June 2010

The power of anecdotes to persuade (see Why Stories Sell and Your Brain on Stories) is established, but there's a dark side to that power. Quite simply, an effective story can take over our brains to the point where we disregard more valid…

We know that anecdotes can be a convincing way to sell a product, particularly if the story is told by someone we trust. (See Your Brain on Stories.) Evolutionary psychology may offer a reason. Human brains evolved when we had just two…

What's more accurate than asking people to predict their behavior? According to a new study at UCLA, the answer is, "Scan their brains." This may not come as a surprise to those engaged in neuromarketing research, but the newly…

What are the ideal characteristics for a person in a sales position? Great people skills? Strong product knowledge? Add confidence to the list. Continuing a discussion started in Convince With Confidence, there's more evidence that the…

Review: The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons Before reading farther, watch this video if you haven't already seen it: The Invisible Gorilla provides an…

Finnish scent marketing firm Ideair used ten restaurants and bars to conduct an interesting test of the effect of scent on product sales. As reported by Reuters, five locations used only visual ads for a specific liquor brands while…

In Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior, author and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller spends a lot of time discussion the "Big Five" personality traits, two of which are agreeableness and aggressiveness. These traits…

What does your brand sound like? If you have no clue, you are missing an important part of an overall sensory branding effort. One firm that knows what its signature sounds are is Audi, which has gone to considerable effort to establish a…

The issue of simplicity vs. complexity is, well, complicated. In business, simplicity and brevity are usually greatly preferred, but in marketing trying to get your message into a few words sometimes doesn't work as well as longer…

In a fascinating study just published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers have shown that we make buying decisions even when we aren't paying attention to the products, and that fMRI observation of brain activity can predict…