Remember the talk and controversy around ‘subliminal advertising’ on cinema screens in the 1980s? Rumour was during the movie, Coca-Cola flashed not-visible-to-the-naked-eye images of condensation-drenched glasses of coke and phrases like ‘You are thirsty’ and ‘Drink Coca-Cola’ thereby compelling your subconscious to buy a coke.
Whether this was actually going on the 80s is debatable, but we know for sure that in the summer of 1957, American social psychologist James Vicary ran an experiment in which he flashed said images of Coca-Cola and popcorn on the big screen. The result? Sales of the theatre’s Coca-Cola went up 58%, and popcorn by 18%.
News of the experiment leaked to the press and the next thing Vicary was accused of manipulating people’s thoughts to make them buy a product. Vicary subsequently distanced himself from the whole thing, going as far as to deny the experiment ever took place. However, the mystery and debate over subliminal advertising has persisted ever since.
Fast-forward to the beginning of the 21st century and what we find in subliminal advertising’s place is neuromarketing—a form of marketing that uses neuropsychology to study and exploit consumers’ response to stimuli. And, this time, it’s not a rumour or something to deny, instead it’s happening around us all the time. Companies like Google, Disney, Microsoft, Intel, eBay, McDonald’s, Unilever and, yes, Coca-Cola, are all very open about their use of neuromarketing.
Photo by himanshu Chaudhary on Unsplash
The term ‘neuromarketing’ was first coined in 2002 in an article published by a marketing firm BrightHouse, based in Atlanta. In the article, BrightHouse details how it sponsored ‘neurophysiologic’ research and experimented with functional magnetic resonance imaging to see how consumers’ brains reacted to various images.
Prior to 2002, however, Gerald Zaltman, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University was responsible for some of the first experiments in neuromarketing. Sometime in the 1990s, Zaltman patented the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique, which prompts conscious but more specifically unconscious neurological responses to images. The premise of Zaltman’s theory is that certain imagery has the power to spark unconscious thoughts and feelings which compel the viewer to act, i.e. feel an affinity toward and/or purchase a particular brand.
With the advent of social media and data mining, neuromarketing has never been more prevalent or more powerful. Those ‘weird’ occasions when you are merely thinking about some product you want to buy, or some place you’d like to go on holiday and the next thing an ad for it appears on your screen—that’s thanks to some form of neuromarketing, an algorithm’s ability to read and predict your behaviour based on previous conscious or unconscious inputs.
Neuromarketing can obviously be very effective in matching your product to your consumer. It’s exactly this concept that has made the likes of Facebook and Google the multi-billion dollar behemoths they are—brands are prepared to pay a lot of money to advertise on these platforms because they know their audiences are targeted like never before. Your data tells brands and companies what you’ll buy, when and how you’ll buy it, and which psychological buttons to press to make you want it again.
Such is the sensitivity around neuromarketing, the Neuromarketing Science & Business Association drew up a code of ethics
So, is neuromarketing ethical? Is it any different from standard marketing and advertising which in their own ways also target our subconscious? Hasn’t this always been the goal of advertising—to make you want a product you didn’t know you needed?
Those in favour of neuromarketing argue it’s merely a way of seamlessly bringing a product and its consumer together. Nowadays, especially online, a lot of the adverts you see are tailor made to your preferences. You are no longer bombarded with annoying ads for things you have no interest in. This saves precious time and energy for both you and the seller.
Where the issue comes in is what you’re advertising. To continually (and subliminally) flog unhealthy products like soft drinks and alcohol to people who are overweight or trying to stop drinking is irresponsible. The same can be said of those luminous, flashing ads for online gambling—what if the person they’re targeted at has a gambling addiction? And while not advertising an actual product, using neuromarketing tricks on something like a political campaign is very dangerous. Though it’s debatable as to whether or not we’ve been ‘neuromarketed’ since birth by governments and society to act a certain ways and believe in certain things even if they don’t make much sense.
Photo by Daniel Hjalmarsson on Unsplash
Such is the sensitivity around neuromarketing, and the fact that its possibilities have exploded thanks to big data, the Neuromarketing Science & Business Association drew up a code of ethics in 2016. The pillars of its principles include integrity, credibility, transparency, consent, privacy, participant rights and consideration of children and young people.
How much such codes of ethics remain open to interpretation and change is still to be seen, but what is certain is neuromarketing has arrived in a big way. Whether or not you want to be on board depends on if you’re comfortable with influencing your consumer so cerebrally, and oftentimes unknowingly, and how deep you’re prepared to take this influence.
- Would you be comfortable using neuromarketing? Perhaps you already do—if so, tell us what you’ve found so far.