Marketing And Mind Reading

Neuromarketing loosely refers to measuring physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers’ motivations, preferences, and decisions. These tools use tech like EEG, biometrics, and eye-tracking, and AI to measure neurological reactions.

As reported in Business insider, in a recent campaign for Extra Gum, Mars says it used a neuroscience tool called ACE to cut a two-minute-long video and that the resulting 15-second video was among the company’s top 10% performing ads of all time. In 2020, it used ACE to shortlist “Band Aid” as the TV ad for its cat food brand Sheba, which it says resulted in an 18% sales lift for the brand versus the 14% sales lift of the last campaign. So this tech can work.

While the whole idea can feel a little insidious, it’s not new. Brands have been manipulating consumers since, well, since there were consumers. And the field of neuroethics is growing in importance as technology evolves, and the techniques become more mainstream.

The biggest concern is ensuring transparency to understand how we’re being manipulated, such as when Facebook manipulated nearly 700,000 users’ mood states in 2012 by altering their newsfeeds without informing them. Cerf goes pan to say, “A portable, affordable fMRI would be a total game-changer”.

And scary as hell.