• Advertising Age , Wednesday, October 22, 2008 10:30 AM

Believe that subliminal advertising is a bunch of hooey left over from the Mad Ave. conspiracy theorists of your father's generation?

Think that tobacco marketers are vile purveyors of death?

Well, if you've read this far, I can unequivocally state that you at least like a challenging headline, but I can't go as far as Martin Lindstrom, who is chairman-CEO of Lindstrom Co. He says in a new book that anti-smoking warnings on cigarette packs make you want to smoke.

The good news for Lindstrom is that, whatever your position, you'll probably have one regarding his Buyology: Truth and Lies About What We Buy. It's published by Doubleday and lays out the findings of a three-year, $7 million neuromarketing study. Other "counterintuitive" claims are that a brand's logo is not as important as some believe and that consumers' sense of sound and smell are more powerful than their sense of sight.

Marissa Miley reports that Lindstrom's researchers in Oxford, England, used the most up-to-date neurotechnologies -- functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) -- on 2,000 people from five countries in an effort to better understand consumer behavior. The goal was to gauge the efficacy of product health warnings, product placement and subliminal messaging, among other things.

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