay for ad-free radio in my cars and on my desktop. I toss 99% of direct mail unopened. I have a policy of not reading stickers slapped on my newspapers and tearing out any and every unusual ad format from magazines before I read them.

Yet, I am still influenced by ads. I know that and accept it (although some of the extreme, in-your-face forms of ads -- from being sprayed in a department store to guerrilla street ads to skywriting -- REALLY piss me off).  But the process of moving me down the funnel is often far more complex than can be deduced by any form of research (although I am perfectly happy to have an attractive co-ed follow me around 24/7).  I have brand loyalty to some products and services that is decades old -- and NOTHING anyone says will change that. On the other hand, I will try something new in a heartbeat -- especially if a brand (or retailer) breaks one of its fundamental promises to me.

But I tell you what, you can electronically read my id, ego, subconscious, hypothalamus , or, as Kingfish once famously said, "my sapo-cracker-jack" -- and I swear it will be no predictor of what I plan to buy next.

But you could just ask me. For some consideration, I'll give you an electrodes-free list of brands that are in and brands that are out. At least for today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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