Neuromarketing

30s ad about mother taking a cough syrup so she can take her child to the cinema dead sick- is shaping a world in which women are expected not to need rest, healthcare and time to recover from everyday life. Is that what we want for this world to be?

If by any chance you are a fan of Mad Men TV series that features the lives of bad ass marketing and advertising Madison Avenue Gods Don Draper and his agency crew, you probably remember that not always did Draper win a pitch. One of those ones that they lost was with Heinz when Draper proposed them a campaign which shows no product at all. Yes, you heard it all good: NO PRODUCT AT ALL.

My eyes are all bloody and I fight the sleep though the fact that I am sooooo tired (and also six months pregnant) but I am binging on Stranger Things on Netflix like my life depends on it. I am watching 4th episode in a row and I can’t stop. No, it’s not only that the directors are amazing at cliff hanging me until next episode, it’s my brain that is sparking neurons like mad! Nope, it’s not only great story telling, it’s the 80s! Even though I was just a kid during 80s, seeing all the reference to this era was amazing:

So, Super bowl is here. For us who live in Europe and frankly hate sports, this is not less big of a deal. This is the time of the year when all marketers gaze the screens carefully watching what the rich advertisers are preparing for this advertising feast.

If you enjoy following Twitter wars between companies (brands) accounts and crazy trolls who complain mostly about everything they can think of during their morning toilet ritual, you must have followed up a recent “epic fail” as some would say, of the America’s largest consumer electronics retailer. I quite admire people who sit behind the brand Twitter accounts and resist their urge to say a few bleep words.

I went to a drugstore yesterday to buy some hair products and I was standing in front of the shelf with a stack of thousand different products. Yep, we’ve discussed this horror in my previous post, but this time, I had another mindf**k project being delivered to my poor over-thinking brain: product labeling.

Few weeks ago, I was attending a conference about digital media and there was a discussion about “selfie phenomenon”. One of the speakers said that concerts are not that important anymore, what is important is that “I AM AT THE CONCERT”. That is why we record and share. We want to blow a whistle: Hey, I was at the concert man, gimme LIKE, gimme FAVORITE, Retweet man!

I guess all of us had childhood heroes: Superman, Luke Skywalker, Sherlock Holmes, Cinderella…
But who are your adult heroes? Do you have any at all?
I do. And I met mine yesterday.
Years ago when I was writing my final master thesis I bought a book from amazon “Neuromarketing – understanding the buy buttons in your customer’s brain”.  I had no idea who the authors were. I couldn’t drop the book before I read it and I sucked up all the ideas. In the morning, I got up and said “this is what I want to do with my life”. That was 5 years ago. I still live up to my dream reading and blogging about that amazing field of new age science.

Yesterday evening, I stopped at a local shop to buy some stuff and I was standing in the queue for the cash register. Two teen girls were in front of me, buying some energy drinks, listening some strange music on their smartphones, singing out loud and sighing “Gee, what a pain in the ass, this queue is so slow, lady can you hurry up?!”, they shouted at the lady working at the register. I rolled my eyes and turned around. A guy behind me, about 30 years old shouted at them “Hey chicks, behave yourselves or you can leave the shop”. They turned around blinking and playing with their hair, almost killed him with their eyes .

If you are by any coincidence born around 1983, we are the same age and we can try a little experiment:
Remember the time when we were in the 3rd grade of elementary school. That puts us in year 1993. Try to remember the things that you asked your mother or father to buy you because you really wanted it. Does maybe a thing like this come up in your memory?

Few weeks ago, another great supermarket opened nearby. I wanted to buy some melon and coffee, so I got in just to check it out and do shopping. After almost an hour, I got out with a 50 euro bill and an hour of my life that I can never get back. Like a time jump. Snap. It just went away, 60 minutes flew away. Poof! I almost had a Twilight zone moment because I was sure that I had been there for 15 minutes tops. My parking reminder buzzed me that something in there was very wrong.

So you think you know what you like? Hm. Think twice.
The real nightmare of a marketing department starts the moment when the campaign is ready to set off. Before the launch, experienced and not so brave marketing gurus turn to conventional methods of gathering people’s opinions about the prepared campaign. Will they love it? Will they buy more beer if we sweat that glass off and make that girls cleevage sexier? Will they hate it? The questions are endless.
Some companies do a brief survey, some of them just sit around for hours and discuss the possible opinions and others turn to focus groups. Aha! Focus group, that is a great idea! (?) Let’s hear it from our future customers, let’s see what they say about it!