Marketing implications of "brain reading?"

20 replies
Now scientists read your mind better than you can | Reuters

Scientists can supposedly predict a person's behavior better than they can themselves.

Imagine having access to a database of "brain readings" over large populations. I think this has to be a somewhat far off advance in a marketer's practical bag of tricks. But maybe not so far off. After all, there are marketers who utilize "heat maps" for tracking readers on their web pages, etc. Why not brain maps?

- Bal
#brain reading #implications #marketing
  • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
    Customer: "I hate long sales pages, exit popups, upsells, and false scarcity."

    Reality: long sales pages, exit popups, upsells, and false scarcity continue to convert.

    Implications? What implications? Since when is this news?
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    "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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    • Profile picture of the author BobRenwick
      Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post

      Customer: "I hate long sales pages, exit popups, upsells, and false scarcity."

      Reality: long sales pages, exit popups, upsells, and false scarcity continue to convert.

      Implications? What implications? Since when is this news?
      Is this not why marketing methods are constantly evolving? Long sales pages are slowly giving way to sideways sales pages and video sales pages. Exit popups will soon go the way of the dinosaur as more people like myself insist on attempting the false exit just to see if there's a better deal behind door number one.

      Upsells have never bothered me as long as I can say "no" and have become predictable for products at lower price points.

      The trouble with all of these things is that, what started as clever and profitable marketing ploys have become the downfall of our own credibility. At what point do we abandon supposedly successful methods to maintain a semblance of respectability?
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      • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
        Originally Posted by renstone View Post

        Is this not why marketing methods are constantly evolving?
        Is that why the best training materials on marketing and salesmanship were written in the 19th century?

        New does not equal improved.
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        "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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        • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
          Caliban,
          Is that why the best training materials on marketing and salesmanship were written in the 19th century?

          New does not equal improved.
          I'll agree completely with that last part. The first, not so much.

          The older stuff covers the basics. It's the meat and potatoes of marketing. But the systems that give the finer points are often relatively new variations.


          Paul
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          • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
            Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post

            But the systems that give the finer points are often relatively new variations.
            And relatively short-lived.

            They're not evolution, they're novelty. We used long sales letters to sell in 1875, and we still use them over a century later. While the details have changed, it's mostly semantics: AIDA may be reasonably new, NLP may be reasonably new, "hypnotic copy" may be reasonably new, but these are just new labels.

            The techniques themselves are right there, a hundred years old, working the same today as they did back then. We have a new explanation of how they work, and why they work, but that doesn't make them work any better.

            And the fact remains, we've been able to predict consumer behaviour better than consumers since at least the 1960s. That's when I first came across those fascinating studies on brand awareness, where the questions and answers went like this, over and over:

            "Would you ever buy the leading brand because it was the leading brand?"
            "No, I would make up my own mind."

            "What's the leading brand of [product]?"
            "Brand X."

            "What brand of [product] do you use?"
            "Brand X."

            "Why?"
            "Because everybody uses Brand X."

            It simply amazed me to see people saying one thing, doing the opposite, and being completely oblivious to the contradiction. It's this kind of flat-out absurdity that interested me in marketing and advertising to begin with.
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            "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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        • Profile picture of the author BobRenwick
          Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post

          Is that why the best training materials on marketing and salesmanship were written in the 19th century?

          New does not equal improved.
          Define "improved." Maybe I'm a pragmatist but to me it means that which works.

          Methods that worked in the 19th century still work today because those who pioneered those methodologies were geniuses in their field. But if they were alive today they would be dumbfounded by the internet. Still, I have no doubt that with a little adaptation they would soon be successful.
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          • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
            Originally Posted by renstone View Post

            Define "improved." Maybe I'm a pragmatist but to me it means that which works.
            To most people, it means "that which works better."
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            "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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            • Profile picture of the author BobRenwick
              Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post

              To most people, it means "that which works better."
              Good answer. Along those same lines you said earlier that "new does not equal improved." That is so right, which is precisely why we split test.

              But that is also why marketing is in a constant state of unchanging flux. Before you call me on the contradiction, consider that everything changes, nothing changes.

              Methods given to us by the pioneers still work but must be adapted to the technology of our day. It must also be adapted to the social climate. People think differently today, are more sophisticated, more aware and more educated, less naive. Thus the need for marketing to evolve.

              Marketing isn't a mechanical process. As long as people are flesh and blood they must be treated as such. Our job as marketers is to discover the proper balance between serving others and earning a good living online.

              As long as the serving others part of the equation is put first the latter should follow. That ultimately is what works better. The rest is all details.
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              • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
                Originally Posted by renstone View Post

                Thus the need for marketing to evolve.
                (...)
                As long as people are flesh and blood they must be treated as such.
                It is my contention that unless and until the human being evolves, it is unnecessary and quite likely detrimental for marketing to evolve.
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                "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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                • Profile picture of the author balsimon
                  So - Caliban - I'm not challenging your contention. No need for that. I am asking for clarification of what you mean.

                  Till there were search engines, there was no SEO, no PPC, etc. Evolution? Or do you see it differently?

                  Ditto for such things as "thank you pages," offline to online marketing (there was once upon a time no such thing as online), online video (a somewhat recent emergent, yes?).

                  Clearly, certain things related to marketing are changing and perhaps evolving.

                  But you seem to be seeing something different. Please elaborate.

                  - Bal
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                  • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
                    Originally Posted by balsimon View Post

                    Till there were search engines, there was no SEO, no PPC, etc. Evolution? Or do you see it differently?
                    However, there were places people looked for what they wanted, there were ways for businesses to stand out, and there were ways for businesses to advertise.

                    The specifics change, but the underlying principles don't. All these courses on PPC advertising that talk about how to get better results from your AdWords dollars? It's the same damn advice I got out of Don Lapre's "Tiny Classified Ads" course almost 20 years ago, and that advice mostly came out of Hopkins' Scientific Advertising from 1923.

                    Evolved? Not really. Tarted up like a cheap whore, maybe.
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                    "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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                    • Profile picture of the author ozduc
                      Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post


                      Evolved? Not really. Tarted up like a cheap whore, maybe.
                      LOL
                      I think you are so right. The underlying principles have not changed. It is only the tools used to achieve the desired outcome that have changed or "evolved".
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              • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
                Originally Posted by renstone View Post

                People think differently today, are more sophisticated, more aware and more educated, less naive.
                You really think people are less naive today?

                I don't think my grandfather would have went in hock up to his neck because a stranger sent him a sales page promising him $10k a month for doing nothing. He would have laughed at the fool for wasting his time.

                Can't say that about a lot of internet users today. Some of them not only fall for it once, but they keep buying the same false promise over and over.
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  • Profile picture of the author BobRenwick
    I for one hope that internet marketing never comes to that. I have enough trouble trying to figure out my own brain without reading the minds of others. I think the closest we can come now to reading mass brain patterns would be the data found at Quantcast. The demographics of a large population of website visitors to a specific site is information that can be golden for the marketer intent on reaching that market. Not quite mind reading, but a reasonable facsimile.
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  • Profile picture of the author tecHead
    ... so is that why people with big foreheads are so arrogant??
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt.Lake
    Isn't the whole phsycology behind marketing essentially mind reading already?
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  • Profile picture of the author balsimon
    It's news because it was in the news. Seems to me that the effort is to add precision to the very human ability to step into another's shoes. This precision can be a powerful tool or weapon, depending on how one makes use of it. Knowing that 76.2% of people will ALWAYS do X when they are exposed to Y could be very powerful, esp if the data is backed up with 10,000 people's MRIs.

    Practical now? No, but something to be aware of? I think so.

    - Bal
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  • Profile picture of the author balsimon
    So I don't really see a conflict here. The Reuters article discussed a more precision way of anticipating how people will react. The people still have "the same" inner structure. That hasn't evolved much,if at all. But getting at understanding their inner structure is evolving, and I see this as noteworthy. An analogy: people will be killed in combat by "the same" damage as before. But now a marksman can use better - not just different - weapons than in times past. The same for reaching the hearts and minds of our customers.

    - Bal
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    • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
      Originally Posted by balsimon View Post

      So I don't really see a conflict here. The Reuters article discussed a more precision way of anticipating how people will react.
      There really isn't a conflict. All I'm saying is that this isn't new. Professional copywriters and marketers have been better at predicting consumer behaviour than the consumers themselves... geez, my whole life.

      Consumers, in general, just plain don't know what they do and why they do it. If you've ever done usability research, and watched people swear they didn't do anything while you've WATCHED them and VIDEOTAPED them doing precisely what they've been told not to do? Seriously, most people are somewhere between stupid and insane, and a surprising number of them appear to be both.
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      "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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      • Profile picture of the author balsimon
        Caliban - I think we may be in violent agreement.
        - Bal
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