I could have placed this in the first thread, which will be linked shortly to address a particular post, but I felt the amount of information and the
context of discussion warranted a new thread.
In Response To Skyfloating
Originally posted by Skyfloating
I despise the premise that says I cant search out and choose the products I want myself. *Snip*
Anybody not know how or where to get a can of coke?
Wait until you get into the wonderful world of chemical/physiological influence that certain ingestable products have on the human being.
Coke, for one is an interesting example. Recall that they started out using cocaine in their recipe, an extreme example of inducing a certain
physiological reaction that is then mentally associated with the product brand name. Sinister?
With cocaine, at least you could overtly and specifically
feel the physiological need and recognize the cause.
Try researching Caffeine and its' relation to Cortisol production in the body. Essentially, without a huge side note, the caffeine stimulates a
Cortisol reaction which in turn stimulates adrenaline release in the body.
What this does put the body into a mostly "Fight or Flight" physiological state that allows the body to be more inclined to react on a more
emotional/physical level...or a very subtle physical addiction that is not always directly attributable (in the current conscious mindset of the
ingestor) to the Coke (current example). But the subconscious indeed recognizes this causality(?)...
As for the topic, I copy/pasted with intent to post a long time ago. The original url is not valid, but each excerpt, save for a few, were taken from
the same page, a page which is essentially selling papers/reports on various aspects of the Advertising industry. A copy and paste of relevant
portions of each excerpt should bring up a google source.
As for relevance, the points of ponderance illustrated within each summary illustrates that the thought process within the industry is actually ions
ahead of what we discuss on ATS. Some very interesting concepts and ideas are covered and I hope that this forum will join me in picking them apart.
I included my own thoughts for each, but do not think that I have a complete understanding of what I am presenting, indeed, the discussion should help
me out with this.
That said, a couple of reminders:
- It's a long read. I did my best to be succinct, but there is a lot of information here.
- All Emphasis Mine.
- All excerpted material is sourced from the link (unless otherwise noted)
here. I attempted to re-visit the link and it shows as ‘Page Not
Available’, though I have found a copy/paste to bring google recognition. A viewable page which these were excerpted from is
World Advertising Research Center
The subject for this Comments section is a continuation of the discussion of neuroscience and advertising research begun in IJA 26(1). In the first
commentary, Max Sutherland, of Bond University, Australia, and author of Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer, responds to comments made by Erik
du Plessis, and Graham Page and Jane Raymond. The second commentary, by Kathy Braun-LaTour of the University of Nevada, Las Vegask sheds light on a
growing area of interest in neuroscience and advertising: the use of childhood memories to make emotional connections to consumers.
Interesting. Neuroscience and Advertising bridged together. Who would have thought it?
What is interesting here is actually quite interesting. When you consider that the emerging American society with radio and television made it
possible for the first time to have universal associations above and beyond that which is genetically endowed; i.e. specific audio and visual snippets
(think a popular commercial jingle or the Coca-Cola logo); then you can see where they may be headed with this. By using popular brands of the past
and utilizing the components that made them successful (or just blatantly re-using them) the advertising industry can induce a nostalgic mindset on
the new brand endeavor.
And I am sure that I am only simplifying the concept.
The insights of neuroscience are only just becoming available for the study of advertising. This paper seeks to consolidate the contribution so
far. Advertising works in two ways: it may trigger some immediate response and/or change the respondent's brand memories in some way that influences
later behaviour. This paper addresses the latter process. In other words, advertising first changes brand equity, and brand equity, in turn, later
affects behaviour. The paper outlines the four main techniques of functional brain imaging and reported research in this area, its limitations and the
opportunities for new research. Whether the contribution to date is seen as modest or substantive is a lesser question than what neuroscience could do
for our longer-term understanding of how advertising works. Neuroscientists and advertisers need to work together so that research investigates how
ads are processed, how brand memories are stored and the subsequent behaviour effects relative to the intentions of the advertisers.
The insights of neuroscience are being made available to the Advertising industry.
Does that not seem interesting?
Indeed, the above cited is an explicit call for advertisers to work with neuroscientists for the purpose of better understanding how they may
influence not only what types of information the citizen takes in (control the questions, don’t worry about the answer type scenario) but how the
citizen will likely interpret and react to the information (profits).
I am sure that neuroscience is indeed concerned with the betterment of the mental health of an individual; however, this strongly suggests a possible
scenario not too dissimilar from pharmaceutical companies paying Doctors for their endorsement of a particular prescription drug.
What if the drive for profits in the form of the Advertising industry in some case directs the activity/direction/(and most importantly) the
interpretations of neuron-scientific research?
And how often do we hear about this research in context to their motivations?
Erik du Plessis, chairman of Millward Brown South Africa, reports on an experiment looking at the effects on viewers of fast-forwarded commercials.
Firstly he reviews current opinion on the effect of DVR viewing, and then explains 'inadvertant' attention and how it affects brand recognition and
awareness. He concludes that, because avoiding ads requires concentration, the viewer gives more attention to the screen than he would if the ads
were ignored. This has some important implications.
The important implications here are the effectiveness of semi-subliminals.
Have you ever fast forwarded through your pre-recorded TiVo show?
You don’t entirely skip the commercial process, as if you were watching a DVD version of the show. You end up seeing snippets of the commercials
and what Erik above seems to think is that the perception of the viewer is so engrossed to the television in order to ascertain when to press the play
button again that there is a higher attention being paid to the snippets of commercials that are being briefly flashed in front of the eye.
For those who have a pre-disposition against believing subliminals work, let us segue a bit…
ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2008) — Although the idea that instrumental learning can occur subconsciously has been around for nearly a century, it had
not been unequivocally demonstrated. Now, a new study published by Cell Press in the August 28 issue of the journal Neuron used sophisticated
perceptual masking, computational modeling, and neuroimaging to show that instrumental learning can occur in the human brain without conscious
processing of contextual cues. My EmphasisSubliminal Learning
Demonstrated In Human Brain
ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2007) — University College London researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do
attract the brain's attention on a subconscious level. The wider implication for the study, published in Current Biology, is that techniques such as
subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but still legal in the USA, certainly do leave their mark on the
brain.Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its’ Mark On The Brain
The two examples above demonstrate that controlled experiments have verified the voracity of the Subliminal and has found that it is possible for the
Subliminal to have an effect.
What is interesting though, is the Advertising Industries attempts to work out how to successfully implement these ideas into an uncontrolled
environment. Indeed, the attention of an individual is difficult to keep.
Which is why the genius observation of an individual’s attention to the screen while fast forwarding through commercials is very important. By
inducing the attention of an individual to avoid commercials (which most if not all of us are interested in) the variable that is direct human
attention is made nil. The entire focus of the individual is now centered. The only thing left is to decide the frame rate of the fast forwarding
and which aspects of each commercial are made to ‘jump’ out at the awareness….
The only variables that remain are personal preferences, which can be bridged using universal/pre-conditioned symbols/archetypes and the environmental
cues, such as a family member explicitly diverting attention.
The following is a similar study that highlights the potential importance of this particular direction/focus.
This paper will outline a research project commissioned by Sky media to investigate what happened when viewers watch ads at x30 fast forward (as if
they were fast forwarding through an ad break on a PVR). The finding was that even ads shown at this speed can have a positive affect on the viewer.
This finding demonstrates how better understanding of cognitive psychology, in this case of implicit memory, can be used to solve the new problems. It
also highlights why it is not always prudent to take consumers conscious reportage at face value. Part 2 describes Sky's approach to researching the
impact of advertising by setting up the SkyView television viewing panel. This not only measures what people view but also in a single source captures
what they purchase. This provides a wealth of information, based on actual consumer behaviour, on which to base marketing decisions.
Jakob de Lemos, chief technology officer and co-founder of iMotions-Emotion Technology A/S, looks at the issue of measuring emotional response to
communications and describes a proprietary eye tracking methodology called Emotion Tool?. He starts by discussing why it is important to measure
emotions, describes what an emotion is and how it is expressed, and how emotions are currently measured. He then describes the development of
Emotion Tool? and explains how it works.
I think this to be a very important aspect of the human mindset and how it interacts with its’ environment. Chemicals are essentially (I suppose
arguably) electro-chemical reactions in the brain as a response to an environmental cue. These electro-chemical reactions have evolved over the
lifetime of our species (why we cry at funerals) and are also environmental in nature (difference between what makes a sports fan happy and what makes
a masochist happy).
The above blurb is merely an over sight; I have no idea what an Eye Tool is…great research, eh
Although women are the most important target audience on earth - they remain misunderstood and under-catered for by the marketing and communication
communities. So argue Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts, from PrettyLittleHead, who explain the differences between the sexes revealed by recent
scientific and anthropological research. The implications are immense, and they conclude by summarising Four Feminine Codes, areas that they believe
determine the success of brands targeted at women.
This is important as it is obvious that the hormonal make-up of the female sex is generally and fundamentally different than that of the male sex.
This constitutes an awareness of the Advertising Industry towards various personality types as it pertains to chemical make-up in individuals and
highlights how specialized they are making their efforts.
A major goal for advertising is to have an enduring emotional impact on an audience by facilitating their creation of personally relevant
understandings of an advertisement. This is achieved through a process of cocreation in which consumers integrate advertising content with their
own attitudes, beliefs, and values to produce the meaning of an advertisement. This article proposes an approach to evaluating advertisements that
builds on the reconstructive nature of memory, the dominant view of memory today. The reconstructive view of memory holds that the memory for the same
event is different each time it is recalled and that the person doing the recalling is unaware of these changes. We present an experimental
paradigm that assesses advertising's influence on consumers' own memory of their beliefs. We demonstrate that advertising can unconsciously
alter consumers' beliefs as reflected by a change in how consumers recall their earlier reporting of these beliefs following an advertising exposure.
That is, advertising that causes consumers to remember differently earlier (preadvertising exposure) reported beliefs and in which the change is in
the direction of the advertisement's message is an advertisement that contains information the consumer has unconsciously adopted as their own and
therefore is likely to be personally relevant and to have an enduring impact on their emotions.
This study is taking into consideration the impact a current physiological state has on the recollection of a previous memory. The goal, if I
interpret correctly, is to instill a brand with the associations of core personal values that allow the consumer to recall an abstract in relation to
the brand that minimizes the variance in memory, kind of like being patriotic to a particular brand.
Or, likely to be more specific, the goal of this strategy is to induce a recollection of a core belief/feeling and to then transfer that core
belief/feeling to the brand so as to instill a sense of familiarity and unconscious preference based on personal identification.
Some help on this one would be nice…
Recall, one of the key metrics in advertising testing, has been criticized over the years as favoring rational advertising over emotional advertising.
An analysis and reconsideration of the available evidence show that emotional advertising is not penalized by recall, and that emotional content in
well-executed commercials can actually boost recall. Strong empirical evidence shows that recall, when used in combination with other measures, is a
valid measure of advertising effectiveness and, as the analysis here illustrates, does not miss the emotion in advertising that builds brands.
To anticipate and understand the impact of an advertising message, marketing professionals are looking for new solutions. This paper presents the IM!
(Impact Memoire) Method, which is particularly useful in increasing effectiveness during the campaign conception phase. The IM! methodology was
invented to help create and deliver effective advertising messages in conjunction with discoveries from Cognitive Sciences on the functioning of
our memory.
The creation of advertising campaigns that are designed on the latest discoveries of neuron and Cognitive sciences.
And these advertising campaigns are being designed to take advantage of the ignorance that the average human has regarding their own conscious
awareness. Not that what we have here is an entirely negative thing. It is necessary for our society to grow through competition and the economic
battleground(at least a large portion of it) is centered on the capacity of a company to make it self heard and to gain a substantial following.
Hence, advertising.
But I find it relevant to note that the advances in these fields are actively being implemented upon a human being without their comprehension of what
this entails. To have your own memories and feelings used merely to gain your dollar seems like an incredible imposition, especially when you
consider that McDonalds spends about 500 million a year on advertising to a nation that many people consider to be over weight. We have
Pharmaceutical companies spending billions of dollars,
[source], on marketing their
drugs, reaching an audience whose majority very likely doesn’t need them. We have car companies advertising billions a year;
General Motors to spend ~1.8 billion for
online advertising alone; to sell brand new vehicles to people who have perfectly operable transportation, not to mention that this money is
being spent on what will soon be an obsolete fuel source.
My point is, people are being intentionally manipulated to do things that they don’t need to do, that in many cases are against their best
interests. This encourages a society that is ignorant and a society where the rich maintain and increase their personal wealth and the poor
stagnant.
If that isn’t an incredible indication of how a generalized Mind Control works…then I don’t know what is. And if generalized techniques to
influence the population are this advanced (indeed beyond many of the populations awareness or even capacity to fathom) then more personalized methods
are likely just as advanced, though that is a different thread(s) in and of itself.
[edit on 5-9-2008 by MemoryShock]
