• by Joe Mandese , November 28, 2006

In a development that is sure to grab hold of some minds - if not brains - on Madison Avenue, a group of medical scientists have uncovered new research linking brain functions to brand impact. The research, revealed this morning at a Radiological Society of North America meeting in Chicago, claims to be the first to utilize the medical diagnostic technique of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to chart the physiological impact brands have on the human brain.

"We found that strong brands activate certain areas of the brain independent of product categories," said Christine Born, M.D., radiologist at University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, one of the medical scientists who worked on the project, which the researchers dubbed "brain branding."

The approach is the latest effort by medical researchers to utilize a biometric method to gauge how human physiology is impacted by advertising, media and brand messages, and is sure to capture the imagination of the ad industry, which already is several years into its own effort to leverage the field of neuroscience.

That effort, which has been led by the Advertising Research Foundation and Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman, author of the book "How Customers Think," is focused on understanding how the brain processes advertising and media content to shape thinking about advertising and brands. The research also is a major component of the ARF and its MI4 task force's engagement research, which is trying to understand the role that consumers play in "co-authoring" advertising and brands.

"Brain imaging technologies may complement methods normally used in the developing area of neuroeconomics," Dr. Born said. Dr. Born and his colleagues used fMRI to study 20 adult men and women. The volunteers were all right-handed, had a mean age of 28 years and possessed a high level of education. While in the fMRI scanners, the volunteers were presented with a series of three-second visual stimuli containing the logos of strong (well-known) and weak (lesser-known) brands of car manufacturers and insurance companies. A brief question was included with each stimulus to evaluate perception of the brand. The volunteers pressed a button to respond using a four-point scale ranging from "disagree" to "agree strongly."

During the sequence, the fMRI acquired images of the brain, depicting areas that activated in response to the different stimuli. In addition to the questions asked during the scanning, the volunteers were given questionnaires prior and subsequent to fMRI.

The results showed that strong brands activated a network of cortical areas and areas involved in positive emotional processing and associated with self-identification and rewards. The activation pattern was independent of the category of the product or the service being offered. Furthermore, strong brands were processed with less effort on the part of the brain. Weak brands showed higher levels of activation in areas of working memory and negative emotional response.