Is 'Neuromarketing' Real? Who Knows?
"Neuromarketing" is a term coined by the advertising industry because it sounds nice and not at all scary or ominous. Then again, it might be total pseudoscientific crapola! Who's to say? The advertising industry, that's who!
The Advertising Research Foundation is formally studying neuromarketing. Besides manipulating women's anterior cingulate cortex to sell them Fritos, what is it good for? The ARF is trying to study the practice (which is used by many of our nation's largest advertisers!) to find out if it really works on people's emotions, or if, you know, this shit is mostly made up. Here's the summary of what a whole panel of alleged experts concluded about one neuromarketing campaign for Colgate, according to Ad Age:
Most of the vendors thought the ad was good, but often for different reasons, he said. In one case, different firms interpreted the same response as good or bad. Some vendors said characters in the ads were "inviting," Mr. Thorogood said, while others thought they wouldn't resonate with the target audience.
"Across eight vendors," he said, "there was not a whole lot of consistency."
Yeah... we're gonna go with "pseodoscience." Unless it's total corporate mind control. One or the other, definitely.
