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Websites That Suck Increase Stress

2. March 2010

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Websites That Suck Increase Stress

We know that slow, balky, and confusing websites aren’t a good thing. Traffic metrics show this, as does conversion data. Google, whom some think of as passively indexing the web, believes quick-loading pages are essential to a good user experience. Google is, in fact, actively trying to speed up websites (and keep [...]

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Brain Movies: Top 5 Super Bowl Ads

1. March 2010

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Everyone loves to rank Super Bowl ads, and one neuromarketing firm that did so is Sands Research (see Super Bowl 2010 Ad Winners. Sands uses a combination of EEG, eye-tracking, biometrics, and surveys to calculate a “neuro-engagement factor” for each ad. Does that mean these ads will sell more product? Not necessarily. [...]

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The Power of Text

26. February 2010

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The Power of Text

What makes an engaging television commercial? If you think visual and auditory appeal – action, sound, music, people, color, etc. – you would usually be correct. Ditto for high production values. An exotic location might help, too. But the recent Super Bowl provided an example that should warm the hearts of [...]

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Neuromarketing: From Soup to Nuts

23. February 2010

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Neuromarketing: From Soup to Nuts

I’ve been chronicling the nascent neuromarketing industry since 2006, and I don’t think I’ve seen a story to date which captured social media attention to the degree that the recent Campbell Soup neuromarketing story did. The original story in the Wall Street Journal fueled a mini-boom of Twitter and blogging activity. Why? [...]

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Your Brain on Soup

18. February 2010

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Your Brain on Soup

Soup is a product you probably don’t lust for. Sure, a hot bowl of soup is nice after a chilly job of shoveling snow out of the driveway, but rarely is it more than an afterthought, or a quick prelude to a more interesting main course. If you are Campbell Soup Co., though, [...]

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Start Me Up: Brilliant Billboard

20. January 2010

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Billboards can be an effective medium, but tend to be very low in viewer engagement. Most outdoor advertising is designed to be viewed in a second or less as motorists whiz by. Here’s an example of how one advertiser turned that idea upside-down to create a fully interactive billboard:

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Got Aura?

15. December 2009

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Got Aura?

In 1936, long before mp3 files and digital books, a German named Walter Benjamin wrote an essay titled, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In it, he discussed the difference between an original work of art and a copy so perfect that it was indistinguishable. He suggested that the [...]

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Trade-Off by Kevin Maney

14. December 2009

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Marketable business ideas often have two key characteristics: simplicity, and a way of categorizing products, brands, or companies. The Boston Matrix, for example, launched armies of strategy consultants who neatly fit businesses into buckets labeled, “cash cow,” “star,” “dog,” etc. Kevin Maney’s book Trade-Off has those characteristics as well.

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Neuromarketing at Microsoft

11. December 2009

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Neuromarketing at Microsoft

Video games and movies are one of the more interesting neuromarketing applications, in that the technology can be applied to not just advertising but the product itself. A new effort by Microsoft and Emsense carries that idea one step further by attempting to compare viewer engagement with advertising across multiple technology platforms, including Xbox [...]

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First-time Scents are Memorable

8. December 2009

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First-time Scents are Memorable

We know that smells can evoke memories – think Proust’s madeleine – but new research shows that first-time scents seem to merit a unique status in our brains. The researchers used fMRI imaging to judge how well people paired scents and objects a week after their first exposure…

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