Negotiating The Neurons of Neuromarketing

Before moving forward, take a look at the above illustration.
Take your time. What do you think it is?

Now check out here what it really is?

The fine orange sticky dust that settles onto our fingers when mindlessly snacking on the guilty pleasures, is perhaps not the first thing that comes to our mind when we start exploring neuroscience, that which has given rise to not so new wave of marketing called neuromarketing.

After scanning the brains of a carefully chosen group of consumers, in 2008 it was discovered that the "icky coating triggers an unusually powerful response in the brain: a sense of giddy subversion that consumers enjoy over the messiness of the product." Frito-Lay leveraged that information into its advertising campaign for Cheetos, which has made the most out of the brains' response to the mess. NeuroFocus, the company behind the research earned a Grand Ogilvy award for advertising research for "demonstrating the most successful use of research in the creation of superior advertising that achieves a critical business objective."

The capturing of the synaptic brain waves seems to be the ultimate promise of neuromarketing. It takes about half a second for the sub-conscious to react to a stimulus received by the brain. During this vital time frame, the sub-conscious mind is free from memories and cultural convictions. It is in a state of primal potency: not polluted social norms and cultural beliefs. It is in this state that the cheese flavored orange dust of Cheetos seems pretty adventurous. However, once this action moves to the conscious level, the artificially flavored and colored MSG dust is, kind of repulsive.

"I bet you, long ago if you looked at cave paintings, there were a bunch of Cro-Magnon men and women sitting around a fire in focus groups wondering whether to go hunt mastodon that night," says A. K. Pradeep, founder and CEO of NeuroFocus. "Today, our focus groups are no different." Being under the constant pressure of political correctness, we have denied ourselves the inner truth. Pradeep believes he can get at the truth.

Read more about the players of neuromarketing who are spending millions to find out what you like and why like it. Explore how you can use the research to further your trade show marketing efforts.

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