WATCH | Should neuromarketing be part of your marketing strategy?

In a world dominated by human needs and desires, which often provide the motivation behind our decision-making, having an insight into someone’s brain can be the ultimate recipe for brand success. Will neuromarketing be the ultimate tool to provide a customer experience that is second to none?

It does sound a bit like science fiction, but the concept of neuromarketing is not as ominous as it may seem. It is, however, becoming a main ingredient for drafting an effective brand strategy and guiding product development, despite it being early days for many brands regarding its adoption.

Essentially, it's about understanding the psychological drivers and triggers that make people respond in a certain way. Marketers are then able to design products and position them to be irresistible.

The truth is that humans and consumers are more complex. Our different life circumstances mean there's no single cookie-cutter approach to grabbing consumer attention. But neuromarketing is certainly providing insights on what generally draws consumers in, and what pushes them away. So which marketing stimuli are people most responsive to?

By using electroencephalograms and/or functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure changes in brain activity on a cohort of volunteers, scientists can measure the subconscious response to certain marketing elements such as colours, text, images, sounds, smells, and textures.

By targeting the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex of the brain — our emotion, memory and pleasure centres — it’s possible to see when a positive response has been elicited. Eye-tracking, facial response and biometrics (heart rate monitoring, for example) all add to the neuromarketing discipline.

So, who's are already using the science to design the best product or brand experiences for consumers?

PayPal has used neuromarketing research to refine its brand message and quadruple clickthrough rates. Frito-Lay used insights to change its chip packaging from a shiny to matt finish, which provided more consumer appeal. McDonald’s uses colour in its logo to reflect happiness, and link to French fries, while tequila producer Patrón uses hippocampal headlines to draw attention and interest with its slogan “Practice makes Patrón”.

Join the next episode of the Future of Media online conference series, where a panel of experts will share how neuromarketing bridges the gap between cognitive psychology and behavioural economics. The discussion will allow brands to understand the decision-making process of the human brain and measure emotion and attention — to optimise successful communications.

They’ll explore the subconscious and uncover how neuromarketing can (and should) be incorporated into your 2021 marketing strategies to speak to the motivations deep within the mind.

Panel members in the discussion, moderated by Siya Sangweni, include:

• Thom Nobel — chief strategy officer, Cloud Army
• Mark Drummond — co-founder, Neural Sense
• Jackie Dhaeyere - market research consultant specialising in implicit and other non-traditional techniques
• David Rosenstein — co-founder, Neural Sense

Date: Thursday, June 24
Time: 10am — 11am

Partners of the Future of Media online conference series include Vodamedia, Vodacom, Primedia Outdoor, The MediaShop, TILT, WAN-IFRA, The FM Redzone and The Media Online.