Archive | August, 2008

Neuromarketing Firm Awards Olympic Gold to Visa, Home Depot

29. August 2008

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Mega-sporting events are always mega-advertising events, and the cost to become a sponsor or advertiser is a huge commitment of corporate dollars. The inevitable question that arises after the event is, “Was it worth it?” NeuroFocus, a neuromarketing research company, has released their “Beijing Brand Study” which attempts to answer that question for [...]

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Branding: Does Hate Trump Love?

27. August 2008

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Jim Edwards of Brandweek has penned an interesting and lengthy article describing his own experience as a neuromarketing subject, as well as providing some general background on the promise offered and challenges faced by the nascent science. In an interesting neurobranding test, Edwards had his brain scanned by Joy Hirsch, director of the Functional [...]

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Visual Selling

25. August 2008

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Book Review: The Back of The Napkin by Dan Roam
The Back of The Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas by Dan Roam is a meaty book for managers and marketers that explains how to turn problems and concepts into simple pictures to analyze and persuade. Roam’s premise is that people think visually, and by [...]

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Customer Satisfaction: Time is Precious

22. August 2008

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Today, there is a big emphasis on productivity in sales and customer service. Increasingly, customers are given tools to place their own orders, check on their status, and so on. In-person sales calls cost hundreds of dollars (some estimates run over a thousand dollars), so an emphasis on efficiency is understandable. And, [...]

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Fear Factor Branding: The Best Ad Placement Ever

19. August 2008

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One of the interesting tricks our brains play on us is to transfer physiological and emotional states that we are experiencing to something else going on at the same time. In Sway, authors Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman describe one of the more unusual experiments in behavior I’ve seen. In fact, it sounds [...]

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Mega-Branding: The Purple Oreo Problem

18. August 2008

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In Decoy Marketing, I described my befuddlement when staring at a shelf full of shaving gel product variations. In that case, a jumbo-sized can at the same price as the regular-sized cans put an end to my indecision. It turns out I’m not the only marketer with an eye on the shaving gel [...]

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A Pretty Woman Beats a Good Loan Deal

15. August 2008

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Marketers are constantly facing the challenge of how to make an offer more attractive to their customers. Will free shipping garner more orders than a $10 coupon? What about a 10% discount, or a free tote bag? Smart marketers know there is only one way to definitively answer this kind of question: [...]

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Danger in Discounts

8. August 2008

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I’m a sucker for discounts. Show me something that costs $50, tell me I can have it for $25, and my hand will be reaching for my wallet while my brain is still trying to figure out whether I need the item at any price. Most of us respond that way – our [...]

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Better Branding with Chocolate and Sex

7. August 2008

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Fantasizing about food and sex can reduce pain. (And you always thought those fantasies were a waste of time…) People in emotional or physical distress often turn to “comfort foods” – new research shows that just thinking about these foods can have a significant effect.
“Imagery tactics are the most potent cognitive behavior interventions [...]

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Sway: More Irrationality

5. August 2008

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Book Review: Sway – The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
We love irrational behavior here at Neuromarketing – when humans act in illogical and unexpected ways, that behavior provides clues to their real motivations. This understanding may, in turn, also help marketers develop products and promotions better suited to the real needs and desires of [...]

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