This book is rad. Clearly written with great and compelling counter-intuitive ideas, and neat and new research to support them.
A lot of reviews of this book have challenged the legitimacy of the research presented in Martin Lindstrom’s Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. However, the key benefit of the book is not exactly about the legitimacy of the research. The data from new fMRI brain scan technology is so cutting-edge no one’s really too sure how to interpret or apply it with great effectiveness. I’m not sure the point of the book is to prove the veracity of the data.
Rather, this great book explains how the insights from this (however dubious) research is actively employed in advertisements and marketing strategies everywhere. Whether it’s about manipulating our mirror neurons, or taking advantage of our secondary brand associations, this book does a great job of calling our attention to the more subtle selling strategies that constitute the majority of the most exciting (and disturbing) marketing these days.
In addition to improving marketing practice, becoming aware of how the less conscious parts of your brain are actively targeted (I think) will be increasingly essential to what it means to be a self-aware person. It won’t just be about scrutinizing your belief system, but how the world is shaping your tastes and instinct.
For example, the sound your straw makes when it punctures the cup lid at McDonald’s is completely engineered for you to associate it with the restaurant. That sound becomes linked to thirst and the fast food meal in the sucker of a brain we all seem to have.
There are some many great ideas in this book. Here’s a few that will stick with me.
- The Vampire Effect: Sex sells, but it only really sells itself. Or so Martin and crew discovered with a study analyzing people’s retention of sexually explicit ads vs. non-sexual ads. The sexually explicit ads certainly got more attention from our brain, but they didn’t do anything to effectively sell the product they were used in the service of. People had a much harder time recalling what the sexy ad was about than the not-sexy ad. Sex in advertising is said to have a “vampire effect,” effectively sucking our attention away from the content of the advertising message. Hot chix may be great, but don’t expect them to move vacuum cleaners.
- Mirror Neurons: Martin describes contagious yawning as a function of mirror neurons, the neurons that fire for someone when they observe the actions of someone else. In the brain, the neuron “mirrors” the behavior of the observed’s action, as though the observer were his/herself acting. Thus, contagious yawning, as well as the thrill from watching action movies, and hunger when we see others eating. It is this neurological phenomena that marketers and advertisers manipulate repeatedly and with increasing sophistication. Beware of your reaction to ads portraying people doing stuff…you’re getting played.
- Product Placements Don’t Work: Product placements, for the most part, do not work. Whether we see Brad Pitt nonchalantly take a bite of a Pizza Hut pizza, or Zooey Deschanel sneeze outside a FedEx Office, it does nothing to induce us to pursue (or even remember) that product or service. Only in the instance where the product is used as a key part of the plot (Reese’s in E.T.) does the placement have any resonance with the audience. Get ready movies where Joan Allen freaks out when her Cinnabon doesn’t have enough frosting…My screenplay, Joan Allen Spazzes at Cinnabon, has been optioned.
