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Where Will Neuroscience Make Its Greatest Contribution to Advertising?

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At the recent Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Re:THINK 2011 conference, ARF reported the results of its study of nine different suppliers’ tests of the same commercials. All nine suppliers utilized their own approach to the measurement of involuntary psychophysiological response to stimuli.

Later that day, two other suppliers who had decided against participation were probably patting themselves on the back for staying out of the study. Why? Because the report had the result of (slightly) dialing back what had been the industry’s excitement about these new tools. The general picture painted was: (1) there is still a lot of work to be done; (2) at least some of the suppliers had not done their homework to become better informed about the test campaigns themselves; and (3) counter to expectation, these practitioners in general appeared to be less rather than more scientific than the existing state of the art in copy testing.

The folks at ARF certainly didn’t set out to pour cold water – they went into this with high enthusiasm about the promise of neuroscience for advertising. What happened?

Perhaps the problem was that the ARF, in order to gain cooperation, promised not to identify the pros/cons of individual suppliers. This protocol had worked well for the Council on Research Excellence (CRE) in their study of set top box (STB) data/analysis suppliers last year, which probably would not have gained enough cooperation to go forward otherwise.

Now the learning experience for industry leadership is that composite supplier descriptions/evaluations is a technique that must be carefully adapted on a case-by- case basis. In fact, the key difference between the two studies is that CRE did not cross the line from description into evaluation, whereas ARF did cross that line.

Possibly this was because the STB data analysis companies were willing to disclose techniques more so than were the neuroscientists. Perhaps ARF felt there would be nothing to report without evaluation, since in-depth technique description was not available. (Although I know of one supplier than provided 40 pages of such documentation.)

Today’s blog posting is motivated by the desire to see no slowdown in the development of the neuroscience field for the advertising industry and in general. Some years ago we did some advertising neuroscience of our own in company with Dr. Richard Davidson, today one of the most respected and quoted neuroscientists in the world, and Dr. Daniel Goleman, best known for his best-selling book series on emotional intelligence, a term he coined. That work convinced this writer that neuroscience can be of great value in advertising and media.

For example, in the research Drs. Richardson, Goleman and I conducted, we succeeded in using neuroscience to solve a conundrum that had baffled a leading drug company for years:

One of their big-spending TV over-the-counter brands had run a commercial years earlier that rang the bell so strongly there was no denying it had caused a substantial sales increase. For years, the agency tried to replicate the results with new commercials but never succeeded.

Neuroscience, however, was able to identify why the commercial was so effective, with such clarity that the agency was able to create a new commercial nearly as sales effective as its progenitor.

This case study is instructive in terms of how to derive greatest value from neuroscience in the context of advertising: instead of using biometrics to evaluate the power of a commercial, we used it to dissect the reason for a commercial’s power.

In other words, we used neuroscience diagnostically rather than evaluatively.

Instead of trying to answer the question “How well does it work?” we set out to answer a different question, “how (or why) does it work?”

Which is not to say that neuroscience cannot be used both ways, just that it’s possible the greatest increase in knowledge might come diagnostically. This is at least something worth looking into.

In the case just described, part of how the commercial worked is that it created the brain signature of the pain state in the viewer. By then segueing to a shot of the product package and the use of the product ending with a pain-free actor, the commercial ended with removal of the pain signature in the viewer’s brain.

Hence the viewer when next in the real pain state would subconsciously remember the product that removed the pain state. Classic problem-solution at the involuntary level rather than at the rational level.

So what is the generalizable clue? The concept of brain signatures for more complex states.

What if we as an industry are able to become aware of the brain signatures of brand gratitude, brand affinity, persuasion, purchase intent – signatures that can be validated against the same person’s change in brand purchase behavior?

What if we can also learn the brain signatures of specific blocks to a commercial’s success, such as lack of comprehension, disbelief, and distrust?

Neuroscience commercial testers are using the concept of brain signatures, but many seem to be stopping at purely evaluative signatures such as attention, arousal, and approach/avoidance, rather than the more complex diagnostic signatures suggested above, which tell more about why a commercial is or is not working.

In the interest of perhaps making a modest contribution to industry knowledge, and to  supplement ARF’s composite report, we will provide a venue in upcoming blog postings for any interested neuro (and non-neuro) copy testers to communicate their validation work, which we will present with individual supplier identification and our own editorial commentary.

 

Briefly Observed News in the Media

  • On April 4, in an interview regarding Libya on Fox News, Dr. Henry Kissinger enunciated his recommended policy for US intervention in such situations. Because US resources are not infinite and are already overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, he proposed that the US only become involved in other countries that meet both of the following two criteria:

    • Humanitarian concerns e.g. people being killed by their own government
    • US national strategic interests
  • On April 5, the media reported that because of the situation in Japan, it is being considered that the evacuation zone for the Indian Point Nuclear Power facility in case of an emergency be expanded from ten miles to fifty miles – which would mean the necessity of evacuating New York City. (Need I say more?)
  • Also April 5, it was reported that Muammar Gaddafi is considering a deal to step down. Miraculously, he reached out to Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon, one American he trusted (we have written about the importance of trust before), who flew into Libya to meet with Gaddafi. Weldon is the American that Gaddafi had spent more time with than any other American. I have heard it said that one person does not matter, but obviously that is not always the case. In the words of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.”

 

Best to all,

Bill

Gratitude Reach Units (GRUs)

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“Quality Of Life (QOL) advertising/promotion… advertising/promotion designed to trigger a feeling of appreciation or gratitude as the audience realizes that the advertiser has made a positive contribution to the quality of life, either in the advertisement/promotion itself, or in a separate event that the advertising/promotion recounts.” —Media Science Newsletter, June, 1979

Since 1979, there has been an upsurge in the use of Cause Marketing to the point of overload, as pointed out in the June 1, 2010 AdAge blog by Mike Swenson, CEO of Barkley, whose Cause agency clients include H&R Block, Lee Jeans, and the March of Dimes. Mike comments that when Cause is done right, the emotional partnership with the audience is achieved, but this emotional connection is missed when Cause is just another incentive to buy a product right away. He more broadly observes that Cause is in danger of being moved into the promotions department where its practitioners will have no in-depth appreciation for how it works or what it is meant to be, hence they will eliminate its effectiveness both for social good and for profits.

The only way for gratitude marketing to work is for it to be motivated by social good as much as by company good. The reason is that the public is so cynical and suspicious, they will root out insincerity even if it is artfully concealed. As if a great law of karma were at work: gratitude can only be an effective strategy if it is done with real intent for social benefit. Therefore the selling must be side-stepped, if not left out entirely.

Have these ideas ever been empirically tested, that a gratitude strategy can work if the  advertising does not try to sell, and merely provides a gift of some kind to its audience? There are 28 cases summarized in an ARF paper I co-authored in 2006, reporting that Internet sponsorships can generate extremely high persuasion scores and ROIs when there is no selling at all, and when the content is something that the audience can reasonably be expected to perceive as an unexpected gift.

Such as what? What kinds of communication content have been proven to generate these high metrics? Objective product information that is not entirely positive (gift of honesty), yet is utilitarian and not-overworn; information of interest to specific target audiences (e.g. Volvo sponsors Yahoo coverage of The NY Auto Show — Volvo paid so buyers could see Volvo competitors too — again gift of honesty, this time also showing confidence in one’s product); and educational content (e.g. how to be a great digital photographer). These are the dominant three content types across those studies.

Not included in that ARF paper but learned elsewhere we also know now that gratitude strategy can work with true sponsorship (“true”=no selling) of:

  • content that is hard to come by (e.g. jazz),
  • a report of some act of good corporate citizenship (Cause),
  • content that is inspiring and/or educational, and so on — the possibilities are endless, depending on the interests and lifestyles of the people in the target audience.

The idea of Gratitude Reach Units (GRUs) — which I had referred to as “QOL spots” in the 70s — resurfaced in my work for Internet publishers using the gratitude strategy. These publishers were achieving high CPMs and renewal rates with their advertiser clients, because marketing mix modeling and persuasion scores were so high. However, their Internet work for these advertisers remained a very small part of the total marketing pie for these same advertisers, because a gratitude-producing site on the Internet has very low reach. Yet the right sorts of people come to the site, the very ones that the brand is most interested in reaching, and they leave with an increased trust and liking for the sponsoring brand — because the brand did not ruin the moment by selling.

The Internet publishers were happy with Next Century Media's work in gratitude effect. But they wanted to find a way to become more important to their advertiser clients, and to somehow release their powerful gratitude method on a larger audience.

Hence the idea of Gratitude Reach Units — use some of a brand’s 30-second TV spots as GRUs, miniprograms with zero brand-sell, just with well-produced useful and/or inspiring content. Reports of humanitarian work in some cases; 9-year-old girls who sing opera as if trained for decades; true stories of everyday unsung heroes who go on every day nonetheless — whatever it might be. Again, the content is endless.

Not in a low-reach (“pull”) Internet site, but a 30- second (“push”) TV spot where high reach can be achieved.

For most brands’ targets, the content will mirror the kinds of content that ANA’s Family Friendly advertiser effort — led by folks like Barbara Bacce-Mirque — has been seeking and putting on the air for many years. In GRU form it will only be 30- (actually anywhere in the range of 20-120) second form rather than 60 minutes.

For a smaller number of brands aimed at younger people, GRUs may need to be edgier.

This is a testable concept. A brand can take a small percentage of the inventory it has already been allocated in an upfront buy — say 3% of the brand’s inventory — and use it for GRUs. Marketing mix and singlesource (and holdout geo areas) can be used to accurately measure the ROI impact of GRUs. If it lifts ROI, further testing can then optimize the percentage that should be GRU. It will undoubtedly differ by brands — more GRUs being desirable where the brand itself is perceived by most buyers to be at parity without significant advantages, fewer GRUs where the brand has a compelling and evident competitive edge.

Affinity/liking for the brand, respect, trust, appreciation, gratitude, “the brand is my friend”, experiential connections with the brand, inspiration — these will be the main diagnostic metrics to be used in creating and pre-testing program content for GRU sponsored miniprograms to run in commercial inventory. Neuromarketing measures should go beyond arousal and approach/avoidance, attempting to find a detectable signature for the gratitude effect. Frontal lobes, and smile/frown muscle electromyography, are two of my hunches, in the search for gratitude detection. Obviously the better we can pre-test and improve GRUs the more effective they will be in terms of financial ROI.

Who knows how great the ROI might turn out to be in terms of social good?

Best to all,

Bill

Rollout of Freedom, Long Stalled, Resumes

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Agnes Smedley, a great American heroine unknown here in the U.S. though known to schoolchildren in China, considered that The French, American, and Chinese Revolutions for Independence were not three wars, but a single revolution.

The Freedom Revolution.

Since written language began, nations have been formed by warlike leaders. These controllers have been better or worse for the people living within their domains. A rare few, such as the presidents of the U.S., have been relatively more dedicated to their people, which is as it ought to be. Nowadays most truly civilized nations have caught up to the U.S. in this and in other ways. Thank God!

There continue to be other nations that repress their people. Ten or eleven years ago when the Internet penetration slowly started to climb in these latter nations, betting folks would have laid odds as to when the revolutions would start. It was inevitable. Even Hitler would have known that, given his comment on media: “First, capture the radio station.”

Unlike broadcast media or any other media before it, the Web/Mobile medium now fascinating us all with its endless surprising unfoldments, is interpersonal, like conversation and sex. It is inherently social, and empowers both the individual and the group, informing their increasing interaction. This means that this medium is a democratizing tool. The human race is the pre-eminent tool-building race on the planet, and now we have invented a tool that feeds and feeds off our inherent ability to come together socially in synergistic and potentially win/win ways.

In the consumer electronics business, the leaders are already aware that the Internet/Mobile medium – let’s call it the Web for short – has democratized technology. What we are now seeing on a global scope is that the Web is also democratizing society.

The information flowing to the populations of repressed nations for the last ten or more years has created a pent-up pressure. When the valve bursts, the repressive governments can no more stuff the genie of freedom back in the bottle by shutting down the Internet (too late) than they could stuff toothpaste back in a tube.

It started even before the Web, with TV. TV brought a view of the world into these repressed nations. It was not always with positive effects. In January 1980, in Media Science Newsletter, I quoted Princeton’s top expert on Iran at the time, Jerome Clinton: “It was almost a caricature of our civilization as we know it. When I was there, it was embarrassing to see ‘Peyton Place’ in Persian. Movies and TV gave the impression that the West was totally materialistic, selfish and consumption-oriented. Conservative Iranian Muslims saw their sons and daughters corrupted by these influences from the West. They felt powerless.”

American TV, movies, and global websites subsequently poured much information, positive and negative, into the repressed nations of the world. The ultimate effect was to drive repressive and rapacious dictators out of Egypt and Tunisia. But look what’s happening now.

The pressure that TV, movies and the Internet have been building up in these dictator-controlled countries – letting in a view of the greener grass elsewhere – is still pent up in lots of nations. They now see the art of the possible. Look what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, they say, we can do that here – we must do that here – we would be cowards to stand by any longer now that we see it can be done. Bahrain, Libya, Syria,   Yemen and even China are now feeling the ripple effect from the Egypt mindquake.

In the smaller nations where this happens and the government kills peaceful protesters, as happened in Syria on March 25, 2011 – yesterday as this is being written – the world community will tend to step in and declare the government illegitimate and aid the rebels – as is already happening in Libya. It remains to be seen what will happen if and when such incidents were to occur in China.

The net result of this process will be fewer and fewer dictatorships – obviously, a very good thing.

Another effect could be that the young and idealistic in the repressed nations will now have a positive cause for which to fight, as opposed to being channeled off into the crime-as-terrorism phenomenon. It should become harder for the Taliban, al-Qa’ida et al to recruit. Another very good thing.

Let it be.

Best to all,

Bill

PS – Working on a documentary about Agnes Smedley. Please email me bhncm@ix.netcom.com for further information.

Audience Created Programming

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“Another Potential Ratings ‘Secret Weapon’: Recruit Your Audience To Do Your Programming. Then they will tune in to see themselves, and get as many other people as possible to watch… Sounds homey and unglamorous, but so are most communities and most people. Its track record proves that this method yields more rating points per production dollar.”  — Media Science Newsletter, May 15, 1979

Back in those days we were always writing about the future of television – at the time that meant 1990 :smile:. Our prediction of audience-created programming (today we call them “reality shows”) was based merely on the growth of cable networks, which meant smaller audience shares for the original networks who paid for most of the top productions. Seeing those smaller shares coming, it was no stroke of genius to think that lower cost programs would be coming too.

Elsewhere in that issue and in other reports through the 80s and 90s, we spoke of viewers using their camcorders (today we would say cellphones) to send video upstream from their homes in a new form of immersive interactive TV – live shows with viewers at home literally stepping into the frame. Risky business – even with multi-second delays and bleep buttons – but Jerry Springer turned it into a goldmine with just a studio audience. Maybe we will get that “Camera Two-Way TV” yet.

This led us to predictions of video dating, video travel, video group therapy – forms which have been developed with somewhat different spins, programs like “Real World”, “Jersey Shore”, etc. – again, not yet using webcams at home – and live programming has quite fallen out of the culture for some years now, except for sports.

Population Becoming More Creative and Inventive?

Remember the (regrettable) experiments with animals deprived of toys, and how that stunted their emotional and intellectual development?

On the other side of the scale, the hyper-stimulation of today’s culture could be generating a population of creative inventors. The 2011 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, according to the Boston Business Journal (January 19, 2011), finds that 71% of females 16-25 consider themselves to be creative, compared with 66% for males 16-25.

Historically, as a culture, we have suppressed the percentage of the population that could make a living as a creative person. As media have grown they have increased how much these few could earn and generate. Could we absorb two-thirds of the population into the entertainment business?

Since this is unlikely, to forego frustration, we need to channel our creative energies into whatever it is that we do.

The same study finds smaller proportions considering themselves “inventive” as compared to “creative” – 39% of males 16-25 and 27% of females 16-25 see themselves as “inventive”. More than twice as many females of this age group see themselves as creative as see themselves as inventive, and the pattern is almost as dramatic for males of this age. Probably just realism: females see themselves doing unique things that are a bit unexpected but do not equate that with creating an invention.

Empowered by the new digital toolkit – video phones, computers, the Internet, affordable video editing suites and animation systems for everyday computers, Facebook and Twitter, having their own blogs, doing mashups, emailing photos from cellphones – the average person has become more creatively expressive.

The programs on the air do not fully tap this range of expression yet; the graphic representation might look something like the visible light slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. The slice that has been most fully developed has been predictably skewed to physicality – because that is more exciting than talking heads. Yet a market for talking heads persists – it is much of what we see around the “dial” today – and the best of the breed, such as “Charlie Rose”, has a franchise and is a business. Possibly more programming can be created that is somewhere (if not a cross :smile:) between “Charlie Rose” and “Jersey Shore”, that taps into the cultural creative spurt that is one of the upsides of the media technology revolution.

Best to all,

Bill