Transcription
[Applause]
If there's one thing that I've learned in life, it's that people love babies. Which is why, among other reasons, it seems like an obvious choice to choose an image of a baby at the center of a diaper ad. But what if using a baby could actually detract from the quality of an ad instead of engaging consumers?
Last year, I came across two versions of a diaper ad. They have the same content, the only difference is where the baby is looking. Take a second to look at these ads. Which one do you find more engaging? If you're anything like me, you most likely didn't notice much of a difference. But in reality, you actually process much more information from the second version. The ad, and let me tell you why.
I tracking data was collected on 106 participants for both ads, and the differences are astounding. In the first version, the ad people were so drawn to and distracted by the baby that they barely processed any information. However, in the second version, marketers took advantage of visual biases and created an ad where people naturally followed the gaze of the baby, reading much more of the text. When I first saw these heat maps, I was shocked. How could something so seemingly insignificant create such major changes in the success of an ad?
I began to research the other ways that marketers could take advantage of subconscious decision-making processes and create better advertisements. It dawned on me that in this day and age, when we're exposed to more than four thousand ads every single day, psychology and neuroscience are essential to creating strong advertisements. And yes, you heard me right, we really are exposed to more than 4,000 ads every single day.
So, to stand out in a sea of monotonous advertising, many brands are turning towards neuromarketing. Neuromarketing is an emerging field of market research that uses neuroscience technology and principles to create better advertisements. Neuromarketers understand that consumers don't always do the things they say they'll do. We react to the world around us in milliseconds, making subconscious emotional decisions that affect what we do and what we buy without us even realizing it.
Think about it. How many times have you gone to the supermarket with a set list in mind, only to make impulse purchases you totally didn't need? Or all the times you've been singing a song that just randomly popped into your head, but in reality, was just playing on the radio a few minutes earlier? These are both examples of how our subconscious affects our decisions. And now, with modern technology, neuromarketers can measure these decisions and see how they affect our buying behaviors. By looking at the centers of our brain that deal with attention, memory, and emotion, neuromarketers can measure our overall engagement with an ad and see how likely we are to buy a product because of it.
My obsession with neuromarketing led me to spend the summer working at Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience, a neuromarketing company in Boston. One day, while talking with a friend about the worst ads we'd ever seen, we decided to do what any good neuromarketing interns would: perform a full-fledged analysis on the worst ad of our generation, Kendall Jenner's infamous Pepsi ad from 2016. Let's take a look at some of the highlights from the ad.
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I know you're thinking, how could they get it so wrong? The ad was a melee, met with outrage, with viewers saying it trivialized recent protests, specifically the Black Lives Matter movement. However, was the delivery and the quality of the ad poor, or was it just Pepsi's lack of social awareness that caused the ad to flop?
We began our analysis by looking at biometric engagement, a metric that measures your heart rate and galvanic skin response, or how much you sweat. Basically, the more engaged you are, the higher your heart rate gets, and the more you begin to sweat. And biometrics measures and quantifies those changes. We also collected eye-tracking data, facial coding data, and responses to a self-report on viewers' impressions to the ad.
We first looked at the overall biometric engagement trace and immediately noticed that a huge portion of the ad fell below the purple line, which represents neutral engagement. This means that during these parts of the ad, viewers were actively disengaged, not paying attention, and not processing the information being presented to them. We then noticed that the first minute of the ad had a downward trend in engagement, which is a red flag that something wasn't working. We hypothesized that this was due to the lack of context during this section of the ad, as well as poor creative execution, including quick cuts, odd angles, and obstructed faces. You may think that these things sound insignificant, but they've actually been proven to consistently lead to disengagement in advertisements.
This hypothesis was confirmed when we looked at the eye-tracking data and saw consistently scattered heat maps during the first minute of the ad. This shows that viewers were not, do not have a central area of focus during the ad and were fading out because of the scene's extended length. We then looked at the facial coding data, which made the story even more interesting. Instead of negatively expressed emotion, like we expected, because, duh, we actually found consistent positive reactions to the first minute of the ad. After cross-referencing with the self-report responses, we found that viewers found the characters besides Kendall to be interesting and relatable. This was again confirmed by looking at the eye-tracking data, where we saw a consistent, strong, unified visual attention whenever the character was on screen.
We then looked at the climax of the ad, the moment Kendall hands the police officer the can of Pepsi. This moment aligns exactly with the very bottom of the second valley. Eye-tracking data showed that more than 95% of the audience was fixating on this moment. However, the low biometric engagement, negative facial coding, and responses to the self-report all show that viewers were both confused about what was happening, potentially because of the shot of the disembodied hands, and also generally uncomfortable because of the social connotations of the ad. However, the handoff wasn't a total failure. The supposed resolution to the conflict, along with the cheering by the protesters, led to an increase in engagement with viewers, mirroring the positivity expressed on screen. The combination of this high engagement with a strong visual attention from the previous scene led to a great final branding level for Pepsi, with 100% of the audience using the final branding for more than a third of the time it was on screen.
Okay, not to toot my own horn, but isn't this pretty incredible? Neuromarketing gives such dynamic insights that standard market research can never give you. But there are also some ethical concerns that should be considered. Is the use of neuromarketing negative? What if neuromarketing was used on political campaigns, or controversial topics, or voting matters, or even propaganda?
One of the biggest critiques of neuromarketing is that it takes advantage of its consumers. However, this takes a very simplistic view on what manipulation is and how neuromarketing affects advertising campaigns. Manipulation is the act of playing upon others' hopes and fears in order to get them to act and think in a certain way. Under this definition, all advertising and marketing could be considered manipulation. And yes, I'm sure many of you already had this opinion. I think that advertising is the devil, but that is a totally different talk for a different day.
In all seriousness, advertisements are built to do one of two things: to form an opinion about a brand, or to change an opinion about a brand. Advertisements are built to make us feel and think in a certain way, to make us desire things, and most importantly, to engage us. Marketers are an omission, see who can go the deepest into our brains to grab our attention. The idea that neuromarketing inherently makes advertising any more manipulative is absolutely absurd, because everything we interact with influences us in some way or another. Even now, as I am speaking to you, my words and the way I'm communicating with you are influencing you and affecting your thought patterns. Didn't I just show you that one of the worst ads in recent years actually had some very strong moments? Something that I'm sure many of you would have never said before.
So, what can we do to protect ourselves from overly manipulative advertising while still allowing neuromarketing to create the strong, engaging ads that I can? First, we must update the Consumer Bill of Rights to include neuromarketing. The Consumer Bill of Rights was created in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy in order to protect the rights of consumers across the world. It includes the right to consumer education, which is the ability to acquire knowledge and make informed, confident decisions. Although this definition may have been sufficient in the '60s, I believe it needs to be updated to include neuromarketing and make restrictions on how it can be used. In my opinion, neuromarketing should only be allowed on consumer products, not on political campaigns, not on controversial topics, not on voting matters, and definitely not on propaganda. The risk of manipulation is just too high.
Second, we must embrace neuromarketing with open arms. In the same way that any new technology seems scary when it's first introduced, many people right now are afraid of neuromarketing and the implications that it has. However, I hope I've been able to show you today that there's no reason to fear neuromarketing, and we should accept it as the future of advertising. With neuromarketing, we can create social good and avoid future Kendall Jenner Pepsi ads. With neuromarketing, advertising can be as exciting as those during the Super Bowl. With neuromarketing, we can create strong brand associations that are beneficial to customers as the brands themselves. Neuromarketing is the reason we think innovation when we think Apple, adventure when we think Patagonia, childhood when we think Cheerios, or happiness when we think Coke. And who can't use a little more happiness in their life?
Thank you.
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