Transcription
My name is Marie, and I am a liberated woman. I lead my life as I wish, which is why I've chosen this brand. The skin cream—I can't do without it. The sensation when I apply it—it's a real pleasure. When I get home from the gym, I often stop at this burger restaurant. I love it—the smell and the toasted bread, and it's so nice inside. I reserve my train tickets through this travel agency. There are so many images there that make me want to get a return trip to the sunshine. It's like my bank. I recently changed over to this credit company. I took out a loan for what I need to buy for the kids. My name is Marie, and I'm a liberated woman. All these products because I'm worth it.
Well, Marie, do you really think you're a free and liberated woman? Do you know the smell of fast food is deliberately designed to produce an emotional reaction? The travel pictures are deliberately chosen to arouse your desires. The bank slogan is specially created to play on your fears? [Music] And your body cream has been developed to spark a desire from within your brain. You didn't realize that, of course. Why should you? It's all calculated using the latest technology from neuroscience, like an MRI or an electroencephalogram. These new sales methods have a specific technique to control your brain. It's called neuromarketing, but my dear consumers, you're not meant to know about it. Neuromarketing is a taboo subject among the companies of the 21st century. Come on, activate your neurons. We'll introduce you to the best-kept secrets of the major brands you know well. [Music]
One marketing company has exceptionally agreed to show us how one mass-market retailer studies your behavior and incites you to buy. We meet up in central Paris, a typical-looking building, and whoops—this is our floor. On the door, a somewhat unusual sign, and inside, not a Parisian apartment, but a supermarket. "We call this an experimental store," and it's in this kind of shop that we'll ask people to pretend to do their shopping. It allows us to study their behavior. Eric Sanglo works for BVA, a market study agency whose clients include some well-known brands that test new packaging and placements on a store's shelves. From his observation post, Eric Sangler tracks the consumer's reaction in the store's aisles. They're volunteers from the public in the street below; each wears a strange-looking pair of glasses worth 20,000 euros. Using a system of red dots, the glasses record each movement of the eye to the nearest millisecond. It's known as an eye tracker. "Now here you can see she's looking in a specific area for a product that interests her, and it's what we call a direct purchase—something she hasn't looked at too closely." We've also put on the glasses; suddenly we seem to see everything so much more clearly. They demonstrate exactly which elements spark our impulse to buy something without us knowing. "By analyzing the look in its direction, can you analyze what's going on inside the brain somehow?" And to better understand how the human brain works and how individuals reach the decisions that they take—for example, how the shape of the spoon in the mashed potato, the color, uh, or the design of the mash's image will capture one's attention—so we'll go some way to explaining the elements that help us.
Playing with your subconscious to make you buy something is the aim of this new high-tech marketing, which makes us think of a word that, like marketing, begins with an M—manipulation. Let's check the dictionary: manipulation—the state of being manipulated; shrewd or devious management, especially for one's own advantage without the subject's knowledge. Without the subject's knowledge—here precisely is the new tool of BVA, the first neuromarketing device being developed in France: the electromyograph. Its inventor is Olivier Drewler, a researcher in neuroscience. Nestle and L'Oreal have already signed up to test their ads using this machine. It's subconscious, but every time you watch advertising, your brain receives and acts on millions of different bits of information. They provoke emotions you're not even aware of. The electrodes on the face and fingers allow these to be tracked. There's one muscle—it's called a zygomatic, or smiling muscle—even if the muscle itself doesn't smile, of course, you can detect an electromyographic impulse. That's the corrugator, which is activated during mostly negative emotions. This method is interesting because it detects subtle, discrete, and often subconscious emotions. The importance of the subconscious as marketing is not hard to understand. Here's an ad for a McDonald's new line of hamburger: "He's so cute, he's so chubby. Oh, you're too cute!" Some Tabasco, a bun scattered with paprika, a new red chili pepper. The reactions of the human guinea pig are registered by the different curves. "Now that's more than just an impulse; it's almost at maximum. We can level say there was a strong positive emotion." After the test, Olivier Roules asks the lady, "At what point did she feel more emotion?" [Music] "Well, before there was a little emotion, but the peak comes when we see the pack shot—is the image of the product. It was at this point that the lady became excited, and there was an emotional peak. I'm a little bit surprised, as I thought, uh, it was more the character herself. I didn't think it would be the brand that influenced me." [Music]
The impact is not just coincidence, but the results of our brain being worked on from an early age. It's something you notice by conducting a little experiment in a class in a Parisian school. "Good morning, boys and girls. I'm going to show you some pictures under which there are some words written. When you don't recognize them, you say, 'I don't know,' but when you do recognize them, and the more you recognize, shout out its name!" All the kids in this class are barely five years old. [Music] "Euros! Very good! Great!" [Music] Nothing surprising so far, then, but [Music] now even louder. [Music] How can McDonald's have made such an impact on five-year-olds? [Music] A simple test in front of one of their restaurants provides the answer. "Who decided to go to McDonald's? The kids. The kids. Why does the child like it? Because there's a toy inside. That's it. It's just for the toy; he doesn't even eat; he just plays with the toy. I have three kids—that's three toys. Oh, for the toy, definitely—eats hardly anything. Does your child get upset if you don't go to McDonald's? Yes." There you are. Look—right now he's all crossed. And this is McDonald's weapon of mass attraction: this toy, which may not look like much, but it's highly profitable. This is a confidential document from a U.S. association of McDonald's franchisees. It shows that 95 percent of families that visit McDonald's do so as a result of their kids. [Music] In the game of cat and mouse, children have little hope of escaping the clutches of McDonald's. The brand has made sure it will indelibly mark their spirits. [Applause]
The man who introduced toys to McDonald's has agreed to be interviewed. He lives in a remote part of Arizona, and to find him takes you down many windswept, dusty roads. To be honest, we did get lost at one point, but we did finally find his ranch. [Music] Before retiring with his wife and horses, Roy Bergold was in charge of world marketing for McDonald's. He worked for the fast-food giant for more than 30 years. "It started in uh, 1969, so that was a long time ago, and we didn't—we only had uh, like I said, we had about 600 restaurants in the United States and uh, none internationally, and now I think they're in about—I'm not totally sure, but I think they're in about 140 countries now, and I started about a hundred countries." The man who knows all the secrets of the multinational brand agrees for the first time to talk money on camera. He denies nothing about the methods McDonald's used to become one of the wealthiest brands in the world, and he explains why Ray Kroc, the company founder, decided to focus on children. "If you can get the child at, you know, four, five, six years old to come to McDonald's, he's probably going to continue to come as a teenager and as an adult and then to bring his kids. So Ray always said, 'If you have one dollar to spend on marketing, spend it on kids marketing.'" Giving a hamburger to a friend; the toy was the first marketing strategy aimed at attracting children, with the clown ambassador, Ronald McDonald. "50 gift certificates to everyone—it's a nice way to say…" [Music] Advertising featured restaurants, schools; it reached its target—to associate McDonald's with a brand-stamping, feel-good factor in the minds of future customers. [Music] "That way you're not—you're not a commercial; you're not there telling kids to do something; you're simply giving a message that's important to that kid and to his parents and his teachers and whatever." Ronald is less than evidence these days. Here's the Happy Meal, a new character that's very successful. McDonald's has an annual turnover of 47 billion. "We just plant the idea of fast food—McDonald's—in their mind, and again that translates into, 'I'm hungry; I think I'll go get something fast.' That's McDonald's, and that's sales, and that's the way it works. That's marketing muscle, and we do know that if you can be top of mind with a person—in other words, if they think, 'I'm hungry—McDonald's,' that's going to be great; that's going to get you a lot of business. So we really believed in the power of marketing and how we could be uh, how we could have the top of mind awareness of a customer."
A little further to the west of Arizona, in San Francisco, for the first time, a suit has been filed against McDonald's for using this type of marketing strategy. [Music] It began with a housewife and mother in Sacramento, California. Monet Param has a four-year-old and an eight-year-old daughter and a collection of knickknacks gathered during their stops at the fast-food chain. For months now, she's been in a legal wrangle with McDonald's. She wants the company to stop influencing kids by using presents. "I think it's—it's disgusting, you know; they're going any way they can to get to these small children so they can get a hook in them and keep them as customers for life. But you cannot say no. I mean, absolutely—your mother's duties—absolutely, and I say no all the time. I say I—I say no all the time, but I also don't want them hearing, in terms of marketing, that, 'Hey, this is cool; you should get, you know, this meal because you can get this toy,' and then you get all the fat and the sugar and the salt that comes with it. It sort of normalizes the behavior for young children. It's okay because Barbie's, you know, label is on it. You know, they're not able to think that through and process it that in a way that helps them make a healthy decision. So I have to do that for them and have to say to a company like McDonald's, 'I want you to stop talking to my kids.'" "Lauren, I just need a few minutes. Okay." Monet Param is not alone in this fight. An increasing number of Americans accuse McDonald's of taking advantage of children's vulnerability. In addition, the city of San Francisco has now banned toys from being provided in the Happy Meals. Activate disguise legislators in New York are thinking of doing the same. At Stanford University, a pediatrician has proved the impact of such marketing on children. Tom Robinson used an enlightening method. He placed some French fries in McDonald's packaging and some in a plain, unmarked box. He then asked 60 children to try them, and this is what he found out: "Overwhelmingly kids thought the food—or their kids pointed towards the food from McDonald's that they thought was from McDonald's, even though all the food was the same. If they thought a food came from McDonald's, they actually thought it tasted better. So not just whether they would choose it and not just whether they—they wanted it, but actually whether it tasted better to them." Yes, dear parents, educating your little darlings has made no easier when one brand shapes their taste buds from the age of three to the extent of making them prefer its products to all the rest. Ice. [Music]
The major brands can do this because they know how to penetrate deep inside the front part of the brain—the prefrontal cortex. U.S. researcher Samuel McClure made the discovery. For several years, he's been scanning customers using an MRI—a magnetic resonance imaging scan. The large electromagnetic machine detects the flow of blood to the activated parts of the brain. "You're going to go in; you'll lie down in this bed, and it's going to slide you in about up to your waist. All right. Now there are some really important things because we're measuring your brain activity, so you have to stay really still. That's a big deal." In 2004, Samuel McClure conducted an experiment that gave rise to neuromarketing. Inside the MRI, the guinea pigs were given Pepsi and Coke without being told which was which. A majority preferred the Pepsi. When they were told which brand before drinking, three-quarters preferred Coke. "As soon as you have brand information, the pattern of brain activity changed entirely. We got recruitment of the prefrontal cortex, which then we believe biases these sort of more basic structures related to taste, so biases them to actually respond more vigorously and make you think that you actually like this more." By being embedded in our brains at a very young age, a brand like McDonald's can make us become addicted to its products. "I'm hungry; I think I'll go get something fast—that's McDonald's." It doesn't stop there in its attempts to influence the public. During our investigation, we discover McDonald's has been using customers' brains to try out artificial flavors. [Music] We managed to speak to one of those responsible for these secret studies, on condition of anonymity. He revealed what happened. "This is not mind science fiction; we're able to get consumers off that brand, put them in a brain-scanning machine, measure their emotional response when we presented them with the fragrance. Now that project is still under test, but positionally and theoretically, the brand is very interested in this concept. Has it been applied in some restaurants? It has been applied successfully in some restaurants in Germany and France and one or two in the UK. Or can they measure that changing the fragrance was successful? They did brand perception research, and they saw a seven percent increase in the brand perception index. Now what they're doing is uh, looking at the distribution chain to work out how they can implement it fully." We have a document that details the study. It explains that if the flavor is too obviously present, rational thought will uncover the ploy that will then become ineffective. As part of the test, McDonald's apparently placed some of the odor in its cleaning products to subtly be diffused without the clients realizing what was happening. Today, it's been proven that a smell that provokes a positive emotion will increase sales. Procter & Gamble, one of the world's biggest mass-market retailers, used an artificial perfume under the lid of one of its washing liquid brands, Ariel. As a result, sales increased by 70 percent. Martin Lindstrom knows this kind of method well. The Dane is one of the most successful neuromarketing consultants; among his clients is McDonald's. [Music] "Smell is the only sense we have which is bypassing the rational part of our brains and go straight to the emotional part of the brain, and even though I would tell you that they're manipulating that smell, I would still not be able to say, 'Hey, I don't want to be affected by it,' because that smell goes straight to the emotional part of my brain, so the rational feel that cannot say, 'Hey, don't be affected by it.'" We know what you're thinking from now on. [Music]
By experimenting on its customers' brains and using a perfume that will make us buy more, is the company really respecting its ethical charter? [Music] On its website, the company claims, "We operate our business ethically. Sound ethics is good business." We ask McDonald's directly, but the company refuses any comment. In three successive emails, it denies the charge and states, "McDonald's has never conducted any neuromarketing studies." And yet we tracked down the company that surveyed consumers in MRI machines on behalf of McDonald's. It's called Neurosense and is based in London. [Music] On the internet, it lists its major clients; they include GSK, a pharmaceutical laboratory, Unilever, and McDonald's. Okay, versus boss is Gemma Calvert. [Music] "Our work centers on making sure a product, an advertisement, or a smell will act positively on the consumer's brain—what's known as the reward circuit. It's the holy grail for all companies. This small region which lies deep in the limbic system—part of the reward network—this is the nucleus accumbens, and it has lots of dopamine neurons. So dopamine is the kind of feel-good molecule which is in the brain, and it's expressed, for example, during sex; it's expressed with cocaine and other pleasurable experiences, such as looking at products. You can activate the same part of the brain that people who are taking drugs or something like that. That's right; these are all reward centers; they're pleasure areas of the brain, which is why people buy them so much." [Music] So this is the future that lies in store for us, thanks to neuromarketing. It's what might happen to your brain by simply walking into a shop. Tempting, isn't it? "Website, you have several brands; you have McDonald's. Yeah, we work for a range of companies um, and across a very broad range of their products and uh, for a very large number of questions with those companies, and you are able to see what you do for this company. Of course, we have NDAs um, with many companies, just like any other market research company." "What do you mean by…" "I've got to stop there, sorry—restricted by a confidentiality agreement." Gemma Calvert cannot talk about McDonald's, but another researcher will prove far more enlightening. We meet at Oxford University's department of experimental psychology, and going into the laboratory, we discovered—no, actually what we see is this. The professor who specializes in neuromarketing and who took part in the studies for the fast-food giant, before the interview, Charles Spence says he won't mention McDonald's name on camera. Listen carefully to what he has to say; he's a little bothered, but what he does say is very interesting. [Music] "I've done—involved in a project for one of the uh, burger chains were interested in launching store fragrance, so they funded a number of projects to try and say, 'Can brain scanning, as one of those techniques, help us to choose perfume A, B, or C?' And there what the researchers were looking for was an increase in the blood flow in the parts of the brain uh, responding sort of uh, flavor and reward when one fragrance was paired with McDonald's imagery." So you showed the logo of McDonald's and then you make people smell the new fragrance. So um, for the burger chain, I'm saying which one… Oh, you said you're just saying it was Baghdad… You did… No, no, you said… Dude, I said a burger. All right. Let's check with a McDonald's imagery. With a McDonald's imagery uh, was the question again?" The researcher says the majority of people scanned were women, typically with two children. Kids—don't forget one of McDonald's principal target considerations. [Music] Then, when he doesn't realize he's being filmed, Charles Pence will give us the very proof we've been looking for, and here they are: McDonald's small, artificial perfume bottles. One of the McDonald's fragrances, and it does indeed smell nice. "So it was to diffuse on the product or store—in store. That's one of the other ones because it doesn't smell uh, burger. No, exactly—fruity bit floral—for healthy—for healthy rebranding." This kind of practice is completely hidden from the client. Something commercial alert: A U.S. consumer association has strongly condemned. Jeffrey Chester is its spokesperson. We show him the interview: "To choose between two fragrance when one fragrance was paired with a McDonald's imagery versus one of the other ones. When McDonald's is testing its products to see whether or not it increases the blood flow to the brain, what it really says is that consumers are not being given a fair chance—have any choice. So consumers today are being heavily influenced by multiple neuromarketing campaigns that raise questions about how long will we be able to engage in truly independent action." McDonald's still refuses to respond to our various interview requests, so we had to interview them at a conference called "Let's Dare France," a forum apparently for companies who dare. The head of McDonald's France is there, of course, and is about to speak. And the executive vice president for McDonald's Europe. Luckily, it's open to the media, and yes, that's us down there. "Yes, it's true; I started up McDonald's here in 1985. We had just 17 restaurants then. France now represents 4.2 billion in turnover. In a few years, we have not just become the second largest market after the United States, but we've also learned how to dare, when sometimes it's better to say sorry than to ask permission. It's quicker, especially for the large multinationals." [Music] After the speech, it's our turn to ask a few questions. "Hello, Mr. Petty Elise from France TV. We've sent several interview requests to your office, and since we never received a reply, I'm daring to interview you now. Have you dared to use neuromarketing techniques in the McDonald's group?" "No neuromarketing. No."
No, I said no. We don't use that sort of technique. Well, the thing is, we have definite information that shows you placed mothers of children in MRI scans in the UK, mainly to test new odors that might then be used in McDonald's outlets. So we know that yes, you have used it. I don't know what they might do in England; that's not my responsibility, but it would surprise me a lot actually, because I don't see the point of artificial smells.
Well, that's exactly what they are. No, I didn't think that was done in England. I can assure you it was. Well, you'll need to prove it. Ah, but I can prove it. It was done through the intermediary of a company, Neuroscience, and by a university professor called Charles Spence, who was also involved in the research and who confirmed it and provided documents showing that it was carried out. Well, show me the documents. That I doubt it. Doesn't it shock you to put mums inside an MRI scan to see what's happening inside their brains? I would be deeply shocked, because that's not the way our company works. And to answer your question, at the risk of contradicting you or not at all, your answer would be great. I categorically deny it.
I don't doubt it, but we're certain of our facts. There's just one professor who gave you some information. No, no, no, no. We're absolutely sure of it. And besides, Neurosens, as the company is, is the company that used the MRI scans, and they've even put you on their website where you're quoted as being clients. Excuse me, but this interview is over, and I'm asking you to stop. So make an appointment. Uh, you'd agreed to be interviewed, of course. All right. You've been investigating this for six months, so I would like to give you detailed answers. Let me be precise right now: these measures are not being taken in France. Jean-Pierre Petty seems to not be aware then the, the tests conducted by his company.
[Music]
After a meeting, France Television and ourselves received a registered letter from the company. It states our information is false and threatens legal action if we broadcast it. But a few days later, McDonald's suddenly agrees to an interview. We're told to meet them in a smart central Paris hotel. Our interviewee is Pierre Vocek, who is the head of brand strategy in Europe. We believe that he's responsible for the McDonald's surveys.
[Music]
Has the company ever used neuromarketing? Well, in 2006, we had a problem raised by a consumer who told us we had an odor problem in a restaurant. So yes, we tried to find a scent that could solve this problem and which wasn't a food smell. So we decided to find a scent that could suit the McDonald's brand. Okay, so was neuromarketing used, yes or no? There was a new system that would allow us to see if the smell would match the McDonald's brand. It's important to know what happened anyway. So then you place women in MRIs? We did put mothers inside with the smell and brand images to see if the two would match inside MRIs. Right. Yes. Yes. We agree on in MRIs. I want us to be clear. Can you confirm whether or not in 2006, through the Neuroscience company, whether or not mothers were placed in MRIs to taste some smells and images of McDonald's? They were put there to test images in MRIs, some in MRIs. Thank you, Mr. Boyzek, for admitting that. So you say it all led to nothing? No, it was not successful at all. We tested three odors in restaurants. Consumers said, you see, a perfume like that is used in several places; it has to go through the air conditioning system. We didn't want to do that for reasons of hygiene. The information we have is that it was placed in cleaning products. Exactly. We wanted to do that instead of having that slight chemical smell; we wanted to put it in hygiene products, but it proved impossible because it meant the companies who provided the cleaning products would have had to radically change their formulation. So we left it. Do you regret it today? Are you asking me what I think of Neuroscience? Yes. Yes. I have no regrets. If you ask whether at the time we thought it would be harmful, no, not one person thought it was wrong. But does neuromarketing offend you today? Yes. I wouldn't use it. At the time, people who did, they didn't think they were doing anything wrong, you included. When we did the study, when we saw the result, yes, by trying to compare a smell with a brand and whether it was bad by placing people in MRIs. Listen, when I saw it, I was greatly surprised. I, I did find it surprising. Did I think there was a huge ethical problem at the time? No, no. If I understand you well, Mr., what you're saying here and now is that McDonald's will never use neuromarketing techniques again. Is that right? Yes. Yes. In any case, as long as I'm here, I can say yes. More and more companies are specializing in neuromarketing these days.
I was born with the power to read your brain activity. I'm a G. Neuroscience is the study of the brain. Here's a promo.
[Music]
Requests for an interview, but since we were in the neighborhood anyway, we rang their doorbell and brought a hidden camera with us. Nice to meet you. And we, uh, you know, I'm sorry, but we, we don't work this way. So what do you mean? Well, we can't accommodate you if you just show up on our doorstep. So, uh, actually you said that you don't want to communicate with French TV. No, no, that's not the case. We're simply too busy. Is it correct that you're walking and subconscious of people here? Oh, absolutely. That's what we do. We test people's subconscious responses to stimuli. That's the nature of our business. We work for a Hewlett Packard. We work for Google, Microsoft. I'm, I'm only going to talk about the client list that is approved. So okay, but, uh, listen to me. Yeah. Okay. I am very busy right now. I've explained our position, and I don't have any more time to spend with you. I'm sorry. You see.
[Music]
But refuse to talk about it.
[Music]
And yet this is serious stuff. Neurofocus is even associated with Eric Kandel, the Nobel laureate for medicine.
[Music]
The crisis is impacting the consumer's wallet, but companies don't want to see their sales fall. Encouraged by their marketing departments, they call them businesses such as these in complete secrecy. They scrutinize the brain patterns of their clients to play on their emotions, their urges, and their subconscious.
[Music]
Their aim is to push them to buy even more. These techniques aren't very ethical, which may explain why the companies that use them are reluctant to give interviews.
[Music]
But one neuromarketing consultant allows us in on one of their training sessions.
[Music]
This Frenchman lives on the west coast of the states and set up his own business called Sales Brain. His customers today are businessmen from Oregon. Some own restaurants, others sell agricultural material or even washing machines. Good morning. What if you could discover a buy button inside the brain of your customers? What if you could learn what it takes to actually push that buy button inside the brain? And what if all it took to do this was two hours of your time this morning? Patrick Ramosa doesn't use MRI scans. His company has developed a method that merges neuroscience and sales techniques. But guess what? The thinking portion of the brain is really a decision influencer, but it is not the decision maker. It's not the boss, but the actual part of the brain that triggers the decision is called the reptilian brain, and the reptilian brain is the top of the stem and the portion that unites both hemispheres. Makes sense. We decide at the level of a crocodile, of a reptile. Why? Because exercises to help. Patrick teaches his clients to touch the primary instincts to incite the act of buying, and the reptilian brain is the realm of the pain and the fears. It's really the realm of the subconsciousness. So your job, if you want to be successful, is not to stop at the wish and the wants and the needs of your customers, but really to drill inside the iceberg until you find their pain, and then to develop a business whose objective will be to eliminate that pain. A four-hour session is enough to convince the businessman. Boy, we came really close, right? We arrived second. It does kind of freak me out. It freaks me out that that's why I do things, and those who get really good at it can get me to do this by utilizing those techniques. Oh yeah, absolutely. But that's business. I'm sure an argument could be made that, um, it's manipulation, but, um, it's what is it? It's what's driving our world. There's always a danger of manipulating people, but on the other hand, when the method of decision making is public knowledge, it's also the responsibility of the consumer to understand what companies do to sell their products. Now I want you to keep your eyes on this little locket. Your eyes are burning. But can one be aware of it? When you talk directly to our reptile brain, you can hardly keep them.
Patrick Brownwozza's life is spent traveling all around the world to spread the word of neuromarketing. For several years he's been coming back to France at the request of big companies. Here he is in Nice, a few hours before he's due to give a speech to a large French company. But this time we're not allowed to record what will happen. Your client doesn't want to talk about it? No, my client doesn't want to talk about it. As once again, neuromarketing in France is a bit of a taboo subject. People in France often confuse manipulation and conviction. Careful now, the logic of the next argument is not that easy to follow. You need to understand how to push your proposition a little by saying that if your glass is now half full, your glass is more than half full. You shouldn't say that it's more than half full while making your client understand that it's not half empty. Lost, right? Well, we were too. So your client needs to think the glass is half full or half empty.
[Applause]
Patrick Ramboza refuses to name his client today, but we think that a company that's telling its sales forces about neuromarketing is not just any old business. So we look around nicely and find out that 230 salesmen are staying in a large downtown hotel. They're here to take part in a conference hosted by Patrick Ramos. Their employer is Archaea, a subsidiary of the Credit Mutuel bank. These bankers' jobs are to sell financial products to companies as well as to public institutions such as local communes or health authorities.
[Applause]
So how does neuromarketing fit into this? With a hidden camera, we approach the salesman as they're leaving the conference. I was wondering what you learned this morning and what benefit is it to you? What I retain mainly is the reptilian brain that purchasing is linked to the subconscious. Well, I've learned that we need to anticipate what the brain really wants, and I've learned how to understand what the brain wants without them knowing. Do you think the applications might be contentious? Well, yes, of course, because it's almost like manipulation, a bit. It's a good technique because it can be applied to finance and other products as well. What sort of products are you selling, actually? Financial ones, insurance.
[Music]
We're probably naive, but to us, the Credit Mutuel, France's fourth favorite bank, used to be this. I've got some bad news. Oh yeah. Well, what would you do if Father Christmas doesn't exist? What are we talking about? You're dreaming. You don't think they're selling financial products just because they're good for you. Well, yeah. Credibility, more than ever. The bank to talk to, the Credit Mutuel may be the bank to talk to, but not necessarily the bank to get interviews from. It refuses interviews, adding via email: This conference's only goal was to open people's minds about a subject which might be of interest to salesmen, and besides, we don't see any ethical problems. We call one of those responsible up by phone, and then everything seems clearer. It might be counterproductive for us to appear as if we practice neuromarketing purely to enter into our customers' brains. You know what I mean?
[Laughter]
It's to be able to almost subliminally touch someone who might be right there, right, right in front of you. I'm still intrigued because one can manipulate people by the way you behave, by the way you speak, in exactly the same way. In France, a philosopher who follows the trends of consumer society has risen up against this use of neuroscience for purely commercial ends. From the moment neuroscience is involved, it allows one to intervene directly on the reptilian layers of the brain. I receive or I give, those are the levels of the reptilian brain. What makes neuromarketing work today is the use made of the immediate reaction. That's because there's a reaction that can be very easily manipulated. When you know how to take advantage of this, you can manipulate people as if they were puppets. You press the button, and it provides a reaction. That's what's so worrying about it. In theory, there are laws limiting this kind of practice. Marketing studies using MRI scans are actually banned by law in France. Public health rules of the civil code only allow experiments on human beings for strictly scientific or medical purposes.
[Music]
What happens before the advertising? When I'm showing this logo before I've seen the ad 10 times and after I've seen the ad more than 10 times, there are long-term functional changes in the brain. So who's the ultimate client? What I say is I work for market research groups. After the speech and still on camera, Arnold Petra reels off a list of his clients: SFR, MAAF insurance, Cartier, and SNCF French Railways. Petra doesn't wish to talk about this last client again. It's a matter of a confidentiality clause. But why would French Railways use neuromarketing? We tracked down someone who was involved in the survey. He was an intermediary between the railways and Arnold Petra's Belgian company. He described the experiments on condition of anonymity.
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What the SNCF was testing on customers' brains was its online ticket sales site. French Railways told us its main target or targets, and it invited its website users to surf the internet. You may be looking for a train ticket from Paris to Brussels or from Paris to Lille online, and you're invited to sign up to buy a ticket. What we do is to evaluate how easy or difficult it may be. So you use the MRI scan to sell tickets? Exactly, to a volunteer. Oh yes, and we try out different versions on the computer. Top rights are the web pages that have been tested. In the center is the image and color of the zones of the brain that have been more active during the experiment. So you check whether the reward circuit has been activated by a web page? Precisely, the reward circuit. French Railways asked them to test one page with a background picture of a pine tree and then one without the pine tree. We tested reaction to various perfumes that resembled pine trees, and in the part of the brain that recognizes smell, what's known as the olfactory cortex, we noticed some activity. So in parts for the imagination, it worked. In other words, it did smell of pine a little. So on top of the page, there's something about Strasbourg for the Christmas holidays. So if the smell makes your imagination think of Christmas and Christmas trees, all the better, as it makes the offer tangible. They said they wanted people to buy tickets more easily, without hassle, and find the information they needed quicker. Times have changed on the railways. The days of steam are long gone, and buying your fare from a human being at the ticket counter may soon disappear too. Everything seems to be happening far quicker these days. More than 60 million tickets are sold by SNCF each year on its website. The seat which is quite remarkably interested in what your brain is up to is also France's leading online travel agency, and that's something French Railway seems quite determined to get into your skull. Everyone should know that SNCF also sells airline tickets. We have all the solutions: plane tickets, car rental. Voyages-sncf.com is more than just about trains. You'll soon get used to it. Voyages-sncf.com will take you further than you might have thought. We asked the head of the SNCF travel agency, Yves Tirod, if they hadn't gone just a little bit over the top. What I'd like to know is what kind of study you conducted and how precisely you conducted it to establish what people liked or didn't like. Well, first we asked different types of customers because, well, Travel sncf.com is a special site in a way; it's the site of all the French people. It's a site visited by about 80% of French internet users. Well, you'd like to be inside the customer's head to know exactly how they feel when they visit your site, wouldn't you? Of course. Do you use any neuromarketing techniques? We did actually use some, yes. Oh, so you? What we wanted to know was if the customer's brain spontaneously reacted positively or not to the site by placing some of your customers in the MRIs to see their reaction in their brains. Is that right? I'm not explaining myself well. We know that this technology exists, but it's not a technology that we use in Travel sncf.com. Maybe in Belgium on our site. Well, we have proof that you used it in Belgium, and customers underwent MRI scans there. SNCF is written on these documents, so you can see that the SNCF has practiced neuromarketing and has put its clients in an MRI for their site. There are several things here: the technology exists, the question you're asking is if we used it extensively. My answer is no, no. But you agree that there is evidence you use neuromarketing in Belgium, placing people in MRIs to see their reactions to your site. It's not impossible; there may have been tests in an experiment one day, but in no way do we want to generalize the use of these methods. So why did you do it? Oh, listen, we did it because now everyone does it, but we decided not to use it regularly. I don't think everyone does do it because it's illegal in France. Let me quote you Article 16-14 of the civil code: brain technique can be used only for medical purposes or in forensic cases, and this is neither one nor the other, which is why we don't do it anymore. Is it a taboo subject in France, apart from being illegal? I don't know; it's the first time anyone's asked me about it. You mean the first time a journalist is asking you about it because the topic was started by someone, so they must have told you about it? No, of course, but again, it's extremely marginal. I don't want our viewers to think that it's a widespread practice if that is not the case. But my question is, is it taboo? Okay. A pledge, safety guarantee. Consumers, do not be afraid. The neuromarketing experts are working on your behalf. Sincerity for a better world, a world where hamburger chains put a smile on your children's faces, where bankers know how to soothe all your anxieties, and where beauty creams fill you with desire, no matter what the product. Tomorrow you will be satisfied by simply just opening your wallets.
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