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18: Using Neuroscience Effectively

The author indicates that this chapter was written by Graham Page, a consumer neuroscience executive, who has a better perspective of neuromarketing in practice.

Currently, neuroscience is a hot topic in the marketing industry, as evidenced by the number of conference presentations, articles, books, and general activity in the area. The claim is that neuroscience will play "a revolutionary role" in the future of marketing and it is given much attention.

In practice, talk of neuroscience permeates marketing, brand, and advertising decisions, and there are a growing number of agencies that claim to offer services based on neuroscience. The phrase "neuroscience proves" is increasingly being used to justify activities and expenditures, often without much consideration of the soundness of the "proof" that is claimed.

Primarily, neuroscience is attractive because it provides a method of quantifying phenomena that traditionally defy quantification. Traditional research methods such as focus groups and surveys are being displaced by EEG and other biometrics, which are assumed to be more scientific, accurate, and valid.

However, over the past few years, questions have been raised regarding the entire area, and there is forming a division in the industry between those who regard neuroscience as revolutionary, and those who dismiss it as mere hype.

The Current State Of Play

The writer's own firm has been very cautions about neuromarketing. While marketers are increasing turning to neuroscience, it requires a great deal more caution than it is often given: neuromarketing is new and controversial, and those that would leverage it need to "do their homework" to ensure that what they are doing is useful rather than harmful.

A few points/observations:

• Traditional marketers are (rightly) suspicious of neuromarketing. It's a new area, largely unproven, and the overblown claims make them all the more suspicious of it.
• There are many significant practical hurdles. The techniques for measuring brainwaves are very intrusive and clumsy, making them difficult to apply to many research efforts without significant expense, and cost-cutting measures entail leaving out tasks that are critical to getting accurate results (such as using an adequate number of test subjects or a control group)
• There are many practitioners who are not qualified, whose methods are unsound, and who make grandiose claims upon which they are unable to deliver.
• Many companies believe their work in this area to be a competitive advantage, and are secretive about methods and results, making it difficult to evaluate results and identify good/bad practices.
• Most who use neuroscience quickly realize that it does not provide much in the way of actionable information and find that they still have to conduct traditional research.

The last point is crucial: certain neuroscience methods do seem to provide some value, but only when used in addition to existing methods rather than as a replacement for them. More importantly, their results are only as valid as the interpretation, which must be done with extreme care by individuals who are qualified and experienced in the field - of whom there are not many.

Neuroscience Methods

When you propose to leverage neuroscience, there are a few key questions to ask:

1. Does the method tell us something meaningful that can be applied to marketing?
2. Does the method tell us something we do not already know?
3. Does the method discover anything that could not be discovered by more cost-effective methods)?
4. Is the method practical and scalable?

While many proposed methods do not pass these screening questions, three that seem to do so in many instances are implicit association measurement, e-e-tracking, and brainwave measurement.

Implicit Association Measurement

Implicit Association Measurement is not, strictly speaking, a technique of neuroscience, but it attempts to infer associations from the timing of responses rather than the content of the response - the principle being that a person responds more quickly to concepts they with which they have a positive association than a negative one.

For example, a person will respond faster to a question about "Toyota" than a question about a "Ford" because he has a more positive association to the former brand. They will respond faster to questions about logos, advertisements, commercials, packaging, and other elements if they have a positive association to them.

Eye-Tracking

Eye-tracking technology has become mode widely used, largely due to cheaper equipment. By tracking eye movement, we can identify areas of visual focus with more accuracy and detail than self-reported answers. This does not reveal why a particular area of an ad catches the eye, or how people respond to it - which still needs to be inferred.

The writer indicates he has found the technology useful in advertising and packaging, discovering when parts of a layout that are critical are overlooked or ignored, and attempting to adjust the layout of an advertisement to ensure that the subject (literally) sees the part that is most critical.

(EN: This is also a good technique for Web design - and a more natural fit, as Web pages are generally viewed on a computer screen. By viewing eye-tracks of a single user, or an aggregate of multiple test subjects, we can quickly notice what parts of an interface get little attention.)

Brainwave Measurement

Brainwave data can provide measurement of test subject reactions to a band or experience on a moment-by-moment basis, capturing reactions that are so quick of fleeting that the test subject may not remember, or even be aware of them, hence unable to report them. He notes that it is particularly important in countries such as India, China, and Latin America, where there are cultural tendencies toward cooperation and test subjects tend to make positive remarks.

The measurement of brainwaves using EEG equipment "is perhaps the most complex area in neuromarketing due to the variety of systems and companies offering them." The writer details the various reasons his firm uses Emsense equipment (EN: which may be moot, since the company went out of business in 2010): the Emsense equipment is scalable, cost-effective, and includes EEG data along with an array of other biometrics such as heart rate, respiration, blink rate, and body temperature; additionally, it is compact and unintrusive, such that it can accommodate a wide range of experimental situations.

Measuring activity in the brain that is believed to be related to emotion and cognition provides insight as to which stimuli are mentally engaging - but that is the extent to which EEG data is helpful: we can merely detect that a given part of the brain is active. That is, we can infer that a stimulus has been perceived and experienced, but cannot say what that experience happens to be (positive or negative), and the results are based on the assumption that any reaction is good, and a strong reaction is better.

(EN: Even this seems a bit generalized - there is no proof that a high level of activity means that there is a stronger reaction. It could well be that the most powerful stimuli, in terms of forming a lasting and positive impression, result in less activity than less significant ones: when we see an image, we may well expend more energy, in a literal sense, attempting to recognize it than we do in deciding whether it is attractive - and a strong emotional reaction may be had to an object with which we are familiar, but because it is familiar, we spend less energy to recognize it.)

This can be leveraged to make comparisons between alternatives (test subjects have a stronger reaction to one version of an ad than another) or to identify which parts of a message generate the strongest reaction (useful for doing a 30-second cut-down of a 60-second television spot - you keep the bits that have the strongest reaction.)

Will Neuroscience Replace Conventional Research?

The writer plainly states that "it is a misconception ... that marketers will be able to just measure people's response to stimuli via electrodes and work out what they really want." Again, the neuroscience indicates "there is activity," but to get to what the activity signifies, there is still no substitute for talking to people. As such, "we don't believe neuroscience methods can ever replace the need for conversation."

It's also noted that there is nothing inherently wrong with surveys and focus groups: they have been shown over many years to have a demonstrable link to consumer behavior, more so than the fledgling neuroscience methods. To abandon research methods that are well-known and that can be demonstrated to be effective in favor of unproven methods that have a theoretical basis but have not established their value and accuracy is plainly inadvisable.

However, there is some value in neuroscience even now, and there is potential for its value to increase as the science progresses - as such, neuroscience methods can be "a powerful complement" to traditional research methods, though a careful assessment is necessary to determine when neuroscience has the ability to deliver meaningful results that are relevant to a specific research question.

When Should Neuroscience-Based Techniques Be Used?

The author lists a number of instances in which neuroscience techniques seem to have the greatest potential to add value:

• Sensitive Topics - When researching into a topic where a respondent may be uncomfortable giving a candid response, and results may be skewed by their avoidance of unpleasant topics.
• Abstract concepts - When consumers have difficulty answering "weird" questions to speak to the topic the researcher is investigation, their struggle to formulate an answer can lead to less accurate results.
• Momentary reactions in real time - When asking respondents their impression of something such as a 30-second advertisement, the answer is necessarily reflective and generalized rather than specific to a given part of the experience.
• Emotions - Subjects have difficulty describing their own emotional states, in terms of the nature and strength of feeling.

In addition, certain techniques have particular applicability to very specific situations, such as using eye-tracking for visual advertisements, which yield data that traditional methods may not be able to capture.

Getting The Best Out Of Neuroscience

The writer names a few best practices for designing and implementing research using neuroscience methods.

First, be critical. The technology is new and sexy, not to mention hyped. Inquire into the methodology itself and look for proof that it is effective.

Look to credentials and experience. There are many charlatans as well-meaning but unqualified vendors who propose to offer value, few of whom can demonstrate qualifications.

Integrate neuroscience with other research methodology. Neuroscience methods do not reveal hidden truths, and do not trump the findings of traditional research. Used appropriately, they can help to validate or shed additional perspective.

While the writer expresses that in its present state, neuroscience offers value in a limited number of instances, but is continuing to develop. In time, it may become a standard tool for marketing research, but even then it will likely not become the only tool - just the right tool for certain tasks.