By Maximiliano Denaro. From the editorial staff of Clarín.com.
mdenaro@claringlobal.com.ar
A group of German scientists studied that neuromarketing works and that our brain responds better to known brands than to unknown ones.
Scientists from Ludwing-Maximilians University demonstrated, thanks to functional magnetic resonance imaging, that before we try on a piece of clothing or examine a car, our brain has previously decided what we are going to buy. The results of the experiment were presented at the meeting of the American Society of Radiology and demonstrate the power of advertisements on the human mind.
The research procedure was conducted by Christine Born, a German radiologist at the university hospital in Munich, and the test involved twenty adults of both sexes with an average age of twenty-eight years and a high level of education. While they were connected to a brain scanner, they were shown the badges of both highly publicized and less publicized brands. As they watched them, the participants pressed a button to rate, on a scale of zero to four points, which ones they liked the most and which ones they liked the least.
Born concluded that the best-known brands lit up the areas related to positive emotions and associated with self-identification and memories. In addition, the brain recognized them with little effort. In contrast, the unknown brands made the areas of memory and negative responses work.
At the University of Buenos Aires, a project led by Carolina Borracchia, founding partner of the branding agency Combo, is being developed with the aim of understanding the emotional links between people and brands. It is made up of eight researchers who bring different disciplinary perspectives. “The team was designed to be interdisciplinary because I understood that the role of feelings and the study of language in relation to brands is still an area that has been discussed but not studied in depth and that I believe requires a broader view than the one that graphic design proposes today,” says the project director.
Its ultimate goal is to provide knowledge on brand building beyond the purely visual aspects, facilitating the understanding of the construction of the brand outwardly. It is about deepening a theory about the link that builds with people. For Borrachia “a brand has to meet certain functional requirements and communicate attributes from a visual sign but the graphic designer must go beyond this, must be aware of the personality of a brand and its positioning, providing a strategic thinking”.
Clarín.com contacted Nicolás Oliveira, account executive at Publiquest, a technology marketing agency that offers communication and marketing solutions. Oliveira affirms that brain addiction to brands exists: “Brands are increasingly seeking to be represented in people’s emotions. Situations such as a family meeting or being among friends, job satisfaction or love itself, are the target of marketing actions”. He adds: “Mutual internal representation is the result of the association of the external world with our internal world, and its identification. We try to make the consumer feel identified and connect with the product”.
According to the research, in front of the best-known brands, people activated the areas related to positive emotions associated with self-identification. For Oliveira, “leading brands manage to connect pleasant emotions from our inner world with the stimulus of their advertising. They succeed in the reverse path of “situation – emotion”.
Neuromarketing is a very complete method to know people’s reactions when confronted with a certain brand. “Its use includes neuroscientific studies on the physical reaction that certain stimuli, such as brands, advertisements and situations, have on our brains”, the executive points out.