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The Age of Neuromarketing Has Dawned
(Douglas Rushkoff, February 19, 2004)
The latest innovation in a never-ending quest to decode consumer behaviors, the institute uses Emory University Hospital’s Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment to scan the brains of human subjects on behalf of corporate clients such as Coca-Cola, K-mart and Home Depot. . . . Of course, this goes against the grain for any of us still old enough, or conscious enough, to recognize the difference between marketing and culture. We are already living in a world where the colors of wallpaper, the textures of carpet and the scents pumped through ventilation systems are concocted to alter our mood, change our gait and make us bring more items to the checkout line. Our children recognize McDonald’s and Nike logos before they can read, and our teens are suffering from more advertising-related psychological diseases every year–from diabetes and anorexia to attention deficit disorder and alcoholism. . . . So, yes, the thought of a once-respected university surrendering its MRI equipment, psychiatrists and addiction experts to an advertising agency in order for them to mine deep into our pre-conscious neural patterns and speak directly to our reptilian brains is disconcerting, to say the least. . . . If this stuff works, the bottom line of the corporate balance sheet could very well become the arbiter of reality–or at least the way we perceive it. . . . The simple craft of describing what a product does and taking some nice pictures of it has been replaced by the voodoo of emotional logic and cognitive imprinting. . . . Commercial Alert’s letter is quick to cite Forbes magazine, which has called neuromarketing the pursuit of "a buy button inside the skull." Indeed, in a 2002 press release, BrightHouse claimed it would use science "to identify patterns of brain activity that reveal how a consumer is actually evaluating a product, object or advertisement…to help marketers better create products and services and to design more effective marketing campaigns." . . . A decade or so from now, I suspect we will regard neuromarketing researchers and their techniques the way we regard phrenologists or blood-letters today. And we’ll realize that the only people who ended up being hypnotized by their wares were the daft corporate executives who paid for them.

posted by LoZo 11:51 AM