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Buyology Article Archive
This section contains articles by and about Martin Lindstrom that were written after the launch of Buyology. For articles written before this time, please check out the Complimentary Articles pages.
GUILTY:
by Martin Lindstrom
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Forget about depression, fear, angst, anxiety or night sweats. Guilt, that most puritanical of all our human emotions, has resurfaced to become a 21st century emotional social and consumer pandemic. Parents who in lieu of spending time with their adolescent children leave them with a rented DVD or on Facebook; shoppers who care about buying organic, but who can’t afford the higher prices, and then feel immoral afterwards; consumers who splurge on wine or truffle oil, then a day later feel gross and wasteful for spending so much money during a recession; the list goes on.
Today’s shrewdest marketers have recognized that old-fashioned Pilgrim-era guilt is (with the right twist) one of the secret keys to unlocking a consumer’s Buyology.
Consider a 40-something woman named Louise. For weeks she’s been strolling past a bright yellow jacket hanging in the window of her favorite upscale clothing store. The jacket may be calling out her name, but the price tag isn’t. Ever since the start of the recession, many retailers have reluctantly ignored the truism that if they discount merchandise, it can take up to seven years for prices to return to what consumers perceive as “normal.” But this store doesn’t offer discounts. One day Louise comes in with an inspired new tack. She’ll haggle. She’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse. She spears a male salesclerk, clears her throat, goes red. Will the store agree to take 15 percent off the listed price? In return Louise gets only the blankest of stares. Still that much closer to buying the coveted coat, Louise’s guilt suddenly kicks in – “My husband will kill me,” and “My friends will think I’m an idiot if I didn’t buy this coat on sale, especially at a time when every store in the world is discounting,” and “Isn’t this a bit extravagant, particularly when my neighbors are having trouble paying their mortgage?” One by one thoughts like these flit through her head, yet are balanced out by her own brain’s dopamine arguing for the renewed confidence she’ll feel wearing the coat at work or at next week’s holiday party.
End of story? Well, yes, that is, if Louise had suppressed her cravings, and allowed her guilt to shepherd her out of the store empty-handed. But it didn’t happen that way. Why? Because in the seconds after the sales clerk rejected Louise’s offer, there came a Justification Moment so powerful it amounts to a whole new marketing frontier. Instead of telling Louise she could have the coat for less, the clerk turned and said, “But did you know that we can offer you something even better?” He flipped over the coat’s yellow exterior to reveal a midnight blue interior. “It’s two-in-one. Perfect for all occasions, and all seasons. Which means you don’t need to buy another jacket for the next two years.” Who needs a sale, a discount or a special one-day-only blowout when an offer of such enormous practicality comes along, one which is both satisfyingly indulgent and potentially money-saving?
Guilt strategies appeal to consumers on two levels. The first is emotional, where consumers feel that by buying the shirt, coat, trousers or iPod, they’ll gain self-confidence, whether in the form of a perfect appearance or a cutting-edge style (which is hard to justify when a consumer has maxed out her credit card). The second is rational, and is linked to a product’s practical dimensions, which not only come as a pleasant surprise, but also promise to justify the purchase to others once the consumer gets home.
More and more, marketers realize that the person with the wallet isn’t necessarily the back-end decision maker – and that the people whose opinions matter equally if not more than the consumer’s range from the partner at home, to the children (bear in mind that 67% of all kids decide which car their parents will purchase next) to one’s colleagues at work. As the world crawls out of a painful recession, independently being able to justify buying a jacket, a handbag or a watch is no longer sufficient. Today’s consumer is helped out by a back story of sorts that will shed light on the varying reasons why he or she buys a product. The better the marketing world can come up with such stories, the less guilt consumers will feel, and the more reversible yellow-and-blue jackets will be walking out of the store. (Just ask Louise.) |
Contagious: The 4-second revolution!:
by Martin Lindstrom
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Suddenly, you see it everywhere – in airports, hotels, restaurants, and of course, in most public bathrooms. It’s on sale in corner kiosks, wedged conspicuously between the gum and People magazine. And in a blink, it’s been seamlessly integrated into life as an essential everyday item. Just five years ago, the product never existed anywhere, and yet if you were to conduct a straw poll, most would confide that they simply couldn’t live without it.
I’m not talking about the iPod or the Blackberry, or even your favourite pair of Crocs – I’m talking about antibacterial hand gel – the kind you can squirt whenever you feel the need to cleanse. From I see around me, a lot of people seem to be feeling pretty dirty these days.
It’s a phenomenon prompted by bird flu and swine flu. Ironically, neither virus can be prevented by sanitary wipes or cleansing gels, since both are spread through minute droplets sneezed or coughed out by someone who’s infected. But the thought of contagious diseases that have the capacity to kill has driven us into a sanitation spin.
A while back I conducted an experiment on the American NBC’s ‘Today’ show. It involved scanning a woman named Kelly’s brain as she walked down the supermarket aisle. The objective was to study her thought patterns as she made a selection from the thousands of products on offer. Supermarket executives closely monitored the large screens displaying Kelly’s brain activity as she engaged in her choices. They were thrilled with her selection of brands, and applauded her decision-making processes.
Kelly first picked a baby shampoo, explaining after that her child’s paediatrician recommended the brand. Interestingly, this very choice generated the most brain activity during the shopping spree, supporting research that says that when an authoritative figure recommends a brand, our brains focus more intently. This probably goes some way towards explaining why testimonials remain effective. Furthermore, the executives were intrigued by the fact that the ‘discount’ signs consistently registered on the scans, despite Kelly denying being affected by them.
There was one thing that the executives, the film crew, the producer, and even the viewers failed to notice. Every time Kelly picked a product off the shelf, the brain measured a 4-second reaction. And it’s this reaction time that can force a manufacturer to change everything about their marketing strategy, including their packaging and marketing campaign.
Let’s take a moment to think about this. Every time Kelly selected an item from the shelves, she held it in her hands momentarily and examined it. There’s nothing surprising about this. What was surprising is that once she’d made her decision to buy that very product, she’d return it to the shelf, and pick another just like it, stashed three rows behind. This whole action took less than four seconds.
Did she consider the first item dirty? Perhaps. Research reveals that a similar experiment conducted five years ago, minus the brain scans, revealed their ‘Kelly’ couldn’t have cared less. What she initially picked off the shelf went directly into her trolley. But now, this fear of contamination has totally entered the shopper’s psyche.
The brain scans showed that as Kelly took the product off the shelf and at the same moment decided to buy it, a strong activation in the amygdale area of her brain took place. The amygdale is responsible for generating fear and danger, as well as psychological discomfort. The fear was registered with every first contact Kelly had during the entire shopping expedition, from the Dove soap to the Gillette foam, as well as the Elizabeth Arden beauty products. The fearful response grew even more dramatically when the product of her choosing was the last item on the shelf. So much so, that she opted for another brand rather than go with the last-standing item.
This, you may say, is the response of just one woman, and as such, cannot be held as an ultimate truth. I suspect however, that her reaction is far from unusual.
After her shopping trip, I asked Kelly why she finally bought the shampoo and gel, while on the other hand she returned the shaver and mascara to the shelf. She replied, “Because I somehow didn't feel for the brand”. Had I decided to build my future strategy based on the outcome of good, old, conventional qualitative research techniques, I would never know how to solve the problem of Kelly’s brand rejection. However, the deciding 4-seconds measured by the scan revealed that cleanliness had catapulted up the ladder of priorities... now by far surprising any other factor – even though she was a big fan of both the brands she ended up rejecting.
Environmental issues, media fragmentation, and the need for increased consumer interaction with the brand have become the most pressing topics in the branding world. As the globe focuses on these very important issues, another trend seems to have slipped in the side door – the need for sanitisation. Despite the insidious nature of this need for clean, the affect on our behaviour is so subtle that even consumers are not aware of its power to control our behaviour. It’s embedded itself into our culture, our behaviour and our decision making to such an extent, that to a large degree it controls where we choose to spend our money.
Whatever you may think of it, those brands who are clever enough to identify and run with it, will be the ones who will be reaping untold rewards. In a consumer population who has come to expect their food to be well sealed and vacuum packed, their expectations have now extended to every category they purchase being sanitised for their protection.
But there’s another message underlying this fact. Far too often we look in the wrong direction for answers, forgetting that we are fundamentally emotional creatures, 85% driven by our subconscious mind. Yet today 100% of all our research seems to rely on studied, conscious research techniques. A little food for thought, I guess. So long as it’s sanitised before we do the thinking!
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Are you addicted? Listen to this (if you dare!):
by Martin Lindstrom
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Have you ever been in a café when suddenly, over in the corner, a baby starts giggling? If you have, you might have noticed that every woman, regardless of age, looked up, momentarily distracted from her coffee, magazine or conversation. It’s as if women are hard-wired to tune into this sound. Check out YouTube and you’ll notice that among the most-watched videos on the site, is one of a baby giggling. More than 107 million people have downloaded it.
There’s can be no doubt – sound is immensely powerful. And yet 83 per cent of all the advertising we’re exposed to on a daily basis (bearing in mind that the average person will see two million TV commercials in a single lifetime) focuses, almost exclusively, on the sense of sight. That leaves just 17 per cent for the remaining four senses. Consider to what extent we rely on sound. It confirms almost all our digital and electronic connections. We rely on it to dial or text on our cell phones. Interestingly, the revenue from the slot machines in Las Vegas fell by 24 per cent when the whirring and tinkling sounds was removed. Furthermore, experiments conducted in restaurants show that when music slower than the rhythm of a heartbeat is played, we eat slower and we eat more!
Can sound make us buy more, want more, dream more and eat more? Any 50-year-old American can sing a whole range of television jingles from the 1970s – they are all well stored in the recesses of our brain. Yet if you were to ask the same of the generation who have recently come of age, you will find them stumped. Have the magical tunes disappeared, or has the advertising world lost sight of the fact that people do indeed have speakers at home?
I decided to put these questions to the test.
By teaming up with neuroscience marketing company BUYOLOGY INC and Elias Arts a sound identity company, we wired up 50 volunteers and subjected them to neuroscience-based galvanic, pupil and brainwave methods. We learnt that sound has remarkable power. This may not be surprising for many, but it was certainly surprising to realise just how many commercial brands have made their way into the world’s ten most powerful sounds over the past 20 years. The sound of brands came in ahead of some of the most familiar and comforting sounds of nature. But it was in the second and third places where the most astonishing surprises occurred.
Forget the sound of waves or the song of birds – they didn’t even make the top 10 – but a computer chip, which most of us have never even seen, took the prominent second spot. Who could have imagined just how strongly we would respond to the sound of Intel? This result indicates that repetition is the key, since most of us can’t even sing it. What this tells us is that there’s no limit to this phenomenon, because after all, a computer chip doesn’t really have a sound.
The third most powerful sound is a young one – not much older than 10 years – and yet it had such a profound effect on our research subjects that the moment they heard it, they removed their headsets, and reached for wherever they keep their cell phones to answer its ‘vibrating’ call. Regardless of whether the phone is switched to ‘silent’, the vibration has a sound of its own. It’s hardly surprising that the Blackberry has been dubbed a CrackBerry – even President Obama is hooked.
Psychologically speaking, this is not a happy discovery. Recent studies show that the first thing we do when we wake is check our BlackBerry. Going to the bathroom, brushing our teeth and eating breakfast takes a back seat. Increasingly people sleep beside their phones – that message that arrives at 4.00am is now a priority!
Even though the sound of a vibrating phone has taken second place to a baby’s giggles, it seems that in just over a decade technology provides the predominant sounds for daily life. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time before brains registering the sounds of sizzling steaks, newly lit cigarettes and sparkling sodas, will become sounds that are immediately brand-related and we will think Outback, Marlboro and Dr Peppers.
About Martin Lindstrom
MARTIN LINDSTROM is a 2009 recipient of TIME Magazine’s “World's 100 Most Influential People” and author of Buyology—Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Doubleday, New York), which appeared on both the ‘New York Times’ and ‘Wall Street Journal’ bestseller lists. Lindstrom is an adviser to executives of McDonald’s Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Microsoft Corporation, The Walt Disney Company and GlaxoSmithKline, amongst others. His personal global audience is estimated at over a million people. His book, Brand Sense, was ahailed by the Wall Street Journal’ as “…one of the five best marketing books ever published.” Lindstrom's latest book, Buyology and Brand Sense have been translated into more than 40 languages, and are now out in paperback.
The sound study was conducted in partnership with BUYOLOGY INC (www.buyologyinc.com) and Elias Arts (www.eliasarts.com) and LINDSTROM company (www.martinlindstrom.com).
THE MOST ADDICTIVE SOUNDS IN THE WORLD
Non-branded and branded sounds
1. Baby giggle
2. Intel
3. Vibrating phone
4. ATM / cash register
5. National Geographic
6. MTV
7. T-Mobile
8. McDonald’s
9. ‘Star Spangled Banner’
10. State Farm
Branded sounds
1. Intel
2. National Geographic
3. MTV
4. T-Mobile
5. McDonald’s
7. State Farm
8. AT&T
9. Home Depot
10 Palm Treo
11. PC Richard
Top 10 non-branded sounds
1. Baby giggle
2. Vibrating phone
3. ATM / cash register
4. ‘Star Spangled Banner’
5. Sizzling steak
6. Hail to the Chief
7. Cigarette light and inhale
8. ‘Wedding March’
9. ‘Wish Upon a Star’
10. Letterman theme |
Perfectly perfect - almost:
by Martin Lindstrom
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We’ve seen it and heard it a thousand times – the flawless model posing in an ad for facial-blemish cream... an extremely powerful cleaner that removes every trace of dirt in one effortless wipe... the picture-perfect baby modelling the 100% waterproof diaper. In these scenarios, there’s not even a hint of a single red spot, a stubborn stain, or a bedraggled mother. This is the story of the past 50 years of commercials, and they all have one thing in common – they all feature perfect brands in perfect environments. En masse, we all must believe what we see, or do we?
Take for example the most watched videos on YouTube. Most are by amateurs whose work looks amateurish. We watch reality shows on television, and despite all predictions that they’re on their way out, they keep inventing ever-new situations.
Some months ago a major European cosmetic brand was forced to cut costs. They were not alone, but the only way they could do this was by reducing the length of their TV commercials. They aimed to cut their regular 90-second spots down to 30 seconds. The big dilemma they faces was which scenes should be cut out? Instead of taking the conventional route – opinions and guesswork – they used a neuro-scientific tool based on EEGs whereby brainwaves of consumers were measured and evaluated. By scientifically analysing the commercials they were able to assess which scenes were the most emotionally engaging.
To everyone’s surprise, one scene – the one all the senior executives wanted to cut out – showed to be the most powerful of them all. It was a scene where two ladies were huddled close, with one touching the others cheek as she was crying. For want of a more diplomatic description, the client referred to it as “the lesbian scene”. Whether it was the notion of lesbians or crying women, the prevailing thought the client had was that this particular scene would negatively affect their brand.
However, based on the neuroscience, a 30-second commercial was cut and tested. To everyone’s surprise it showed that not only were consumers substantially more emotionally engaged, but when asked to pick a product in a simulated retail store, they ended up ‘buying’ 35 percent more of the brand. In fact you may very well recognise the commercial – it’s still running.
Yet when you stroll down the aisles of a supermarket, every product stacked on the shelves – from bread to bath salts – features perfect pictures of the perfect fruit or the perfect smile or the perfect cookie. Furthermore, if you ask customers about the criteria they want their products to have, more and more will say they’re looking for a product that’s authentic. The thought of gigantic factories churning out millions of cookies, or food being injected with additives that boost the ‘natural’ color or enhance the aroma, or irradiation processes that keep old fruit looking new – well, all these sophisticated processes just seem to generate feelings of enormous distaste and even horror in the minds of consumers.
I recently visited Trader Joe’s where some luxury chocolate called Ghirardelli was on sale. Ghirardelli was selling "bulk" chocolate chunks packed in large brown paper bags marked with a style of old-fashioned handwriting. The bag contained hand-made chocolates cut into uneven pieces – some large, some very large and some tiny bits. There was no doubt that this looked as fresh and authentic as it could be –until I happened to buy two bags and coincidently discovered that all the uneven, hand- cut pieces had a perfectly matched partner in the second bag. The broken chunks were not accident at all but were moulded to look like random broken pieces.
There was a very clear plan to appear home-made, and for a while, I believed it.
Studies show that the people we relate best to, are those who we perceive share our weaknesses –those who mirror, or at least seem capable of mirroring the mistakes we tend to make. Regardless of the evidence, brands continue in their quest to present as perfect, because it’s quite simply not in the vernacular of advertising culture to really tell it like it is.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not asking the ad agencies to focus on the negative aspects of a brand. What I’m suggesting is to show how life really looks. Babies do not stay clean when eating their pureed food, and apples are never all the exact shape and size and colour. Messages portraying perfection are not trustworthy. No one actually believes them. We don’t believe candidates applying for jobs who claim they can do everything you can think of – perfectly of course! We don’t believe the person we sit beside at a dinner party who tells us everything in their life is just, well, perfect. So why should we believe it of brands? We don’t. Yet for some reason the world of advertising continues to think we do. |
In a Word:
by Martin Lindstrom
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The enemy has changed. It’s no longer simply your business competitor. You’re up against a substantially more scientific reality – our inherent lack of ability to multi-task!
We may indeed believe we’ve mastered the skill of multi-tasking, but have we really? Are you able to send a text message while you’re in a meeting, while at the same time engage in the conversation and also take in what’s being said? Your instant response is undoubtedly a resounding ‘Yes’, but in all likelihood the truth is an unfortunate ‘No’.
Let’s try a simple experiment. It will only take a minute. Begin by visiting MartinLindstrom.com/experiment. Then, when ready, simultaneously read the following clause while listening to my speech. When you’re done, I’ll get you to answer a few simple questions.
Let’s go…
An average consumer is exposed to two million TV commercials before reaching the age of 65. That’s equivalent to watching eight hours of TV commercials, seven days a week for six years. If you feel this is excessive, look at Japan. In Japan you’ll discover that the average Japanese consumer watches seven years worth of TV commercials. The interesting fact is that as the number of TV commercial hours increase, so the success rate of new brands falls.
Today we know that 8 out of 10 new product releases in the western world fail within the first three months. In Japan, the statistics tell us that 9 out of 10 new product releases fail. In Europe, a brand new product will survive on the shelf for 10 weeks, whereas in Japan it will only last two. To further complicate things, the innovation time for a new product in Europe is on average 16 months but in Japan it’s only three! Let me not forget Korea. There you’ll discover the fastest innovation time in the world – with an average of only 10 weeks.
The speed to market not only reflects a steady increase of technology, it also a sign of the increasing consumer demand for instant gratification. We simply don’t have the patience to wait forever for a new product. We want it now! In the same way, we expect a reply to our emails within 24 hours, and as for our text messages – we want that within minutes!
Your time’s up! Here are the three questions:
1. How many TV commercials are we exposed to before we reach 65?
2. What is the average product innovation time in Japan?
3. My speech mentions an increase in a woman’s heartbeat when she sees a blue box from Tiffany’s. By what percentage?
Before I reveal the answer, let’s revisit the results from an identical experiment we conducted only weeks ago. When people only read the above text without listening to my speech, 92% were able to recall the correct answers. (If we added another question to the written text, the success rate would fall to 84%.) However, when adding the multi-tasking component to the experiment, only 31% were able to answer all three questions correctly – a dramatic drop from 84% to 31% – despite the the fact that all three questions represented the essence of the message.
Now it’s your turn. The answers:
1. Two million
2. Three months
3. 22%
How well did you score?
Every study conducted on multi-tasking demonstrates how bad we are at it. Our brain is simply not wired for it – and now matter how hard we try, we’ll lose the game. The reason is actually quite simple. Take for example our reading of the copy above, our brain has to shut down, reset and start again if we’re to capture the second message happening at the same time. There is no way we can keep two tracks open and once and take in the information from each simultaneously. Furthermore, as we shut down the brain we not only lose data from the first task, but we also lose on the second. In other words, the combined knowledge we take in whilst multi-tasking is substantially less than if we just focused on one task.
And this fact of life is the primary adversary of the advertising industry. An average kid takes in 26 hours of content over 24 hours. Despite the ungodly hours kids keep, they’re generally exposed, on average to at least two information sources at any given time. What this means is that they ten to only remember a fraction of what’s said – ‘fraction’ being the operative word.
Even though recent studies indicate the brains of young children have begun to adapt to this multi-channeling phenomenon. And for this very reason, the concept of simple, needs to be further simplified. The word count in ads must be reduced, the messages minimized, and the language, pictures, music and sounds completely aligned. Forget the notion of three messages in one ad. Forget about a logo, a pack shot, a web address and a slogan on the end frame in your TVC.
Let’s insure your communications remain relevant for the future.
First, does your brand own one word – one truly unique word?
I say ‘cowboy’ and you say ‘Marlboro’. I say ‘safety’ and you say ‘Volvo’. How is your brand stacking up? Is it claiming its own territory or is it melting into the generic mass? One where there’s any number of companies laying claim to ‘quality’, ‘worldwide’ and ‘service’ – to name just a few.
Second, do your messages consistently communicate and support that single word?
Take for example any Apple ad. Simplicity, design and innovation are words or values consistently communicated in every aspect of the product, from the packaging to the commercials. Select any aspect of an Apple ad, and I’m sure you’ll agree that at least one of the above words are communicated. Can your product bear similar scrutiny?
Third, let it become a somatic marker!
Some years ago the concept of somatic markers was founded. A somatic marker is essentially a bookmark in our brain. It’s often created by an event so dramatic that you’ll never forget it. Think 9/11, or the death of Princess Diana… now remember where you were when you first heard about it. No doubt you will also remember who you called or who you with. By comparison odds are that you’d struggle to remember what you ate for dinner two days ago. That’s the difference between a somatic marker and a non-event.
Great communication establishes powerful somatic markers – it establishes something dramatic enough that makes it memorable. Can you remember the BlendTech viral ads which showed a person blending an iPad. How can you forget such a ridiculous notion? Or the one about the Spanish toy chain called Imaginerium, which always features the two doors into their store – a large one (for the adults) and a small one (for the little ones). I bet you’ll never forget the store either once you see it.
What about you? Does your ad have the power to create a somatic marker in the brain.
Did you manage to tick all the boxes? Or even one?
Time’s up. You’ve now spent five minutes reading this article and here’s the good news: You didn’t multi-task at all – well done! Here’s the bad news – you’re probably the only person on Earth concentrating on one message only.
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When advertising is moving home:
by Martin Lindstrom
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81-year-old Tahakasa Omi, a Japanese grandma of four, had spent her day excitedly anticipating the arrival of a package from Do-Co-Mo. Do-Co-Mo, the largest operator of mobile phones in Japan, if not the world, had spent the last two years developing a concept for people just like Tahakasa Omi. It’s not hard to understand why. Japan has the oldest population in the world – and it’s a market worth an estimated $120 billion.
Tahakasa Omi’s package didn’t contain a flashy new mobile phone – what arrived was a picture frame. With a simple click on the side, the frame would immediately connect to the nationwide Do-Co-Mo mobile network and in turn connect with Omi’s four kids. The moment one of her children took, say a photograph of a grandchild, they could press their ‘Grandma’ button, and within a few seconds the photo would appear on the frame in her living room. The 1,200km physical barrier separating her and her children, seeming to vanish in an instant. And, by the way, the picture frame was free.
But this is far from the full story, since there’s more than pictures appearing on the screen. The Do-co-Mo invention is the latest in an ongoing stream of initiatives from mobile operators from Japan – all seeking to explore new advertising channels.
Advertising penetration in Japan is by far the highest in the world – with the average Japanese consumer watching eight hours of TV commercials, seven days a week for seven years! That’s one whole year more than Americans. Step outside any Japanese doors and you’ll see that every space, every square centimeter, contains a commercial message. When you stroll down the streets of Tokyo, even the air is pumped with thousands of sound messages from every display, point-of-sale counter or store. –
With Do-Co-Mo’s picture frame the ads have not only moved inside the home onto the mantelpiece beside the TV screen, they’ve also managed to achieve what the television set has so far failed to do – a steadily growing, in-depth insight about its users. They not only know the users network of friends, but they know that full attention will be paid to each picture when it arrives. Not only that , the cost of the images are all paid for by the mobile phone users – like Tahakasa Omi’s four kids. But even they have a choice – they can elect to receive commercial messages instead.
The picture frame is by no means the only commercial initiative on offer from the telecommunication giant. Geo-position based advertising has become a reality – allowing advertisers the opportunity to push messages to their audiences according to their demographic. Contextual Branding, as I dubbed the concept when the technology first appeared in Japan some years ago, is now offered to every major advertiser. Companies can now communicate with all Do-Co-Mo’s subscribers who opted for the lower subscription rate. And these advertisements are of course targeted directly to the recipients’ profiles, as well as the where they are at any specific time of day.
Do-Co-Mo is not the only company to branch out from conventional communication and distribution channels – the home Gecko is the latest invention converting homes and offices into retail stores. Imagine a hotel mini-bar – then place it in your office instead. The mini-bar is stocked several times a week with new product innovations. So, for the staff who arrive in the morning the mini-bar is stocked with new coffee products from Nescafe, then at lunch there’s the latest Maggi product and as the afternoon wears on, the mini-bar is restocked with energy drinks and snack bars. Every product in the mini-bar is straight out of the test kitchens, and they are distributed to specifically target the description of the office workers they are catering for. Furthermore, the companies are then in a position to determine exactly how their spanking-new product is received, all paid for courtesy of the users.
Now the office Gecko is moving home. There are 20 million people concentrated in the city area of Tokyo, and Gecko is becoming part of many of these homes. Suddenly they all have a mini-bar to supply the latest products. This is by no means a new concept in Japan. For more than 100 years, Japan’s largest pharmacy chain has kept a small cupboard in Japanese bathrooms all stocked with headache tablets, band-aids, and liquid disinfectants.
For brands this means more than another distribution opportunity – it means an instant feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Whereas most brands in the West rely on research data, focus groups and interview sessions to access the success of a product, Japanese companies have realized that there’s nothing more real than the real thing. They allow the consumer to experiment with their product in their home environment. There are no one-way mirrors or questionnaires to be filled in. If they like the product, they’ll buy it.
This trend is transforming the entire nature of research in Japan. Restaurants, cafes and even bars are offering companies to sample their products in real environments with sophisticated “behind the scenes” monitoring tools. Concepts like SampleLab and SampleCafe – offers thousands of brand-hungry consumers the opportunity to enjoy a cup-of-something while testing the latest anything – from beer to chewing gum. The consumers are aware of it , but are perfectly willing to participate since they are given access to the latest gizmo.
Next week it’s Thakas Omi’s 82nd birthday. She eagerly anticipates what new stuff Do-Co-Mo will deliver. The advertisers are keen too.
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Contagious: Branding Fear:
by Martin Lindstrom
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What do guns, burglar alarms and condoms have in common? Their sales all boomed in 2009, with condom sales jumping 22 per cent over the same period in 2008. But why?
The answer can perhaps be found in Nigeria and Chile – two countries I visited on my world tour promoting Buyology. Surprisingly neither of the two countries was familiar with the “R” word. When asking government officials why that was the case, the explanation was simple – the media hadn’t paid that much attention to it, and as such no one had effectively read about the Recession, so the Recession simply had not yet arrived.
Is this whole thing just a well-orchestrated media story whipping up that dreaded component – fear? When you are told repeatedly that the world is buckling under the weight of a financial crisis, the first line of defence is to save whatever money you have. That sets a whole new train in motion. Suddenly your local retailer around the corner loses revenue from your less-frequent visits. They are forced to lay off staff, who in turn are spending less, and in fact are no longer buying your products. It becomes a cycle somewhat akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy. We’re told it’s a crisis. We stop spending. They stop spending. Everyone from producer to retailer suffers. And the economic meltdown keeps on melting.
As sophisticated as we have come to believe we are, at this point in time, we need to remind ourselves that we’re not that far from our evolutionary relatives – primates who live their lives taking care of most basic needs – food, sex, sleep and survival.
In an atmosphere of fear, we tend to revert back to our own basic needs, and this can explain why we’re stocking up on condoms, buying weapons and installing burglar alarms.
A recent neuroscience study shows that fear is a far bigger driver than we would ever care to admit. Fear of losing our job, fear of not being able to make the kid’s school payments, fear of ending up in the proverbial gutter. These thoughts are scary enough to bring on an instant anxiety attack. When we’re operating in survival mode, fear and sex become our two main drivers.
When President Johnson ran his ‘Daisy’ TV commercial, which threatened voters with nuclear annihilation if he wasn’t elected, the voters hated it. George W. Bush tapped into a similar zeitgeist in 2004. His commercial, showing wolves crossing the border as stealthily as terrorists, he instilled the self-same dread and fear. Both TV commercials acted on the amygdale, the region in our brain responsible for generating fear. Voters spoke of their dislike for both commercials, yet what brain scans showed was that as a consequence of these ads, voters favoured the politicians that would best ‘protect’ them.
From the very first days of the US recession, all three big car manufacturers announced unheard-of discounts to shift their stock. They continue to offer their cars at cost, and despite this, nobody’s buying. The problem is not the cars, but the proposition which has failed to take the fear factor into account. People who fear for their jobs, are hesitant about spending money on a big-ticket purchase. The Korean car manufacturer Hyundai took this cautious mood into account and began and offering very real assurances. They say, “Buy any new Hyundai, and if in the next year you lose your income, we’ll let you return it.” In just a month Hyundai increased its sales by more than 20 percent in the US alone. You may wonder if the company’s sitting with a lot of returned stock. Well, as this goes to print, supposedly only two cars have been returned.
You cannot build brands in a recession unless you are able to manage fear. It’s essential that you understand how fear works, and consequently how it affects purchasing behaviour. Fear is often as irrational as everything else in our lives. When a plane crashes, the airline industry allows for 10 percent less traffic in the weeks that follow. Yet you don’t have to be a statistical genius to know that the chances of a second plane crashing shortly after, are substantially lower than before. Irrational propositions become more powerful than ridiculously high discounts.
Over the past months, a flurry of new banks have opened their doors for business on Main Street, USA. They have no track record, no established history and no known personnel. Their proposition is straightforward – We’re new. We have no links to Wall Street. We’re here to serve you. Consumers are finding this immensely attractive. Yet, I’m sure we’d agree that a similar proposition a couple of years ago would not have stood a chance.
So what can we learn from neuroscience to help us cater for a market reeling in the depths of a financial recession? How can we continue to build brands?
I offer three ways to do this.
First, there’s always good news in bad times. A standard approach in this situation is to address consumers’ problems. And people always have problems. The fact is we rarely know what we want, but we have no trouble pointing out our difficulties. For example, no one knew they wanted an airbag, but everyone agreed they wanted safer cars.
It’s therefore important to ask yourself what sort of problems are consumers facing during this economic recession? There are many. People have had to cut back on travel and if they can afford to still take a holiday, well, it’s much cheaper to keep it local. Which might explain why those French perfumes are still selling – they offer a whiff of Paris. And if you can no longer afford expensive dining, you can always supplement your home-cooked meal with an after-dinner Lindt chocolate. We’re increasingly reluctant to invest in the share market, but we’re happy to put our money in gold.
Convert problems into assets for your brand.
Second, add a practical dimension to an irrational decision. No matter how much money you may have in the bank, or how secure your employment may be, it’s now fashionable to save your money and buy everything at a discount. What can a brand owner do? Particularly in light of the fact that a discounted brand typically takes seven years to recover!
The answer is simple. Add a practical dimension to the equation. One only needs to look at a hardwearing boot like Willeys to see that this manufacturer of sturdy reliable footwear is clocking up big sales. A well-designed jacket, that just happens to be reversible, could tip the balance in favour of the consumer who perceives they’re getting two coats for the price of one. The fact may be that the consumer is buying the jacket because they love the design – yet in recession times, the practical dimension is the deal maker.
Third, you have to systematically remove fear. Hyundai did it. And a stream of new banks are doing it. Both have succeeded in identifying why consumers are reluctant to spend. Once this is understood, then you can harness it and build a better product by addressing the fear and finding a way to eliminate it.
You sales may be down. But do you know why? People are certainly buying less, and explanations like, Well, there’s a recession going on out there, is not helpful. What’s important is to understand the fundamental role of fear, and then turn it around to strengthen your brand. Some of the world’s most enduring grocery brands were built on the back of the Great Depression, Each one turned the threat into an opportunity.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do the same.
MARTIN LINDSTROM is a 2009 recipient of TIME Magazine’s “World's 100 Most Influential People” and author of Buyology—Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Doubleday, New York), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best–seller. A prolific traveler, Lindstrom is on the road 300 days annually dispensing his brand of wisdom to top executives of McDonald’s Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Microsoft Corporation, The Walt Disney Company and GlaxoSmithKline, amongst others. His personal global audience is estimated at over a million people. Lindstrom has and continues to feature in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, TIME, The Economist, New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Washington Post, USA Today, Fast Company, and numerous other publications. His recent book, BRAND Sense, was acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal as “…one of the five best marketing books ever published.” Lindstrom's latest book, Buyology, has been translated into more than 30 languages. More at martinlindstrom.com.
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WSJ October 30, 2009:
Fighting Back Against Shoppers' Guilt
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By CHRISTINA PASSARIELLO
(The following article may be found online on the Wall Street Journal website.)
 In the past year, the guilty pleasure of shopping has turned to plain old guilt.
Guilt has always been part of the shopping experience. But retail executives say it has become such an overriding emotion among shoppers since the economic crisis set in last year that it is delaying the recovery of the luxury-goods industry. Shoppers are suffering from "luxury shame," consulting group Bain & Co. said in a research report earlier this week.
Right now, guilt is the single biggest problem in the way of getting people to shop again, said one executive of a European luxury powerhouse - although he declined to be identified for fear of sounding too negative about his outlook.
"Guilt has really increased in the last year," says Martin Lindstrom, a brand strategist and author of "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy." "It can hamper any other good feelings" about shopping, he says.
Now some luxury brands are emphasizing marketing tactics that they hope will push away the guilt and reboot consumers' desire to spend. That can mean touting a special justification for splurging - profits are channeled to a charity, for instance - or offering novel shopping experiences that can make people forget their guilt.
"It used to be about keeping up with the Joneses, and now it's about outsaving the Joneses," says Alexis Maybank, the co-founder of Gilt Groupe, which organizes online, by-invitation-only 36-hour sales of high-end merchandise from labels such as Burberry and Matthew Williamson. "We need to encourage people to get excited about fashion." (The double entendre in her company's name dates from an era - 2007 - when the guilt that went with shopping was far less disruptive.)
Browsing and buying release a variety of emotions. Selecting clothes and trying them on produces a high. When shopping feels good, that's the dopamine in your brain, the same euphoria that eating chocolate can generate.
 But guilt sets in quickly. "It's not very strong at the beginning but increases when you swipe your credit card through the credit-card reader," says Mr. Lindstrom, who conducted three years of studies in neuromarketing - hooking 2,000 people up to sensors to monitor the brain's response to ads and brands. Guilt flashes up in the prefrontal cortex - the same reaction generated in a smoker who has finished a cigarette.
Guilt is what Carolyn Hsu, founder of The Daily Obsession, a shopping blog, felt after her purchase of a Tod's bag at the beginning of the year. It was one-of-a-kind, she was told at the private luxury sale she attended. She decided to pay more than $1,000 for the large aubergine-colored bag, driven by the fear that she would never find the bag again.
"I try not to have those moments anymore," says the 24-year-old, who also works in marketing. "I still have [the bag], but it hides in the back of my closet."
Guilt is running so high these days that many people are simply not going into stores in order to avoid the temptation to buy, retail executives say. Shoppers are steering clear of the usual shopping zones, says Andrea Ciccoli, the administrator for Italian fashion group Ittierre SpA, the owner of Gianfranco Ferre and the licensee of labels such as Just Cavalli and John Galliano.
In response, some brands are trying to catch consumers off-guard with new outlets for selling. Ittierre is considering having some brands open pop-up stores - boutiques that exist for a few weeks or months - in unexpected parts of European and U.S. cities that aren't traditional luxury shopping districts. The idea is that pop-ups may not activate the psychological barriers that prevent shoppers from entering traditional stores.
Of course, many brands have used pop-ups in recent years to create buzz and test ideas. But the idea has new currency as a way to short-circuit guilt. "People are so disciplined, their super-ego tells them not to buy, and then they don't buy," says Mr. Ciccoli.
Encouraging Internet shopping, as many brands have been doing, can also help break old shopping habits. "Luxury shame" - epitomized by the showy act of walking out of a fancy store with a big shopping bag - is one of the main reasons for the estimated 20% jump in online luxury sales this year, Bain & Co. says.
 'Luxury shame' has benefited online shopping outlets such as Gilt Groupe's site.
Online shopping involves different consumer behavior, says Gilt's Ms. Maybank. Instead of planning a chunk of time around going to the store, "you take five minutes out at a specific moment of the day to get the things you need [online]," she says.
Another tactic for taking some of the guilt out of shopping - offering a charitable-giving component - is gaining traction as well, especially ahead of the holiday shopping season, when people tend to feel the most pressure to donate. Shoe brand Cole Haan recently sponsored a typical promotion: Get a 15% discount on a new pair of shoes when you donate an old pair to a designated charity.
Such incentives could help with "the argument shoppers have with themselves," says Sue Phillips, the London-based chief executive of consumer-research firm Synovate Censydiam.
One of the hottest new stores in Paris this year, Merci, fuses fashion with philanthropy. The store's light, loft-like space is as trendy as that of other concept stores, selling apparel from brands such as Stella McCartney, special versions of Annick Goutal perfume, flowers and used books. The difference is that all of the profits, after operating costs are paid, go to children's charities. Last month, Merci - which was founded by Marie-France Cohen as a way of giving back after she sold luxury children's-clothing label Bonpoint - opened a temporary one-month shop in New York with help from the Gap.
The charitable argument may give consumers another reason to visit the store, Ms. Cohen says, although she believes "a consumer who is tempted by an item goes back to being just a consumer."
Other companies are putting more emphasis on the "guilt-free shopping" that is said to come with buying environmentally safe products. Stores are even offering to ameliorate the global problems of waste and - interestingly - overconsumption. Last year, upscale Swedish clothing brand Filippa K opened a secondhand store in Stockholm that sells used clothes of its own brand for at least 50% off.
Anders Wiberg, who oversees the boutique and is the brand's supply-chain director, says the boutique has boosted sales of the current collections. "The customer looks at us as taking more action," he says. |
Article by Martin Lindstrom, November 2009:
I feel guilty!
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If for one reason or another, youd slept through the past five years, only to find yourself suddenly awake in 2010, youd quickly realise the world of advertising and marketing has fundamentally changed in three major ways. First, subconscious or subliminal communication (and research) has become part of the vocabulary of most marketers. Second, power has shifted from brand owners to consumers - even the most powerful brands know that successful campaigns have to systematically engage consumers, who will in turn use their mighty word of mouth to spread the messages opposed to relying on big media budgets do the work. Third, 2010 is shaping up to be dominated by guilt. Guilt for spending money in the midst of a debilitating global recession, guilt for polluting the world, and finally, parental guilt, as kids increasingly engage in their own online world, far removed from traditional values that were previously the exclusive domain of the family.
So what does this mean for a marketer in 2010? Dont fall into the trap of believing that conventional research will do the trick. More than 80% of all the decisions we make every day are decided upon in our non-conscious part of the brain. Now if we can trust these numbers, and every study indicates that we can, then 2010 will be the year where marketers will be forced to investigate alternative research methodologies that tap into the subconscious processes involved in decision making.
2010 will also be the year where marketeers will have to surrender their brand to the consumer. What do I mean by that? We increasingly witness how brands can be seriously damaged by consumers who choose to vent their frustration or anger online. Witness how Dominos Pizzas share price dropped by a massive 10% in just one day after a negative video clip posted on YouTube. How can a large organisation, which can rarely turn anything around in a matter of hours, handle such an attack? Yet, in order to stay abreast of the way things now work, brands are required to find the capacity to do just that.
And finally, this will be the year when marketers will play the guilt card in ways weve never seen before. This is the sad reality. Buyology taught us that fear probably is one of the most powerful drivers when building a brand. Fear has a very close association with guilt, and as the world spins faster on its axis, guilt becomes a major by-product. Brands that are able to elicit guilt - or even better, remove guilt - will be the winners. I already feel guilty writing this!
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Parade Magazine:
How Subliminal Advertising Works
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By Martin Lindstrom
Publication Date: 4th of January, 2009
"Make it bigger," the executive suggested as I scrambled to sign off on an ad on behalf of a major fashion brand. I wasn't the slightest bit surprised. For as long as I can remember, the size and placement of a product's logo has been the holiest grail of branding.
But considering that by retirement age the average American has watched roughly 2 million TV commercials (and no doubt been exposed to an equivalent number of billboard ads), has the logo overstayed its welcome? In a multimillion-dollar global neuro-marketing study dubbed Project Buyology, I decided to peer inside consumers' brains to find out.
Over the years I've been perplexed by the fact that despite worldwide tobacco-advertising bans and astronomical government investment in anti-smoking initiatives, global consumers continue to inhale 5,765 billion cigarettes a year--and that's not even including the huge duty-free or international black market trades.
The World Bank projects that the number of tobacco users is only going to shoot up further--from a current level of 1.4 billion smokers to roughly 1.6 billion by 2025. Four-year-old kids know about the health dangers of smoking; so why, pray tell, do brands like Marlboro and Camel still rank as among the most powerful in the world?
If experts generally agree that 85% of everything we do takes place in our subconscious minds, it seemed only fitting to target the human brain. Project Buyology, the largest project of its kind, enlisted roughly 2,000 volunteers worldwide, who agreed to submit themselves to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scan, while viewing various cigarette-marketing related imagery.
Over the years, I've turned down numerous entreaties from tobacco companies to work for their cause (if you want to call killing people a cause). For ethical reasons, I've always said no. But that hasn't kept me from distantly--and, admittedly, perversely--admiring these companies' tricks and strategies.
My question was this: Can the desire to smoke be triggered by images merely associated with a brand: images of a camel, a windswept desert, a rugged-looking cowboy or Marlboro's well-known sponsorship of the European Formula One racing circuit, which has forged an inextricable link between smoking and the company's bright red Ferraris? Do smokers even need to process the logos "Marlboro" or "Camel" for the craving spots in their brains to become activated?
Over a two-month period, Project Buyology exposed both social and long-time smokers, as well as non-smokers, to a raft of suggestive images as the fMRI painstakingly scanned their brains.
First, both groups were shown subliminal images that had no overt connection to cigarette brands--those he-man cowboys, sunsets, camels and deserts. Next, they were shown explicit cigarette advertising images including the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel hunched over his motorcycle, as well as the Marlboro and Camel logos. Our goal was to determine if the subliminal images would generate similar cravings to those generated both by the logos and by the clearly marked Marlboro and Camel packs.
Not surprisingly, as they viewed the actual cigarette packs, the MRI scans revealed a pronounced response in our smokers' nucleus accumbens, a small region in the brain associated with reward, craving and addiction. Far more intriguing was that when the smokers were briefly exposed to the subliminal imagery, their nucleus accumbens lit up even more pronouncedly in the same regions they had when they viewed the explicit images of the packs and logos.
In other words, the iconic imagery merely associated with Camels and Marlboros, such as the Ferrari and the Western sunset, brought on a higher craving activation than either the logos or the actual pictures on the cigarette packs themselves.
But wait a second--why? Well, whether it's due to brand boredom, increased media sophistication or consumers' by-now cast-iron defense mechanisms, when we're exposed to logos, our guards go up. We know we're being manipulated, and we'll do anything in our power to prevent that logo from winning.
So in practical terms, what does our research experiment portend? Think about this: Nearly a century ago, when the first-ever Coca-Cola bottle was in the planning stages, the designer received his marching orders. Company executives wanted him to develop a bottle so distinctive that if you smashed it against a wall, you'd still be able to recognize the pieces as part of a Coke bottle. The designer did what he was told, and to this day it works.
For obvious reasons, I call this philosophy "Smash Your Brand." Even back in 1915, Coke's aim was to replace its logo with a "smashable" component. Today, "smashable" could mean anything from a color, a shape, a sound, a fragrance, a design or any other indirect signal that tells a subtle, suggestive and logo-free story.
See that new iPod Touch over there? Where, on its front, is the word "Apple" spelled out? Nowhere. Did you happen to catch Disney's Pixar's latest flick, Wall-E? Did the white, gleaming female robot heroine put you in mind of anything in particular (such as any one of several Apple products)? That familiar sloping roof, that robin's-egg-blue box--are you thinking, as I am, of McDonald's and Tiffany?
Instead of flashing another logo, or bringing out yet another forgettable movie product placement--all of which will only induce consumers to respond defensively and critically--in the future the simple power of suggestion will entice customers to accompany advertisers on a journey, at the same time engaging their subconscious minds.
No, the logo isn't dead yet, but it's on life support. My prediction? That the battle for consumer loyalty and cash will no longer take place in our conscious minds. The ultimate decision-making process of whether we buy something will happen at the deepest levels in the human brain. Until recently, these places were out of reach. But thanks to the unlikely pairing of neuroscience and marketing, we're beginning to understand the secrets of our own human Buyology. |
Parade Magazine:
Buyer Beware
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By Martin Lindstrom
Publication Date: 30th of Novemeber, 2008
What really goes on in our minds when we face the decision to buy something? Thats what I and a team of researchers tried to find out by studying the brains of shoppers around the world as they encountered various products, ads, and sales. Knowing the science behind what influences us to make purchaseswhether theyre needed or notcan help us resist temptation. Here are five tips to help you make it through your shopping experience without breaking the bank.
Leave the Kids At Home
Consumers accompanied by children bought 40% more items than consumers who were shopping by themselves. Children, bless their little hearts, tend to use a variety of techniques to coax their parents into buying more stuff. These can range from negotiation (Ill clean up my room if you buy me those Lucky Charms) to threats (screaming, crying, having a tantrum in the middle of the store) to sneaking the things they want underneath your other purchases. When you finally get to the cash register, chances are good that youll be too embarrassedor worried about coming across as mean or cheapto say anything.
Watch Out for Fake Bargains
The way signs and words are used can have a powerful effect on our brains. Take one stores display of canned chicken-noodle soup. A sign above it read $1.95 per can. Customers pushed right past the pyramid of cans because $1.95 sounded like way too much money for chicken-noodle anything. The next day, a new sign left off the price and said, Maximum 8 cans per customer. The result: customers waiting in line. Another example: You pass by a box of spaghetti marked $2.50. A few days later, the same box features a sign reading 2 for $5. You dont consider that its the same price. Youre too busy snatching up as many boxes as you can.
Both of these bargains stimulate our natural hoarding instinct. A small region in the prefrontal cortex of our brains is associated with collecting. Scientists believe that it reacts as it did earlier in our evolution, when food supplies may have been scarce. In other words, were hardwired to respond to shortages by doing all we can to ensure our survival. The result? A lot of soup and a lot of pasta.
Avoid Big Carts
Strange but true: People buy roughly 30% more items when they shop with a big cart than when they dont. And the bigger the cart were wheeling around the store, the more likely we are to stock it full of stuff we probably dont need.
Whats the reason for this phenomenon? I believe consumers become self-conscious if their big shopping cart contains, say, only a celebrity magazine and a few sticks of gum. Its as though we expect other shoppers to look down on us or even make a disparaging comment. Another thing: If our cart is enormous, the dopamine levels in our brain increase, and we begin pulling things down from the shelf to fill up every square inch. Dopamine is one of the most addictive chemicals our brain produces. It increases in anticipation of any kind of reward, and that includes food and clothing.
My suggestion: Avoid a shopping cart altogether and use a small basket with handles.
Dont Sniff!
Ever wonder why more and more supermarkets are installing bakeries, rotisserie-chicken grills, salad bars, and snack-food outposts so near their entrances? Its because smells can entice us into buying food even if we dont really want it (and especially if were shopping on an empty stomach).
Smell is our most primal human sense. When we sniff something, the odor receptors in our noses make a beeline to our limbic system, which governs our emotions, memories, and sense of well-being. The fragrance of just-baked bread, for example, not only gives off a signal of freshness, it also evokes powerful feelings of comfort and domesticity. Supermarkets know that when the aroma of baking bread or doughnuts hits your nose, youll get hungry and start picking up food you had no intention of buying. (Not just bread, butter, and jam, either, but all kinds of produce.) Our gut response is instantaneous, meaning we dont stand a chance. So bulk up before you go out.
Beware Of Shopaholism
Leave your credit cards at home when you shop. Using a debit card is OK, since it draws money directly from your checking or savings account. But when we slap down a credit card, we often feel as though we have unlimited funds at our disposal. That is, until the monthly statement shows up.
There are roughly 17 million shopaholics in the United Statespeople addicted to the feelings of reward, pleasure, and well-being that the brain chemical dopamine produces.
The average American household has accumulated about $10,000 in credit-card debt. As most consumers know, it can take years and a whole lot of self-discipline to dig yourself out of this hole. Dont get into one if you can help it. |
New York Times:
Inhaling Fear
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By Martin Lindstrom
Published Date: December 11, 2008
TEN years ago, in settling the largest civil lawsuit in American history, Big Tobacco agreed to pay the 50 states $246 billion, which theyve used in part to finance efforts to prevent smoking. The percentage of American adults who smoke has fallen since then to just over 20 percent from nearly 30 percent, but smoking is still the No. 1 preventable cause of death in the United States, and smoking-related health care costs more than $167 billion a year.
To reduce this cost, the incoming Obama administration should abandon one antismoking strategy that isnt working.
A key component of the Food and Drug Administrations approach to smoking prevention is to warn about health dangers: Smoking causes fatal lung cancer; smoking causes emphysema; smoking while pregnant causes birth defects. Compared with warnings issued by other nations, these statements are low-key. From Canada to Thailand, Australia to Brazil, warnings on cigarette packs include vivid images of lung tumors, limbs turned gangrenous by peripheral vascular disease and open sores and deteriorating teeth caused by mouth and throat cancers. In October, Britain became the first European country to require similar gruesome images on packaging.
But such warnings dont work. Worldwide, people continue to inhale 5.7 trillion cigarettes annually a figure that doesnt even take into account duty-free or black-market cigarettes. According to World Bank projections, the number of smokers is expected to reach 1.6 billion by 2025, from the current 1.3 billion.
A brain-imaging experiment I conducted in 2006 explains why antismoking scare tactics have been so futile. I examined peoples brain activity as they reacted to cigarette warning labels by using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a scanning technique that can show how much oxygen and glucose a particular area of the brain uses while it works, allowing us to observe which specific regions are active at any given time.
We tested 32 people (from Britain, China, Germany, Japan and the United States), some of whom were social smokers and some of whom were two-pack-a-day addicts. Most of these subjects reported that cigarette warning labels reduced their craving for a cigarette, but their brains told us a different story.
Each subject lay in the scanner for about an hour while we projected on a small screen a series of cigarette package labels from various countries including statements like smoking kills and smoking causes fatal lung cancers. We found that the warnings prompted no blood flow to the amygdala, the part of the brain that registers alarm, or to the part of the cortex that would be involved in any effort to register disapproval.
To the contrary, the warning labels backfired: they stimulated the nucleus accumbens, sometimes called the craving spot, which lights up on f.M.R.I. whenever a person craves something, whether its alcohol, drugs, tobacco or gambling.
Further investigation is needed, but our study has already revealed an unintended consequence of antismoking health warnings. They appear to work mainly as a marketing tool to keep smokers smoking.
Barack Obama has said hes been using nicotine gum to fight his own cigarette habit. His new administration can help other smokers quit, too, by eliminating the government scare tactics that only increase peoples craving. |
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By Martin Lindstorm
Published Date: 21st of November 2008
"Make it bigger," the executive suggested as I scrambled to sign off on an ad on behalf of a major fashion brand. I wasn't the slightest bit surprised. For as long as I can remember, the size and placement of a product's logo has been the holiest grail of branding.
But considering that by retirement age the average American has watched roughly 2 million TV commercials (and no doubt been exposed to an equivalent number of billboard ads), has the logo overstayed its welcome? In a multimillion-dollar global neuro-marketing study dubbed Project Buyology, I decided to peer inside consumers' brains to find out.Over the years I've been perplexed by the fact that despite worldwide tobacco-advertising bans and astronomical government investment in anti-smoking initiatives, global consumers continue to inhale 5,765 billion cigarettes a year--and that's not even including the huge duty-free or international black market trades.
The World Bank projects that the number of tobacco users is only going to shoot up further--from a current level of 1.4 billion smokers to roughly 1.6 billion by 2025. Four-year-old kids know about the health dangers of smoking; so why, pray tell, do brands like Marlboro and Camel still rank as among the most powerful in the world?
If experts generally agree that 85% of everything we do takes place in our subconscious minds, it seemed only fitting to target the human brain. Project Buyology, the largest project of its kind, enlisted roughly 2,000 volunteers worldwide, who agreed to submit themselves to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scan, while viewing various cigarette-marketing related imagery. Over the years, I've turned down numerous entreaties from tobacco companies to work for their cause (if you want to call killing people a cause). For ethical reasons, I've always said no. But that hasn't kept me from distantly--and, admittedly, perversely--admiring these companies' tricks and strategies.
My question was this: Can the desire to smoke be triggered by images merely associated with a brand: images of a camel, a windswept desert, a rugged-looking cowboy or Marlboro's well-known sponsorship of the European Formula One racing circuit, which has forged an inextricable link between smoking and the company's bright red Ferraris? Do smokers even need to process the logos "Marlboro" or "Camel" for the craving spots in their brains to become activated? |
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