The Open Mind - why neuroscience may not save advertising
b>Time flies and with it certainty. Or to make it personal, the older you get the less you know for sure.
In physics the wandering progression has been from Newton's Laws, which we sort of understand, to String Theory which we probably never will. In advertising we've gone from a process-model of simple measurements (reach, frequency, impact, sales) to a consumer-centric inkblot gestalt called Engagement, where describing what happens seems more important than figuring-out why.
We've learned that it isn't just how or how many messages are delivered that
predicts sales. It's the way consumers emotionally connect with the message that make it work or not. Effective advertising, like beauty, appears to be created in the mind of the beholder. And Mind's last known address is in some part of the brain.
BRAIN PEEPING
Better hold on to your head, because according to the scientists at Carnegie Mellon, we can eavesdrop there. They have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify the parts of the brain that light up when people, stimulated by an ad, consider whether to purchase a product. And using these same measures of brain activity they claim to predict which consumers will choose to buy. This is the emerging field of neuroeconomics, which investigates the emotional processes that keep otherwise rational people broke.
But what may seem to be a eureka moment for advertising deals with only part of the puzzle. It gives us physical markers of emotional response which may predict future behavior. But it does not yet tell us how to produce that emotional response.
It is perhaps a better measurement of message effects (since the sale itself depends on many other things). It may lead to a better kind of copy testing. But it is not yet a guide to more effective advertising.
SIGMOND WAS HERE
We passed through a similar period in the 1950's with Motivational Research, which studied the hidden motives predicting behavior. There were no brain scans then, so it used Freudian discussion techniques to uncover the subconscious emotions that could be used to shape consumer response.
It turns out Motivational Research was an overclaim. Despite its appeal, there was one damning criticism from behavioral researchers who pointed to a planning disconnect. They argued that attitudes, motives, mental states – no matter how ingeniously measured – which cannot be linked to preceding causal factors that can be controlled by the advertiser, are of little use to the advertiser. We have this same problem today. Not only with measures of engagement, but with consumer generated advertising.
Identifying and measuring the seat of emotional effects is intriguing, but not enough. If we want to use measures of engagement to improve advertising, we still need to learn how to produce and manage engagement in the real world. Brain scans of simple forced exposure to ads for different products don't tell us enough. They give us a picture of Thanksgiving dinner without the recipe.
NO SIGNAL, NO RESPONSE
Our battered traditional advertising model divides the process into stimulus (what advertisers do) and response (what the consumer does back). Stimulus measures include targeting, exposure, context and message. I think these essential measures are being neglected.
We look to emotion to understand response. But we have short-changed the better measures of advertising delivery which would tell us the commonsense conditions necessary for that emotion to be felt. Here if we measure better, we can control it and improve advertising.
Two examples. In order to respond to a message the consumer should be a prospect for the product. How well do we control that? TV's demographic definitions from the 1950's are a poor way to identify today's potential purchasers.
In order to respond to advertising a consumer must see the advertising. How well do we control that? The new Nielsen six-stream schema for TV commercial audience measures set tuning not people watching. Perhaps that truth would be too awful.
I think our focus on engagement and our neglect of better targeting and eyes-on ad measurements may be the last hurrah of traditional intrusive media. Engagement lets them change the subject.
Certainly advertising is not working as well as it once did because people are not engaged, but that disengagement starts well before our signals reach their brain.
