FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
October 31, 2003
Medial Prefrontal Cortex Context
Fast Company first encountered Atlanta-based neuromarketing firm BrightHouse in 1999. So it was nice this past Sunday to catch up with the "ideation corporation" in the New York Times Magazine.
That recent article delves into how products and services can be associated with a self-image or lifestyle -- and how we can be trained to consume in order to complete ourselves. Zack Lynch considers the implications of marketing's reinvention, and the staff of the Internet Time Group approach the article's lessons in terms of training and development:
- Emotion trumps reason.
- Build your internal brand.
- If you have Pepsi-quality training, repackage it in Coke bottles.
That last piece of advice makes me want to teach the world to sing.
Starting Monday, I'll be contributing to FC Now live from the floor at Ad:Tech, a conference designed for marketers and agencies focusing on interactive, integrated marketing. I'll be reporting on sessions focusing on branding, viral marketing, mobile technology, the future of television, and other topics. I hope you'll join me!
Posted by Heath Row at October 31, 2003 5:40 PM | Category: sales + marketing |
5 Comments
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Sounds like Neuromarketing to Your Mind:
http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/archives/000534.html
A few years ago we co-worked with a multimedia company where we invited executives from Coca-Cola to attend a presentation. The Coke Executives faces turned white and they refused to come into the conference room. We had no idea why. Of course they told us why, "Remove that offending material and we will come in...". It just happens that there was one Pepsi can in the room and such was Coke's religion it was an affront to their sacredness they hold for the company they work for, that the enemy was real, even though to us its just a spray-painted tin can.
So it is neuromarketing or the way our cortex is pre-configured. I don't think so, I think its the same stuff that creates football hooligans, its our tribal sense of clan and who else knows about tribal clams than people who write at corante or at any otehr watering hole that encourages tribalism. Bottom dollar, the human race will be much better if they got back to the ideals of a Ben Franklin rather than turn the simple heartbeat of human reason into a one big word-contorted pscyho-biological experiment.
M.
zorromark@consultant.com
(Mark Twain wasn't Mark Twain, Mark Zorro isn't Mark Zorro)
You are not invited to my blog at http://www.markzorro.blogspot.com, its mine, all mine. (note: I am former football hooligan and a pepsi drinker)...
"...how products and services can be associated with a self-image or lifestyle -- and how we can be trained to consume in order to complete ourselves."
From a marketing perspective, I can see how this idea would get the saliva running. From a personal perspective, it makes me cringe. I see so much unnecessary dissatisfaction, with self, with life, with everything, that comes down to a constant bombardment with that one message..."You are not enough. Buy this, and you will be complete."
The kicker, of course, is that we never are. And so we go round in this endless loop trying to buy our way into fulfillment.
From a bottom line perspective, the tactic makes total sense - create a perceived need and the people will buy. From a moral/ethical perspective - what are the implications of creating a sense of not being complete that can't truly be filled by product - it gets a bit murkier.
I would love to see Fast Company take a deeper look at that side of the question.
Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst (sm)
http://blog.occupationaladventure.com
On a lighter note, for actual research on the Pre-Frontal Cortex, see Earl Miller's Lab at MIT:
Miller Lab @ MIT
Cheers,
Avi
NeuroMarketing 2004.
The Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX) is hosting a novel symposium April 16-18 to introduce any and all interested parties to the fundamentals of neuroimaging and its range of applications in different markets.
Follow this link to learn more http://www.hnl.bcm.tmc.edu/NeuroMarketing/