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Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing
Practical techniques for applying neuroscience and behavior research to attract new customers Brainfluence explains how to practically apply neuroscience and behavior research to better market to consumers by understanding their decision patterns. This application, called neuromarketing, studies the way the brain responds to various cognitive and sensory marketing stimuli. Analysts use this to measure a consumer's preference, what a customer reacts to, and why consumers make certain decisions. With quick and easy takeaways offered in 60 short chapters, this book contains key strategies for targeting consumers through in-person sales, online and print ads, and other marketing mediums. This scientific approach to marketing has helped many well-known brands and companies determine how to best market their products to different demographics and consumer groups. Brainfluence offers short, easy-to-digest ideas that can be accessed in any order. Brainfluence delivers the latest insights and research, giving you an edge in your marketing, advertising, and sales efforts.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published October 19, 2011
317 people are currently reading
5257 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 96 reviews
December 5, 2019
A fascinating glimpse into the marketing sneakiness. If even 20% of this stuff is real, the mind is truly dark.
Q:
Bundling minimizes pain. (c)
Q:
...for many consumers, the credit card takes the pain (quite literally, from the standpoint of the customer’s brain) out of purchasing. Pulling cash out of one’s wallet causes one to evaluate the purchase more carefully. (c)
Q:
Even a simple currency symbol in front of a price can make a difference. (с)
Q:
Here’s a scenario: You decide to venture into a cell phone store (despite your reluctance to deal with a bewildering number of phones, options, plans, and confusing pricing). As usual, you find you’ll have to wait a bit for a salesperson. The greeter hands you a card with a big “97” printed on it and says, “It should only be a few minutes. We’ll call your number, 97, when a salesperson can help you.” You notice that a large digital display on the wall is showing “94.” You see it click to 95, then 96, and finally 97. The receptionist says, “Number 97, please,” and a salesperson arrives to assist you. You thought nothing of the numeric ordering of customers, but it’s possible that the store had an ulterior motive: they could have been attempting to manipulate the price you would pay. Sound bizarre? (c)
Q:
Researchers at Stanford University and Caltech demonstrated that people’s brains experience more pleasure when they think they are drinking a $45 wine instead of a $5 bottle, even when in reality it’s the same cheap stuff! ...
Shiv, in another experiment, showed that people who paid more for an energy drink actually solved puzzles more quickly than those who bought it at a discount. The higher price made the drink more stimulating...
Yet another study showed that 85 percent of subjects given a placebo pill for pain relief reported a reduction in pain when they were told the pill cost $2.50 per dose; when told the pill cost 10 cents, only 61 percent of subjects reported a pain reduction. The pills, of course, had no actual active ingredients.(c)
Q:
Here’s the conundrum for marketers: On one hand, we know that the pain of paying kicks in when people perceive that a product is overpriced and makes people less likely to make a purchase. But now we have multiple studies showing that people enjoy a product more when they pay more for it. How should a marketer determine the price point? (c)
Q:
Another study looked at the price of houses and found that sellers who listed their house at an odd price, such as $494,500, sold at a price closer to their asking price than houses priced at even numbers, like $500,000. Oddly, the even-priced houses lost more value as they aged on the market, too. (c)
Q:
Relativity is the key element in decoy marketing. (c)
Q:
One study, by Ned Augenblick and Scott Nicholson of Stanford University, analyzed voting patterns in a California county. They found that the lower on the ballot an item appeared, the more likely the voter was to not make any choice or to use a shortcut, such as picking the first choice. The process of working through the ballot making choices caused voters to look for an easy way out as they progressed. (c)
Q:
Sometimes, we process scents without conscious awareness. In one unique experiment, researchers asked female subjects to smell shirts worn by men who watched either an erotic movie or a neutral one. Virtually all of the women said they didn’t smell anything, but the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of the brains of the women who smelled the shirts worn by the aroused guys lit up in a different way. (This is just one example of why surveys, questionnaires, and similar market research tools can yield unreliable results.) (c)
Q:
John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and author of Brain Rules, describes an amusing, albeit informal, experiment he conducted to evaluate the potency of scent to enhance the formation of memories.10 Medina ran the test while teaching a complex molecular biology topic to two classes. In one class, before each lesson he sprayed Brut cologne on the wall; the other class received no such treatment. (Medina doesn’t relate what comments, if any, students entering the cologne-scented classroom made.) When it was time for the final exam, he sprayed Brut for all students. The students who had received the Brut-scented lectures performed significantly better on the test.
Although this experiment wasn’t scientifically rigorous, it is consistent with the theory that memories can be stimulated by sensory inputs similar to those present when the memory was formed. (Think Proust!) (c)
Q:
I’m not a big yogurt fan. “Live cultures” would be unacceptable, or even scary, in most foods, but for some reason, they are highly prized in yogurt. (c)
Q:
Researchers have found that training alters brain maps (the locations of the brain that correspond to individual body parts). One experiment attached two fingers of a monkey together for a period of months so that they acted, in essence, as a single finger; tests showed that the previously separate brain mappings for the two fingers had indeed become one. Although this is an extreme example, many other experiments show that training rewires the brain. (c)
Q:
Martin Lindstrom gives evidence of how associations can become hardwired over time in his popular neuromarketing book Buyology. Lindstrom notes that tobacco warning labels were found to stimulate craving for tobacco when smokers were observed using fMRI brain scans. The very labels intended to frighten smokers became, after repeated exposure, a cue to smoke. By their presence on every pack of cigarettes, the warning labels became associated with the pleasurable aspect of satisfying a tobacco craving. (c)
Q:
One interesting finding reported by du Plessis is that the impact of fast-forwarded commercials is highest when the viewer has seen the whole ad at regular speed at least once. After one regular viewing, apparently there’s enough information in the fast-forwarded visuals to stimulate recall; this makes subsequent “skipped” ads nearly as effective as those seen at regular speed. (c)
Q:
Decades ago, psychologist Robert Zajonc demonstrated what is known as the mere exposure effect by showing two groups of non-Chinese-speaking subjects a series of five Chinese ideographs; one group received five exposures to the symbols, and the other group just got one. In all cases, the exposures lasted only five milliseconds or less, too fast for conscious processing. Then, Zajonc showed the subjects a larger group of images that included the original set as well as new ideographs and other symbols. The subjects viewed the images for a full second, more than enough time to be conscious of seeing them. Zajonc then asked how much they liked each one.
The subjects who received five subliminal exposures to an ideograph liked it much better than the subjects who had seen it only once.
The conclusion was that the presence of familiar things, even when we are unaware of the exposure, makes us feel better. Later work has suggested that this effect is related to fluency, the ease with which our brains process things that are more familiar. And although the experiment used ideographs, it’s not a big leap to suggest that unconscious exposure to brand symbols might work the same way. (c)
Q:
any exposure is better than none and can cause a positive association later. Labeling your products in a way that keeps the brand constantly visible is one approach. Every time the product is used, or carried in public, the brand is exposed. Sponsorships are another. How many people consciously notice who has branded their luggage cart at the airport? Probably very few, but those labels add up to billions of impressions per year...
Samsung is a master of subtle branding via sponsorships. Lately, the firm has been branding airport electrical charging stations. Can you imagine a better way to link an electronics brand with a positive association? Imagine the relief felt by the owner of a smartphone with a dying battery, who, stuck in the airport without a charger, finds this electrical oasis! (c)
Q:
Newlin writes, “Passion brands breed passionate followings, very often through impassioned employees. I remember the early stories of Red Bull, when dogged sales guys would bring empty cans to bars and leave them crunched up and strewn around to make it look like the brand was popular, well before it actually was.” (c)
Q:
Take Apple, for instance; they are a brand envied by all. The firm that began by building some of the first home computers turned their customers into legions of fanatical evangelists. Indeed, brain scans show that when you put Apple “true believers” in an fMRI machine, their brains light up in the same areas normally triggered by religion.
...
Psychologist Henri Tajfel wanted to know how seemingly normal people could commit genocide, and he explored how easy or difficult it was to get subjects to identify with one group and discriminate against others. What he found was startling: with the most trivial of distinctions, he could create artificial loyalties to one group, who would then discriminate against those not in that group.
Tajfel tested subjects by having them perform a more or less meaningless task, like choosing between one of two painters or guessing a number of dots shown on a screen. Then, he assigned each subject to a group, ostensibly based on their answer. When the groups were asked to distribute real rewards, they became loyal to their own group and were stingy with the other group. Many variations on this experiment have been performed subsequently, and they have shown that people can develop group loyalty very quickly, even in the absence of real differences. Subjects even became emotionally invested in their meaningless groups, cheering for their own group’s rewards and mocking the other group.
Tajfel’s experiment led to the theory of social identity, which states that people have an inherent tendency to categorize themselves into groups. They then base their identity, at least in part, on their group affiliations, and build boundaries to keep other groups separate.
...
Jumping back to Apple, look how they have leveraged an “us versus them” approach for decades. Their “1984” commercial certainly drew a sharp distinction between the lone, attractive, athletic young woman and the lines of brainwashed drones.
A year later, Apple’s creepy and somewhat depressing “Lemmings” commercial continued to push people into one of two camps; they again portrayed Windows (PC) users as mindless, in this case as blindfolded businesspeople functioning like suicidal rodents following each other off a cliff. (c)
Q:
The Etsy Approach
Although Etsy, the phenomenal web success story in the arts and crafts market, wouldn’t seem to have much in common with a megabrand like Apple, founder Rob Kalin has emulated Steve Jobs in at least one way. Etsy’s key “customers” are actually the thousands of artists who choose to sell their wares on Etsy, and Kalin has appealed to this group by positioning himself on their side against big business.
Even as Etsy itself turns into a huge enterprise, Kalin calls himself not CEO but crafter in chief and talks about “the big companies that all us small businesses are teaming up against.” This rhetoric seems laughable for a company that has raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, but so far it seems to be working. It’s us (Etsy and the artists) against them (the suits and big business). (c)
Q:
Seth Godin and his tribes!
Q:
A test involving the believability of political falsehoods found that asking undecided voters to write their age on a card nearly doubled the percentage who thought John McCain was senile. Similarly, voters who indicated their race on a card were more than twice as likely to believe that Barack Obama was a socialist.
Undecided subjects gave the “Obama is a socialist” a mere 25 percent probability of being true, a number that jumped to 62 percent when they were asked to record their race.(c)
Q:
Researchers asked people to study a job candidate by looking at a resume placed on a clipboard. Each subject received either a light clipboard or a heavy one. The people given the heavy clipboards judged the applicants to have a more serious interest in the position than did the group that received the light clipboard. (c)
Q:
Song and Schwarz attribute the difference to cognitive fluency—in essence, how easy it is for us to process and digest information.
They performed a similar experiment involving a sushi recipe. Subjects who saw the instructions in estimated that preparation would take 5.6 minutes, while those who read the directions in , a more complicated font, expected it to take 9.3 minutes. (c)
Q:
Use Complex Fonts and Big Words to Enhance Your Product
There’s a lesson here for all kinds of businesses: complicated fonts and difficult text make things seem harder. If you want to convince customers that your product involves tedious steps to make or that great skill is required to deliver the service you provide, slow the reader down with a harder-to-read font and big words. (c)
Q:
A Princeton study compared student retention of course material presented in both simple fonts and more complex fonts and found that retention was significantly better for the complex font. (c)
Q:
A face in your ad will attract attention, but be sure the face is looking at what you want the viewer to see—your headline, a product image, or whatever is key. Viewers will examine the face, and then subconsciously be drawn to what the eyes appear to be looking at. Try it with pictures of adults, too. Instead of a smiling model staring out of the page, position him so that he is looking at your most important content! (c)
Q:
One South African bank trying to boost its loan business did just that. They mailed 50,000 customers a loan offer and used several variations in the direct mail package. ... For me, at least, the most startling finding was that for male customers, including a photo of a female instead of a male on the mailing piece increased response rate by the same amount as a 4.5 percent drop in the loan interest rate. Female customers, meanwhile, were mostly unaffected by the gender of the photo. ...
The second takeaway from this research is that marketers should never assume they know what is going to work; testing different offers, different presentations, and even a crazy idea or two is the only way to know what will really make an offer take off.(c)
Q:
The researchers ran a series of tests. They asked subjects to reflect on how the United States came into being. Half of the subjects were asked to reflect on what their world would be like if the country hadn’t come into being. (This is called counterfactual reflection.) The other half were told to think about what their world is like because the country did come into existence (factual reflection). The subjects told to imagine the “what if the country hadn’t come into existence” scenario demonstrated higher levels of patriotism in subsequent testing than those who reflected on their actual situation.
And it’s not just patriotism that can be stirred by imagining alternative scenarios—it works for businesses, too. A similar test that had subjects reflect on the origins of a company showed a significant boost in positive feelings among those who thought about the counterfactual condition, that is, the differences in the world or their own lives had the company not been created. (c)
Q:
One of the most interesting findings was that the mere illusion of progress caused people to buy coffee more frequently. The experimenters issued two different cards: empty cards with 10 spots to stamp and cards with 12 blanks of which two were prestamped. In both cases, 10 stamps were required to earn the free coffee. Despite the identical number of stamps needed, the group that started with apparent progress on their card bought coffee more frequently than the empty-card group. (c)
Q:
Natural Mind Readers (c)
Q:
Markita’s strategy was simple. When she knocked on a door, she would first ask for a $30,000 donation to the Girl Scouts. Naturally, she had no takers on that request. But then she’d ask if they would at least buy a box of Girl Scout cookies, and just about everyone would. (c)
Q:
Bundling minimizes pain. (c)
Q:
...for many consumers, the credit card takes the pain (quite literally, from the standpoint of the customer’s brain) out of purchasing. Pulling cash out of one’s wallet causes one to evaluate the purchase more carefully. (c)
Q:
Even a simple currency symbol in front of a price can make a difference. (с)
Q:
Here’s a scenario: You decide to venture into a cell phone store (despite your reluctance to deal with a bewildering number of phones, options, plans, and confusing pricing). As usual, you find you’ll have to wait a bit for a salesperson. The greeter hands you a card with a big “97” printed on it and says, “It should only be a few minutes. We’ll call your number, 97, when a salesperson can help you.” You notice that a large digital display on the wall is showing “94.” You see it click to 95, then 96, and finally 97. The receptionist says, “Number 97, please,” and a salesperson arrives to assist you. You thought nothing of the numeric ordering of customers, but it’s possible that the store had an ulterior motive: they could have been attempting to manipulate the price you would pay. Sound bizarre? (c)
Q:
Researchers at Stanford University and Caltech demonstrated that people’s brains experience more pleasure when they think they are drinking a $45 wine instead of a $5 bottle, even when in reality it’s the same cheap stuff! ...
Shiv, in another experiment, showed that people who paid more for an energy drink actually solved puzzles more quickly than those who bought it at a discount. The higher price made the drink more stimulating...
Yet another study showed that 85 percent of subjects given a placebo pill for pain relief reported a reduction in pain when they were told the pill cost $2.50 per dose; when told the pill cost 10 cents, only 61 percent of subjects reported a pain reduction. The pills, of course, had no actual active ingredients.(c)
Q:
Here’s the conundrum for marketers: On one hand, we know that the pain of paying kicks in when people perceive that a product is overpriced and makes people less likely to make a purchase. But now we have multiple studies showing that people enjoy a product more when they pay more for it. How should a marketer determine the price point? (c)
Q:
Another study looked at the price of houses and found that sellers who listed their house at an odd price, such as $494,500, sold at a price closer to their asking price than houses priced at even numbers, like $500,000. Oddly, the even-priced houses lost more value as they aged on the market, too. (c)
Q:
Relativity is the key element in decoy marketing. (c)
Q:
One study, by Ned Augenblick and Scott Nicholson of Stanford University, analyzed voting patterns in a California county. They found that the lower on the ballot an item appeared, the more likely the voter was to not make any choice or to use a shortcut, such as picking the first choice. The process of working through the ballot making choices caused voters to look for an easy way out as they progressed. (c)
Q:
Sometimes, we process scents without conscious awareness. In one unique experiment, researchers asked female subjects to smell shirts worn by men who watched either an erotic movie or a neutral one. Virtually all of the women said they didn’t smell anything, but the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of the brains of the women who smelled the shirts worn by the aroused guys lit up in a different way. (This is just one example of why surveys, questionnaires, and similar market research tools can yield unreliable results.) (c)
Q:
John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and author of Brain Rules, describes an amusing, albeit informal, experiment he conducted to evaluate the potency of scent to enhance the formation of memories.10 Medina ran the test while teaching a complex molecular biology topic to two classes. In one class, before each lesson he sprayed Brut cologne on the wall; the other class received no such treatment. (Medina doesn’t relate what comments, if any, students entering the cologne-scented classroom made.) When it was time for the final exam, he sprayed Brut for all students. The students who had received the Brut-scented lectures performed significantly better on the test.
Although this experiment wasn’t scientifically rigorous, it is consistent with the theory that memories can be stimulated by sensory inputs similar to those present when the memory was formed. (Think Proust!) (c)
Q:
I’m not a big yogurt fan. “Live cultures” would be unacceptable, or even scary, in most foods, but for some reason, they are highly prized in yogurt. (c)
Q:
Researchers have found that training alters brain maps (the locations of the brain that correspond to individual body parts). One experiment attached two fingers of a monkey together for a period of months so that they acted, in essence, as a single finger; tests showed that the previously separate brain mappings for the two fingers had indeed become one. Although this is an extreme example, many other experiments show that training rewires the brain. (c)
Q:
Martin Lindstrom gives evidence of how associations can become hardwired over time in his popular neuromarketing book Buyology. Lindstrom notes that tobacco warning labels were found to stimulate craving for tobacco when smokers were observed using fMRI brain scans. The very labels intended to frighten smokers became, after repeated exposure, a cue to smoke. By their presence on every pack of cigarettes, the warning labels became associated with the pleasurable aspect of satisfying a tobacco craving. (c)
Q:
One interesting finding reported by du Plessis is that the impact of fast-forwarded commercials is highest when the viewer has seen the whole ad at regular speed at least once. After one regular viewing, apparently there’s enough information in the fast-forwarded visuals to stimulate recall; this makes subsequent “skipped” ads nearly as effective as those seen at regular speed. (c)
Q:
Decades ago, psychologist Robert Zajonc demonstrated what is known as the mere exposure effect by showing two groups of non-Chinese-speaking subjects a series of five Chinese ideographs; one group received five exposures to the symbols, and the other group just got one. In all cases, the exposures lasted only five milliseconds or less, too fast for conscious processing. Then, Zajonc showed the subjects a larger group of images that included the original set as well as new ideographs and other symbols. The subjects viewed the images for a full second, more than enough time to be conscious of seeing them. Zajonc then asked how much they liked each one.
The subjects who received five subliminal exposures to an ideograph liked it much better than the subjects who had seen it only once.
The conclusion was that the presence of familiar things, even when we are unaware of the exposure, makes us feel better. Later work has suggested that this effect is related to fluency, the ease with which our brains process things that are more familiar. And although the experiment used ideographs, it’s not a big leap to suggest that unconscious exposure to brand symbols might work the same way. (c)
Q:
any exposure is better than none and can cause a positive association later. Labeling your products in a way that keeps the brand constantly visible is one approach. Every time the product is used, or carried in public, the brand is exposed. Sponsorships are another. How many people consciously notice who has branded their luggage cart at the airport? Probably very few, but those labels add up to billions of impressions per year...
Samsung is a master of subtle branding via sponsorships. Lately, the firm has been branding airport electrical charging stations. Can you imagine a better way to link an electronics brand with a positive association? Imagine the relief felt by the owner of a smartphone with a dying battery, who, stuck in the airport without a charger, finds this electrical oasis! (c)
Q:
Newlin writes, “Passion brands breed passionate followings, very often through impassioned employees. I remember the early stories of Red Bull, when dogged sales guys would bring empty cans to bars and leave them crunched up and strewn around to make it look like the brand was popular, well before it actually was.” (c)
Q:
Take Apple, for instance; they are a brand envied by all. The firm that began by building some of the first home computers turned their customers into legions of fanatical evangelists. Indeed, brain scans show that when you put Apple “true believers” in an fMRI machine, their brains light up in the same areas normally triggered by religion.
...
Psychologist Henri Tajfel wanted to know how seemingly normal people could commit genocide, and he explored how easy or difficult it was to get subjects to identify with one group and discriminate against others. What he found was startling: with the most trivial of distinctions, he could create artificial loyalties to one group, who would then discriminate against those not in that group.
Tajfel tested subjects by having them perform a more or less meaningless task, like choosing between one of two painters or guessing a number of dots shown on a screen. Then, he assigned each subject to a group, ostensibly based on their answer. When the groups were asked to distribute real rewards, they became loyal to their own group and were stingy with the other group. Many variations on this experiment have been performed subsequently, and they have shown that people can develop group loyalty very quickly, even in the absence of real differences. Subjects even became emotionally invested in their meaningless groups, cheering for their own group’s rewards and mocking the other group.
Tajfel’s experiment led to the theory of social identity, which states that people have an inherent tendency to categorize themselves into groups. They then base their identity, at least in part, on their group affiliations, and build boundaries to keep other groups separate.
...
Jumping back to Apple, look how they have leveraged an “us versus them” approach for decades. Their “1984” commercial certainly drew a sharp distinction between the lone, attractive, athletic young woman and the lines of brainwashed drones.
A year later, Apple’s creepy and somewhat depressing “Lemmings” commercial continued to push people into one of two camps; they again portrayed Windows (PC) users as mindless, in this case as blindfolded businesspeople functioning like suicidal rodents following each other off a cliff. (c)
Q:
The Etsy Approach
Although Etsy, the phenomenal web success story in the arts and crafts market, wouldn’t seem to have much in common with a megabrand like Apple, founder Rob Kalin has emulated Steve Jobs in at least one way. Etsy’s key “customers” are actually the thousands of artists who choose to sell their wares on Etsy, and Kalin has appealed to this group by positioning himself on their side against big business.
Even as Etsy itself turns into a huge enterprise, Kalin calls himself not CEO but crafter in chief and talks about “the big companies that all us small businesses are teaming up against.” This rhetoric seems laughable for a company that has raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, but so far it seems to be working. It’s us (Etsy and the artists) against them (the suits and big business). (c)
Q:
Seth Godin and his tribes!
Q:
A test involving the believability of political falsehoods found that asking undecided voters to write their age on a card nearly doubled the percentage who thought John McCain was senile. Similarly, voters who indicated their race on a card were more than twice as likely to believe that Barack Obama was a socialist.
Undecided subjects gave the “Obama is a socialist” a mere 25 percent probability of being true, a number that jumped to 62 percent when they were asked to record their race.(c)
Q:
Researchers asked people to study a job candidate by looking at a resume placed on a clipboard. Each subject received either a light clipboard or a heavy one. The people given the heavy clipboards judged the applicants to have a more serious interest in the position than did the group that received the light clipboard. (c)
Q:
Song and Schwarz attribute the difference to cognitive fluency—in essence, how easy it is for us to process and digest information.
They performed a similar experiment involving a sushi recipe. Subjects who saw the instructions in estimated that preparation would take 5.6 minutes, while those who read the directions in , a more complicated font, expected it to take 9.3 minutes. (c)
Q:
Use Complex Fonts and Big Words to Enhance Your Product
There’s a lesson here for all kinds of businesses: complicated fonts and difficult text make things seem harder. If you want to convince customers that your product involves tedious steps to make or that great skill is required to deliver the service you provide, slow the reader down with a harder-to-read font and big words. (c)
Q:
A Princeton study compared student retention of course material presented in both simple fonts and more complex fonts and found that retention was significantly better for the complex font. (c)
Q:
A face in your ad will attract attention, but be sure the face is looking at what you want the viewer to see—your headline, a product image, or whatever is key. Viewers will examine the face, and then subconsciously be drawn to what the eyes appear to be looking at. Try it with pictures of adults, too. Instead of a smiling model staring out of the page, position him so that he is looking at your most important content! (c)
Q:
One South African bank trying to boost its loan business did just that. They mailed 50,000 customers a loan offer and used several variations in the direct mail package. ... For me, at least, the most startling finding was that for male customers, including a photo of a female instead of a male on the mailing piece increased response rate by the same amount as a 4.5 percent drop in the loan interest rate. Female customers, meanwhile, were mostly unaffected by the gender of the photo. ...
The second takeaway from this research is that marketers should never assume they know what is going to work; testing different offers, different presentations, and even a crazy idea or two is the only way to know what will really make an offer take off.(c)
Q:
The researchers ran a series of tests. They asked subjects to reflect on how the United States came into being. Half of the subjects were asked to reflect on what their world would be like if the country hadn’t come into being. (This is called counterfactual reflection.) The other half were told to think about what their world is like because the country did come into existence (factual reflection). The subjects told to imagine the “what if the country hadn’t come into existence” scenario demonstrated higher levels of patriotism in subsequent testing than those who reflected on their actual situation.
And it’s not just patriotism that can be stirred by imagining alternative scenarios—it works for businesses, too. A similar test that had subjects reflect on the origins of a company showed a significant boost in positive feelings among those who thought about the counterfactual condition, that is, the differences in the world or their own lives had the company not been created. (c)
Q:
One of the most interesting findings was that the mere illusion of progress caused people to buy coffee more frequently. The experimenters issued two different cards: empty cards with 10 spots to stamp and cards with 12 blanks of which two were prestamped. In both cases, 10 stamps were required to earn the free coffee. Despite the identical number of stamps needed, the group that started with apparent progress on their card bought coffee more frequently than the empty-card group. (c)
Q:
Natural Mind Readers (c)
Q:
Markita’s strategy was simple. When she knocked on a door, she would first ask for a $30,000 donation to the Girl Scouts. Naturally, she had no takers on that request. But then she’d ask if they would at least buy a box of Girl Scout cookies, and just about everyone would. (c)
April 8, 2012
I'll try to keep this short and as robust as possible.
If you're new to Neuromarketing and it's concepts then you will find this book very helpful. very helpful indeed. As you make your way through the pages this book you get the strong sense that roger is a very well read man in this field, that he definitely knows a great deal about this stuff. so you feel confident to trust his intelligence on this matter. As you begin to read this you will find that you have many "wow, i didn't know that" moments. it's quite exhilarating. you really feel like you're getting some good stuff you'v never herd about before
now with that being said, i have to talk about the negative in this book. as you can tell by the title, he is explaining 100 ways you can market in the neuromarketing sense. and alot of these findings are not really fact, they are studies and observations and who's to say that these studies have any major value, the sample size of these studies may not be large enough. nevertheless it is interesting and i think it's something that we as business owners should check out. but i would say most of these little trinkets are nothing truly robust, instead they are just little ideas that may "tip the scale" in your favour. all in all i think everyone should give this a read, you may just be missing out. and if you never learnt anything about neuromarketing then you are most assuredly missing out
Feel free to email me at moneymavericks92@gmail.com
If you're new to Neuromarketing and it's concepts then you will find this book very helpful. very helpful indeed. As you make your way through the pages this book you get the strong sense that roger is a very well read man in this field, that he definitely knows a great deal about this stuff. so you feel confident to trust his intelligence on this matter. As you begin to read this you will find that you have many "wow, i didn't know that" moments. it's quite exhilarating. you really feel like you're getting some good stuff you'v never herd about before
now with that being said, i have to talk about the negative in this book. as you can tell by the title, he is explaining 100 ways you can market in the neuromarketing sense. and alot of these findings are not really fact, they are studies and observations and who's to say that these studies have any major value, the sample size of these studies may not be large enough. nevertheless it is interesting and i think it's something that we as business owners should check out. but i would say most of these little trinkets are nothing truly robust, instead they are just little ideas that may "tip the scale" in your favour. all in all i think everyone should give this a read, you may just be missing out. and if you never learnt anything about neuromarketing then you are most assuredly missing out
Feel free to email me at moneymavericks92@gmail.com
January 18, 2012
The style of this book is basically identical to "Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive" by Goldstein and Cialdini.
He gives the bottom line of a particular research study, then demonstrates how marketers can use that research to make their offers more persuasive.
As a data-driven marketer, I find this style to be very practical, useful, and immediately actionable.
He gives the bottom line of a particular research study, then demonstrates how marketers can use that research to make their offers more persuasive.
As a data-driven marketer, I find this style to be very practical, useful, and immediately actionable.
August 27, 2015
The essential thought of this book is Neuromarketing yet the writer call it has "More intelligent Marketing". Proof from more than 150 exploration studies, clarifying in a reasonable, down to earth and brief way how each of these outcomes were picked up by seeing how the customers brain functions and the way it can be exploited keeping in mind the end goal to raise deals and create associations by having better advertisements, better Products and fulfilled clients.
Things I favored from this book:
* How to minimize the customer’s pain of paying.
* How to change the attitude of negative reviewers into loyal customers.
* How should the price be presented so as to have a greater impact on the buying decision.
* As a Businessman - Unconventional marketing strategies that will help us in increasing the sales, with little or no investment at all.
* As a Consumer - How to make decisions and what drives us to buy a product or service.
Things I favored from this book:
* How to minimize the customer’s pain of paying.
* How to change the attitude of negative reviewers into loyal customers.
* How should the price be presented so as to have a greater impact on the buying decision.
* As a Businessman - Unconventional marketing strategies that will help us in increasing the sales, with little or no investment at all.
* As a Consumer - How to make decisions and what drives us to buy a product or service.
November 4, 2014
Easy reading, lots of examples and takeaways that are usable and make you think. Very cool read even if you don't work in marketing.
January 7, 2020
Πολύ χρήσιμο βιβλίο για την επιρροή που μπορεί να ασκηθεί στο ανθρώπινο μυαλό από εξωτερικά ερεθίσματα ή από τρόπους επικοινωνίας. Εξαιρετική δουλειά στη συλλογή πληροφοριών, στην τυποποίηση και καταλογοποίησή τους, ένα σχεδόν υποχρεωτικό εγχειρίδιο σε όσους έρχονται σε επαφή με κόσμο με σκοπό της πωλήσεις, αλλά και για την ενημέρωση μας.
September 19, 2023
One aspect where the book falls short is in keeping up with the ever-evolving landscape of neuromarketing. It was published a few years ago and the field has seen rapid advancements since then. I mean even when you read a philosophical book from ancient times you can still feel its permanence in the modern world. In marketing, however, it is almost impossible to keep up with the innocence and writing a long-lasting work. So, some of the studies and examples mentioned may no longer be current, which limits the book's relevance to today's marketing landscape. Still, you can get a lot of points in terms of the customers' emotional consuming styles. Readers should consider supplementing their knowledge with more recent research and resources.
January 27, 2020
This is a nice summary of many experiments and this is what the author states. Your will get a good intro in the world of marketing and buying decisions.
November 17, 2019
Re-read. Nice and concise, full of practical insights.
October 12, 2024
My review is based on a Blinkist summary of the book so is really a review of this summary. Nevertheless, I’ve found the Blinkist summaries to be remarkably good in terms of extracting the gems from the whole book. And I’ve extracted a few of these gems from the summary itself as below:
Purchases themselves can activate the brain’s pain centre. In an experiment, researchers could accurately predict whether or not the subject would buy an item or keep the cash just by looking at his or her brain scans and seeing how much pain they were feeling.
It’s not just the amount of money we part with that’s important for the brain’s pain centre, but also the context. For instance, losing 75 cents to a vending machine can be far more aggravating than spending thousands on a car.
If you want to sell to even the most miserly tightwads, you’ll need to minimize the pain they feel when they buy......You should make the price seem like a bargain, or at least appear fair.....If you’re selling a $ 120 annual membership to your gym, you can make this amount seem smaller by selling it for “only $ 10 per month” or “33 cents per day.”.....Similarly, appealing to important needs over unnecessary pleasures is a particularly good strategy.
Tightwads were 26 percent less likely than the spendthrifts to buy a massage for pleasure, but when the massage was described as relieving back pain, tightwads were only 9 percent less likely to buy it.
Captivate all the senses, especially smell.
Appealing only to your potential customers’ rationality is not enough–you also need to pull the right emotional strings.......Singapore Airlines is a good example: uniforms, grooming, etc.......They also all wear the same perfume, which is likewise used in their hot towels and other services.....Their mission to make every sensory element appealing has consistently put Singapore Airlines at the top of travellers' preference...Smell is the most important for high sales.
Customers evaluated identical Nike shoes, one in an unscented room and another in a room with a floral scent. Astoundingly, 84 percent of participants in the scented room rated the shoes as superior.....According to Lindstrom [ another author] 75 percent of our emotional reactions are generated by smell.......Simply changing a shampoo's fragrance was enough to make buyers think that it foamed better, rinsed out more easily and left their hair glossier!
Ask yourself: Does my business smell like it should?
Putting a face on your ad will attract attention. But a baby's face will attract even more!
We really are wired to respond to baby faces, and even baby-like characteristics in adults.......Apparently, men prefer females with baby-like features. Likewise, women, depending on their stage of ovulation, may prefer more masculine or baby-like faces.
When someone in an ad is looking at something, we look at it too..........if the baby face is looking at something else-your headline, a product image, key information, etc.-then that's where the viewer will direct their attention........By using pictures of people, you can motivate your viewers to actually spend time reading that snazzy copy you've crafted,
One way to boost loyalty is to draw people's attention to other possible circumstances.
Drawing attention to disadvantageous alternatives to their current life-whether it's the company they work for or a product they're thinking of buying-actually increases people's loyalty to their current situation.....In an experiment, a counterfactual imagining of the world without the US-was more influential than a factual reflection.......If you get a customer to imagine her relationship with another company, she will better appreciate her relationship with your company, and feel encouraged to remain loyal.
Important for you to reward your loyal customers, because rewarding loyal customers is beneficial to you too......One of the best kinds is the old-fashioned punch card system....If you keep your customers continually engaged and loyal, you won't have to spend more on marketing to attract new customers.
If you want to generate more sales, speak into the customer's right ear .... Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University Gabriele d'Annunzio in Italy found that humans prefer information spoken into our right ear, and that requests spoken into the right ear are more likely to be successful.
In the ultimatum game, whereby two subjects are given a sum of money.......One subject decides how to split the money between them, and the second can either accept the split or reject it. But there's a catch: If the split is rejected, then both people walk away with nothing. Most of the time people will reject an offer they feel is unfair.......A twist to this game, whereby the subjects talked to one another before playing. This little bit of small talk caused fair offers to rise by 83 percent, and only 5 percent of games post-small talk resulted in failure........A little schmoozing goes a long way to build mutual respect and trust, and increases the likelihood of reaching a mutually satisfactory deal.
The hippocampus, a small component in our brains, predicts what will happen next. It does this by automatically recalling a sequence of events in response to a single cue. And when the unexpected comes, we react.....You can do it with surprising words... even Shakespeare used it!....He would take, for instance, the noun "God," and turn it into a verb with a phrase like "he godded me" (meaning, he treated me like God)....But you don't have to use words. Surprising images and designs work just as well......For example, if you run a coffee shop, why not tell your customers to "coffee it up" rather than simply saying "time for coffee" to get them thinking?
The right words-or rather, the wrong ones-can tap into your customers' emotions and hold their attention long enough for you to convey your message. The kicker? It won't cost you a dime.
Final summary
We like to think that our purchasing decisions are formed through intellect and rationality. But this just isn't true. Rather, whether we buy or don't buy is determined just as much by our senses, emotions and unconscious mind.
Actionable advice: Bundle your products. If you're having a hard time closing the deal, try putting your products together in a bundle. Because customers can't easily calculate the value of each component, they can't easily evaluate the fairness of the deal. Think about it: Can you calculate the worth of the components of your car? The leather seats, sunroof, air conditioning, etc.?
My overall take on the book. I found it quite fascinating. More or less delivers what it promises....unlike a lot of books in this genre. I wasn’t aware that the power of smell was so effective in marketing. Although, I’m well aware that the smell of fresh bread baking in a house that’s up for sale, is meant to prove persuasive and conjure up homey feelings. It does seem a bit like a used car salesman’s handbook. All that was missing was the salesman’s question: “What can I do that would make you buy this car right now?” I’m not sure that I really want to become a slick, huckster salesman. But maybe one can still apply all these techniques as just making things easier for the customer......whilst well aware that they are drawing on psychological findings.
Four stars from me.
Purchases themselves can activate the brain’s pain centre. In an experiment, researchers could accurately predict whether or not the subject would buy an item or keep the cash just by looking at his or her brain scans and seeing how much pain they were feeling.
It’s not just the amount of money we part with that’s important for the brain’s pain centre, but also the context. For instance, losing 75 cents to a vending machine can be far more aggravating than spending thousands on a car.
If you want to sell to even the most miserly tightwads, you’ll need to minimize the pain they feel when they buy......You should make the price seem like a bargain, or at least appear fair.....If you’re selling a $ 120 annual membership to your gym, you can make this amount seem smaller by selling it for “only $ 10 per month” or “33 cents per day.”.....Similarly, appealing to important needs over unnecessary pleasures is a particularly good strategy.
Tightwads were 26 percent less likely than the spendthrifts to buy a massage for pleasure, but when the massage was described as relieving back pain, tightwads were only 9 percent less likely to buy it.
Captivate all the senses, especially smell.
Appealing only to your potential customers’ rationality is not enough–you also need to pull the right emotional strings.......Singapore Airlines is a good example: uniforms, grooming, etc.......They also all wear the same perfume, which is likewise used in their hot towels and other services.....Their mission to make every sensory element appealing has consistently put Singapore Airlines at the top of travellers' preference...Smell is the most important for high sales.
Customers evaluated identical Nike shoes, one in an unscented room and another in a room with a floral scent. Astoundingly, 84 percent of participants in the scented room rated the shoes as superior.....According to Lindstrom [ another author] 75 percent of our emotional reactions are generated by smell.......Simply changing a shampoo's fragrance was enough to make buyers think that it foamed better, rinsed out more easily and left their hair glossier!
Ask yourself: Does my business smell like it should?
Putting a face on your ad will attract attention. But a baby's face will attract even more!
We really are wired to respond to baby faces, and even baby-like characteristics in adults.......Apparently, men prefer females with baby-like features. Likewise, women, depending on their stage of ovulation, may prefer more masculine or baby-like faces.
When someone in an ad is looking at something, we look at it too..........if the baby face is looking at something else-your headline, a product image, key information, etc.-then that's where the viewer will direct their attention........By using pictures of people, you can motivate your viewers to actually spend time reading that snazzy copy you've crafted,
One way to boost loyalty is to draw people's attention to other possible circumstances.
Drawing attention to disadvantageous alternatives to their current life-whether it's the company they work for or a product they're thinking of buying-actually increases people's loyalty to their current situation.....In an experiment, a counterfactual imagining of the world without the US-was more influential than a factual reflection.......If you get a customer to imagine her relationship with another company, she will better appreciate her relationship with your company, and feel encouraged to remain loyal.
Important for you to reward your loyal customers, because rewarding loyal customers is beneficial to you too......One of the best kinds is the old-fashioned punch card system....If you keep your customers continually engaged and loyal, you won't have to spend more on marketing to attract new customers.
If you want to generate more sales, speak into the customer's right ear .... Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University Gabriele d'Annunzio in Italy found that humans prefer information spoken into our right ear, and that requests spoken into the right ear are more likely to be successful.
In the ultimatum game, whereby two subjects are given a sum of money.......One subject decides how to split the money between them, and the second can either accept the split or reject it. But there's a catch: If the split is rejected, then both people walk away with nothing. Most of the time people will reject an offer they feel is unfair.......A twist to this game, whereby the subjects talked to one another before playing. This little bit of small talk caused fair offers to rise by 83 percent, and only 5 percent of games post-small talk resulted in failure........A little schmoozing goes a long way to build mutual respect and trust, and increases the likelihood of reaching a mutually satisfactory deal.
The hippocampus, a small component in our brains, predicts what will happen next. It does this by automatically recalling a sequence of events in response to a single cue. And when the unexpected comes, we react.....You can do it with surprising words... even Shakespeare used it!....He would take, for instance, the noun "God," and turn it into a verb with a phrase like "he godded me" (meaning, he treated me like God)....But you don't have to use words. Surprising images and designs work just as well......For example, if you run a coffee shop, why not tell your customers to "coffee it up" rather than simply saying "time for coffee" to get them thinking?
The right words-or rather, the wrong ones-can tap into your customers' emotions and hold their attention long enough for you to convey your message. The kicker? It won't cost you a dime.
Final summary
We like to think that our purchasing decisions are formed through intellect and rationality. But this just isn't true. Rather, whether we buy or don't buy is determined just as much by our senses, emotions and unconscious mind.
Actionable advice: Bundle your products. If you're having a hard time closing the deal, try putting your products together in a bundle. Because customers can't easily calculate the value of each component, they can't easily evaluate the fairness of the deal. Think about it: Can you calculate the worth of the components of your car? The leather seats, sunroof, air conditioning, etc.?
My overall take on the book. I found it quite fascinating. More or less delivers what it promises....unlike a lot of books in this genre. I wasn’t aware that the power of smell was so effective in marketing. Although, I’m well aware that the smell of fresh bread baking in a house that’s up for sale, is meant to prove persuasive and conjure up homey feelings. It does seem a bit like a used car salesman’s handbook. All that was missing was the salesman’s question: “What can I do that would make you buy this car right now?” I’m not sure that I really want to become a slick, huckster salesman. But maybe one can still apply all these techniques as just making things easier for the customer......whilst well aware that they are drawing on psychological findings.
Four stars from me.
March 16, 2021
O neuromarketing é uma área que me fascina imenso, especialmente porque combina duas grandes áreas do meu interesse — neurociência e marketing —, mas também porque sinto que, para mim, funcionou como uma via de transição, já que passei da atuação clínica e investigação na área de neurologia para o marketing. É um mundo em que me sinto muito confortável.
O Brainfluence surgiu como recomendação e referência de um outro livro que li e, embora no universo do marketing já o possamos considerar um livro datado (com dez anos), foi importante para mim no sentido em que conceptualizou ideias e perceções empíricas de forma sustentada e científica.
Nesta edição, Roger Dooley explora de que forma é que determinadas estratégias, palavras, imagens ou caracteres operam no nosso cérebro e influenciam ou até determinam uma decisão. O marketing pode não ser uma ciência exata mas o comportamento humano é muito previsível e, quando estudado, podemos retirar insights muito interessantes para antecipar qual será a reação do consumidor a um produto, serviço ou campanha.
Foi uma leitura muito interessante e rica, que me preparou para navegar em estudos e conteúdos mais recentes. É um livro técnico mas, tendo em conta que somos todos um produto ou um consumidor, acho que vale a pena a leitura para percecionarem, de uma forma objetiva, as diferentes abordagens que influenciam as vossas escolhas no quotidiano (mais vezes do que imaginam).
O Brainfluence surgiu como recomendação e referência de um outro livro que li e, embora no universo do marketing já o possamos considerar um livro datado (com dez anos), foi importante para mim no sentido em que conceptualizou ideias e perceções empíricas de forma sustentada e científica.
Nesta edição, Roger Dooley explora de que forma é que determinadas estratégias, palavras, imagens ou caracteres operam no nosso cérebro e influenciam ou até determinam uma decisão. O marketing pode não ser uma ciência exata mas o comportamento humano é muito previsível e, quando estudado, podemos retirar insights muito interessantes para antecipar qual será a reação do consumidor a um produto, serviço ou campanha.
Foi uma leitura muito interessante e rica, que me preparou para navegar em estudos e conteúdos mais recentes. É um livro técnico mas, tendo em conta que somos todos um produto ou um consumidor, acho que vale a pena a leitura para percecionarem, de uma forma objetiva, as diferentes abordagens que influenciam as vossas escolhas no quotidiano (mais vezes do que imaginam).
August 8, 2023
Reading this book made me see advertisements and businesses in a completely new way. Although the book may be targeted towards business owners or marketers, it is also a great read for customers. It shares practical marketing tactics in short sections rather than going into depth and detail on the science behind it, while still mentioning some studies and facts. From reading this book, I have started to notice different tactics used by businesses around me that I never would have noticed before (ex. the strategy of appealing to all five senses to indirectly shape brand image). The book may be aimed to help businesses save money while having effective marketing, but I believe it has also helped me save money as a consumer.
March 19, 2015
A practical compilation of tools, tips and things you can do to improve the way you market to people. Brief and to the point.
September 16, 2017
Practical and didatical as a reciep of cake, Perfect book, worth every page.
May 18, 2018
Critical book for sales and retailers, marketers & advertisers and just about anyone who has an interest in human behaviour.
October 31, 2018
A very enjoyable and insightful book!
April 24, 2019
Very good and simple explanation of marketing strategies with the use of psycho logy
July 16, 2014
Read This Book - Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely
The Branded Mind, Eric du Pleiss
Free, Chris Anderson
Blink, Malcom Gladwell
Bundling minimizes pain - buyer cannot directly correlate an individual expense to product. this works amazingly well in MTG trading. I get better trades when I give a "rough estimate" on a group of cards.
Sushi - "Every bite I take seems to have a price tag on it".
Why do people love to pre-pay for things? It mutes the pain of repeated use ( even if repeated use would be cheaper) Avoid multiple pain points
Showing buyers visual cues to money induces self-maximizing behavior.
Careful mixing self-max and empathy cues "Save Money" is self-max. "On gifts for Mothers Day" is an empathic appeal. Mismatch
Use of decimal places and currency symbols in ad material: use the symbol as a visual cue, decimal places and the symbol both remind user that they're looking at a price, not just any old number.
Price Anchoring - Context, even seemly unrelated context, has an influence on price.
Dan Ariely experiment proved, essentially, that seeing your ad copy with arbitrarily high numbers will increase the user's willingness to pay a higher price.
New products without a good price reference are easily under-priced.
People scanned under fMRI while drinking a bottle of wine; those told it cost more registered more happiness on the fMRI. People who paid more for an energy drink solved puzzles more quickly than those who bought it at a discount. People enjoy products more when they pay more for the product.
Higher levels of precision in a number leads to a much tighter range of mental bracketing. 20 vs 19 or 19.99 vs 19.50. Implied lack of precision (lazy pricing) makes customers question.
Offering an intentionally inferior product at a similar or slightly lower price will increase sales of the original product "Bonus 20% more" shaving cream next to the non-bonus of the same brand.
Rome Vs Paris Vacation Choice = 50/50
Rome (W Breakfast) vs Rome (W/O Breakfast) vs Paris
There is no basis for comparing Paris, but it's clear that between Rome choices, the winner is "with breakfast", and thus the buyer is confident that they're getting an "acceptably good" deal.
Realtors like to set up tours of multiple properties, starting with the worst, to set the stage for the most desirable.
Adding a very expensive product makes the original product look like a reasonable compromise to the internal negotiating mechanism
Choice Fatigue - decisions are a depletable and renewable resource and excessive decision-making burns this resource out.
Avoid similar choices - make the difference between the options very clear and eliminate options that are too similar to others.
Olfactory Memory Training - Using scent, sight, sound and taste hooks to link an idea in your brain. Magic cards have "new card smell" which players of all ages know and love. You can use multiple olfactory cues to lock an idea into your brain or that of others.
Environmental Scenting - Hollister does this with their stores, as does Abercrombie. It is highly effective. This could be used in game stores and conventions to cause people to spend more money and enjoy it more.
Nespresso - 60% of the sensory experience of espresso comes from the coffee shop environment. Launched an entire new sales channel (upscale cafes) to address the perceived sensory gap in the "home coffee environment".
Push alerts with a custom sound for QS Trader Tools
using scents to anchor - "hack" memory and mood, spray a fragrance when you're studying, and then again right before an exam.
Neurological Iconic Signature - the "snap crackle pop" of your product. For magic cards, it could be the snapping of cards, crinkle of packs, scent of new cards, etc.
brands are forms of self identification
Neurons that fire together wire together. -- Carla Shatz
Consistent experience with your brand will forge an inseparable link
Bypassed commercials have a similar but diminished impact to watching them in real-time
Familiarity breeds likability in milliseconds
Keep your brand visible even if no one is paying attention
passionate brands inspire evangalism, loyalists are disappointed if friends fail to follow advice.
Before Red Bull was popular, their staff would bring empty cans and leave them strewn about at local bars to give the appearance of being consumed in mass quantities.
Humans have an inherent tendency to group and categorize themselves and other things. Ads that focus on this are Mac vs PC, Pepsi vs Coke
Compare people (users) not products. Appeal to the "Who Am I?" or somehow, "Our customers are better"
People want the ability to connect with each other, not companies. Make your customers feel like a group.
paper / print marketing causes more emotional processing.
Create superb and vivid images. Think of the care that goes into a mcdonalds burger photoshoot
heavier paper stock creates a more "serious" impression.
Font simplicity translates into perceived difficulty or duration of the text. Simple fonts spur action.
Use complex fonts and big words to enhance your product and make it seem like great skill was required to craft it.
Make the reader's brain work just a little harder to read and it will retain the information more easily. Boost recall with complex fonts.
Baby pictures draw the eye.
In advertising, we will look at what other people (in the ad) are looking at.
Inclusion of an attractive woman spurred an increase in action (and self-max behavior) in males and no change in females. Bikini models caused men to make worse financial decisions, and decisions with short-term outcomes for a quicker deal. Immediate gratification. Arousal => bad decisions
Photos increase empathy
the shaky foundations and gritty roots of startup culture cause employees to speak more positively about their firm. makes the company seem more personable. stories about how the company almost died are powerful. "Imagine trading with someone who has this when you do not"
Closer perceived goal => greater effort to reach. 2 / 12 vs 0 / 10
The amount and timeliness of feedback from entrepreneurs was a key factor in VC trust in their portfolio companies. Quality time adds up and matters.
"You can trust us to do the job for you" - placed at the end of a mechanic's ad, increased trust scores buy 33%. Tell people to trust you, and show them you trust them.
People are more likely to act cooperatively when they've communicated before the game or decision
handshakes -> primal release of oxytocin. If a new person seems similar to a person we've trusted in the past, the brain releases oxytocin flagging the new person as "Safe".
Right Ear Selling - right ear is better for processing spoken info and requests made are more likely to be successful. Dinner seating - The key sales communicator should sit to the right of the prospect
exposure to smiling and angry faces on a millisecond level dramatically modify the price someone is willing to pay for a product jason should put this concept on his new landing page
Confidence trumps demonstrated success. Simple explanations of complex topics get more followers than expert-level explanations.
Jim Cramer never makes waffling, alternative scenario, "hold" claims. He's either Right or Wrong. QS needs to focus on making strong calls.
Make a small request to prime a large request; same concept as a yes ladder in sales. Can prime buyers with a newsletter to generate familiarity and get your foot in the door
Flattery works, even when it's known to be insincere. Appealing to a tribe is a great way to flatter the masses.
Serving warm beverages at an event increases the judgments of people on each other
Don't allow your customers multi-task when you need their attention; remove all sidebars and anything not essential nav from sales pages
People snap to attention at "NEW"
bullet points on a slide distract from the speaker
altitude effect : the perception (or presence) of altitude makes people more generous and cooperative
baby photo makes wallets 5x more likely to be returned when lost
Introduce a larger number to a process and then introduce a much smaller number, it will bracket well
Unexpected word at the end of a familiar phrase gets attention - Make like a tree and fuck off.
People are willing to spend net more money when they think they're getting a good deal.
mis-using words intentionally and shifting parts of speech (noun to verb) is effective at getting attention
1% versus 1 out of 100, the firm numbers imply real people.
Offer something, anything, free with your product.
NEW products activate the brain's novelty circuit and release dopamine.
Proper use of adjectives increases revenue. Think about menu items "ham" versus "lean, hardwood-smoked country ham".
Types of adjectives - Vivid, Sensory, Emotional, Specific, Branded
Avoid adjectives in your call to action, instructions, and wherever quick and easy comprehension is critical
"They laughed when I sat down at the piano…"
tell a vivid story, "How Trader Tools rescued my FNM"
A good testimonial story is worth 100 statistics
Give buyers a simple reason to buy a complex product.
The TT site needs to have content that updates randomly and frequently (market prices, trends…) so users can get "another dopamine hit"
Show price-conscious buyers why the price is fair ($120 annually is only 33 cents a day!)
remind users what prices are "low"
emphasize hedonic value and utility.
brains are not wired to evaluate probability of reward as much as size of reward
the presence of a positive event is more important than the magnitude; "surprise in the box"
men use purchasing as a way to "show off " when romantically primed. women use altruism in public settings
Use simple copy for marketing to men; excessive verbiage will get in the way of the message
Exploit the peacock effect with male buyers - give them the ability to demonstrate status - "Are you able to sign off on this yourself?" Link to a concrete action. "If you trade at least $12 of Magic cards each month"
Attractive female photos shorten male time horizons - can this be used to hack motivation?
an angry customer made happy is worth 10 contented customers. any chance to redirect intense emotion is a chance to make an evangelist
Don't be afraid to apologize to the customer if you're actually wrong.
people make more connections with things they can touch - in MTG trading, hand the other guy your cards, remove them from sleeves, etc. to signal a transfer in ownership even before the deal is closed. ask them what decks they're going to play the card(s) in, help them imagine ownership
make a buying process difficult if you want to cultivate loyalty and commitment
Credibility before Claims - don't try to build cred after you've told someone something outlandish. prime them with credibility first
the brain is more likely to retain supporting information once it's made a decision or learned something new, less likely to retain conflicting info. Test your site's first impression.
The Golden Mean - 1.618 - use this ratio to lay out rectangular elements
exploit scarcity - only X tickets left at this price! and be specific
consider a system that interacts with the customer like their own 'personal trading card analyst'
The Branded Mind, Eric du Pleiss
Free, Chris Anderson
Blink, Malcom Gladwell
Bundling minimizes pain - buyer cannot directly correlate an individual expense to product. this works amazingly well in MTG trading. I get better trades when I give a "rough estimate" on a group of cards.
Sushi - "Every bite I take seems to have a price tag on it".
Why do people love to pre-pay for things? It mutes the pain of repeated use ( even if repeated use would be cheaper) Avoid multiple pain points
Showing buyers visual cues to money induces self-maximizing behavior.
Careful mixing self-max and empathy cues "Save Money" is self-max. "On gifts for Mothers Day" is an empathic appeal. Mismatch
Use of decimal places and currency symbols in ad material: use the symbol as a visual cue, decimal places and the symbol both remind user that they're looking at a price, not just any old number.
Price Anchoring - Context, even seemly unrelated context, has an influence on price.
Dan Ariely experiment proved, essentially, that seeing your ad copy with arbitrarily high numbers will increase the user's willingness to pay a higher price.
New products without a good price reference are easily under-priced.
People scanned under fMRI while drinking a bottle of wine; those told it cost more registered more happiness on the fMRI. People who paid more for an energy drink solved puzzles more quickly than those who bought it at a discount. People enjoy products more when they pay more for the product.
Higher levels of precision in a number leads to a much tighter range of mental bracketing. 20 vs 19 or 19.99 vs 19.50. Implied lack of precision (lazy pricing) makes customers question.
Offering an intentionally inferior product at a similar or slightly lower price will increase sales of the original product "Bonus 20% more" shaving cream next to the non-bonus of the same brand.
Rome Vs Paris Vacation Choice = 50/50
Rome (W Breakfast) vs Rome (W/O Breakfast) vs Paris
There is no basis for comparing Paris, but it's clear that between Rome choices, the winner is "with breakfast", and thus the buyer is confident that they're getting an "acceptably good" deal.
Realtors like to set up tours of multiple properties, starting with the worst, to set the stage for the most desirable.
Adding a very expensive product makes the original product look like a reasonable compromise to the internal negotiating mechanism
Choice Fatigue - decisions are a depletable and renewable resource and excessive decision-making burns this resource out.
Avoid similar choices - make the difference between the options very clear and eliminate options that are too similar to others.
Olfactory Memory Training - Using scent, sight, sound and taste hooks to link an idea in your brain. Magic cards have "new card smell" which players of all ages know and love. You can use multiple olfactory cues to lock an idea into your brain or that of others.
Environmental Scenting - Hollister does this with their stores, as does Abercrombie. It is highly effective. This could be used in game stores and conventions to cause people to spend more money and enjoy it more.
Nespresso - 60% of the sensory experience of espresso comes from the coffee shop environment. Launched an entire new sales channel (upscale cafes) to address the perceived sensory gap in the "home coffee environment".
Push alerts with a custom sound for QS Trader Tools
using scents to anchor - "hack" memory and mood, spray a fragrance when you're studying, and then again right before an exam.
Neurological Iconic Signature - the "snap crackle pop" of your product. For magic cards, it could be the snapping of cards, crinkle of packs, scent of new cards, etc.
brands are forms of self identification
Neurons that fire together wire together. -- Carla Shatz
Consistent experience with your brand will forge an inseparable link
Bypassed commercials have a similar but diminished impact to watching them in real-time
Familiarity breeds likability in milliseconds
Keep your brand visible even if no one is paying attention
passionate brands inspire evangalism, loyalists are disappointed if friends fail to follow advice.
Before Red Bull was popular, their staff would bring empty cans and leave them strewn about at local bars to give the appearance of being consumed in mass quantities.
Humans have an inherent tendency to group and categorize themselves and other things. Ads that focus on this are Mac vs PC, Pepsi vs Coke
Compare people (users) not products. Appeal to the "Who Am I?" or somehow, "Our customers are better"
People want the ability to connect with each other, not companies. Make your customers feel like a group.
paper / print marketing causes more emotional processing.
Create superb and vivid images. Think of the care that goes into a mcdonalds burger photoshoot
heavier paper stock creates a more "serious" impression.
Font simplicity translates into perceived difficulty or duration of the text. Simple fonts spur action.
Use complex fonts and big words to enhance your product and make it seem like great skill was required to craft it.
Make the reader's brain work just a little harder to read and it will retain the information more easily. Boost recall with complex fonts.
Baby pictures draw the eye.
In advertising, we will look at what other people (in the ad) are looking at.
Inclusion of an attractive woman spurred an increase in action (and self-max behavior) in males and no change in females. Bikini models caused men to make worse financial decisions, and decisions with short-term outcomes for a quicker deal. Immediate gratification. Arousal => bad decisions
Photos increase empathy
the shaky foundations and gritty roots of startup culture cause employees to speak more positively about their firm. makes the company seem more personable. stories about how the company almost died are powerful. "Imagine trading with someone who has this when you do not"
Closer perceived goal => greater effort to reach. 2 / 12 vs 0 / 10
The amount and timeliness of feedback from entrepreneurs was a key factor in VC trust in their portfolio companies. Quality time adds up and matters.
"You can trust us to do the job for you" - placed at the end of a mechanic's ad, increased trust scores buy 33%. Tell people to trust you, and show them you trust them.
People are more likely to act cooperatively when they've communicated before the game or decision
handshakes -> primal release of oxytocin. If a new person seems similar to a person we've trusted in the past, the brain releases oxytocin flagging the new person as "Safe".
Right Ear Selling - right ear is better for processing spoken info and requests made are more likely to be successful. Dinner seating - The key sales communicator should sit to the right of the prospect
exposure to smiling and angry faces on a millisecond level dramatically modify the price someone is willing to pay for a product jason should put this concept on his new landing page
Confidence trumps demonstrated success. Simple explanations of complex topics get more followers than expert-level explanations.
Jim Cramer never makes waffling, alternative scenario, "hold" claims. He's either Right or Wrong. QS needs to focus on making strong calls.
Make a small request to prime a large request; same concept as a yes ladder in sales. Can prime buyers with a newsletter to generate familiarity and get your foot in the door
Flattery works, even when it's known to be insincere. Appealing to a tribe is a great way to flatter the masses.
Serving warm beverages at an event increases the judgments of people on each other
Don't allow your customers multi-task when you need their attention; remove all sidebars and anything not essential nav from sales pages
People snap to attention at "NEW"
bullet points on a slide distract from the speaker
altitude effect : the perception (or presence) of altitude makes people more generous and cooperative
baby photo makes wallets 5x more likely to be returned when lost
Introduce a larger number to a process and then introduce a much smaller number, it will bracket well
Unexpected word at the end of a familiar phrase gets attention - Make like a tree and fuck off.
People are willing to spend net more money when they think they're getting a good deal.
mis-using words intentionally and shifting parts of speech (noun to verb) is effective at getting attention
1% versus 1 out of 100, the firm numbers imply real people.
Offer something, anything, free with your product.
NEW products activate the brain's novelty circuit and release dopamine.
Proper use of adjectives increases revenue. Think about menu items "ham" versus "lean, hardwood-smoked country ham".
Types of adjectives - Vivid, Sensory, Emotional, Specific, Branded
Avoid adjectives in your call to action, instructions, and wherever quick and easy comprehension is critical
"They laughed when I sat down at the piano…"
tell a vivid story, "How Trader Tools rescued my FNM"
A good testimonial story is worth 100 statistics
Give buyers a simple reason to buy a complex product.
The TT site needs to have content that updates randomly and frequently (market prices, trends…) so users can get "another dopamine hit"
Show price-conscious buyers why the price is fair ($120 annually is only 33 cents a day!)
remind users what prices are "low"
emphasize hedonic value and utility.
brains are not wired to evaluate probability of reward as much as size of reward
the presence of a positive event is more important than the magnitude; "surprise in the box"
men use purchasing as a way to "show off " when romantically primed. women use altruism in public settings
Use simple copy for marketing to men; excessive verbiage will get in the way of the message
Exploit the peacock effect with male buyers - give them the ability to demonstrate status - "Are you able to sign off on this yourself?" Link to a concrete action. "If you trade at least $12 of Magic cards each month"
Attractive female photos shorten male time horizons - can this be used to hack motivation?
an angry customer made happy is worth 10 contented customers. any chance to redirect intense emotion is a chance to make an evangelist
Don't be afraid to apologize to the customer if you're actually wrong.
people make more connections with things they can touch - in MTG trading, hand the other guy your cards, remove them from sleeves, etc. to signal a transfer in ownership even before the deal is closed. ask them what decks they're going to play the card(s) in, help them imagine ownership
make a buying process difficult if you want to cultivate loyalty and commitment
Credibility before Claims - don't try to build cred after you've told someone something outlandish. prime them with credibility first
the brain is more likely to retain supporting information once it's made a decision or learned something new, less likely to retain conflicting info. Test your site's first impression.
The Golden Mean - 1.618 - use this ratio to lay out rectangular elements
exploit scarcity - only X tickets left at this price! and be specific
consider a system that interacts with the customer like their own 'personal trading card analyst'
September 30, 2017
About the book: Brainfluence explores the unconscious thoughts and motivations that influence our decision-making process, and offers tips and tricks on how savvy marketers can exploit them. By understanding the mechanisms that cause us to buy (or not buy), you can increase your sales while keeping your customers happier.
About the author: Richard Dooley is an entrepreneur and marketer, and founder of the marketing consultancy Dooley Direct LLC. He is also the author of the blog Neuromarketing.
My highlights:
Reduce the feeling of pain during the buying experience and even tightwads will buy.
You should make the price seem like a bargain, or at least appear fair. If you’re selling a $120 annual membership to your gym, you can make this amount seem smaller by selling it for “only $10 per month” or “33 cents per day.”Similarly, appealing to important needs over unnecessary pleasures is a particularly good strategy for selling to tightwads.
Offered massages, both in terms of a massage for pleasure and also as a way to relieve back pain
Captivate all the senses, especially smell.
When making your sales pitch, it goes without saying that appealing only to your potential customers’ rationality is not enough – you also need to pull the right emotional strings. However, you’ll have even greater success if you appeal to a more visceral part of the human experience: this means you have to sell to all five senses.
Of all the senses, smell is the most important for high sales.
Want to make your ad more effective? Put a baby on it.
Putting a face on your ad will attract attention. But a baby’s face will attract even more!
If the baby face is looking at us, then we’ll look right back at the baby face. But if the baby face is looking at something else – your headline, a product image, key information, etc. – then that’s where the viewer will direct their attention.
Generate more sales by building and rewarding the loyalty of customers.
One way to boost loyalty is to draw people’s attention to other possible circumstances. In other words, drawing attention to disadvantageous alternatives to their current life – whether it’s the company they work for or a product they’re thinking of buying – actually increases people’s loyalty to their current situation.
If you want to generate more sales, speak into the customer’s right ear when schmoozing.
Even if you’re just chatting about the kids, golf or the weather, a little schmoozing goes a long way to build mutual respect and trust, and increases the likelihood of reaching a mutually satisfactory deal.After you’ve schmoozed your potential client, you can make the most of your conversation by speaking into their right ear. Seriously.
Sell more by surprising your customer’s brains.
You don’t have to use words. Surprising images and designs work just as well.
The right words – or rather, the wrong ones – can tap into your customers’ emotions and hold their attention long enough for you to convey your message.
Final summary
We like to think that our purchasing decisions are formed through intellect and rationality. But this just isn’t true. Rather, whether we buy or don’t buy is determined just as much by our senses, emotions and unconscious mind.
About the author: Richard Dooley is an entrepreneur and marketer, and founder of the marketing consultancy Dooley Direct LLC. He is also the author of the blog Neuromarketing.
My highlights:
Reduce the feeling of pain during the buying experience and even tightwads will buy.
You should make the price seem like a bargain, or at least appear fair. If you’re selling a $120 annual membership to your gym, you can make this amount seem smaller by selling it for “only $10 per month” or “33 cents per day.”Similarly, appealing to important needs over unnecessary pleasures is a particularly good strategy for selling to tightwads.
Offered massages, both in terms of a massage for pleasure and also as a way to relieve back pain
Captivate all the senses, especially smell.
When making your sales pitch, it goes without saying that appealing only to your potential customers’ rationality is not enough – you also need to pull the right emotional strings. However, you’ll have even greater success if you appeal to a more visceral part of the human experience: this means you have to sell to all five senses.
Of all the senses, smell is the most important for high sales.
Want to make your ad more effective? Put a baby on it.
Putting a face on your ad will attract attention. But a baby’s face will attract even more!
If the baby face is looking at us, then we’ll look right back at the baby face. But if the baby face is looking at something else – your headline, a product image, key information, etc. – then that’s where the viewer will direct their attention.
Generate more sales by building and rewarding the loyalty of customers.
One way to boost loyalty is to draw people’s attention to other possible circumstances. In other words, drawing attention to disadvantageous alternatives to their current life – whether it’s the company they work for or a product they’re thinking of buying – actually increases people’s loyalty to their current situation.
If you want to generate more sales, speak into the customer’s right ear when schmoozing.
Even if you’re just chatting about the kids, golf or the weather, a little schmoozing goes a long way to build mutual respect and trust, and increases the likelihood of reaching a mutually satisfactory deal.After you’ve schmoozed your potential client, you can make the most of your conversation by speaking into their right ear. Seriously.
Sell more by surprising your customer’s brains.
You don’t have to use words. Surprising images and designs work just as well.
The right words – or rather, the wrong ones – can tap into your customers’ emotions and hold their attention long enough for you to convey your message.
Final summary
We like to think that our purchasing decisions are formed through intellect and rationality. But this just isn’t true. Rather, whether we buy or don’t buy is determined just as much by our senses, emotions and unconscious mind.
April 18, 2020
(The English review is placed beneath Russian one)
Хочу сразу сказать, что никакого нейромаркетинга никогда не существовало и не существует (это вам подтвердит любой маркетолог работающий в соответствующем отделе любой крупной фирмы). Все подобные словечки придумываются только с целью что-то продать. Если посмотреть более авторитетных авторов или те же книги по MBA, то вы никаких нейромаркетологов там не встретите.
На самом деле автор описывает обычные эксперименты, взятые из книг по психологии в целом и социальной психологии - в частности. Всё, что пишет автор, это сокращённый вариант из академических учебников и поп-книг по психологии. Ничего нового или чего-то, что было бы проведено исключительно маркетологами, в книге нет. Всё, о чём пишет автор, было создано исключительно психологами (автор почти постоянно будет упоминать таких психологов как Ариели, Чалдини и пр.). Поэтому я настоятельно рекомендую читать если не первоисточники и если не академические учебники по психологии/социальной психологии, то хотя бы популярные книги по данной теме, а не довольствоваться огрызками, подобно данной книги. Уж кто-кто, а маркетологи должны читать книги по психологии с такой же обязательностью как они читают книги по менеджменту или по рекламе. Ибо тут важно видеть картину в целом, а не краткий пересказ темы на 4-5 строчек (именно столько автор часто посвящает одному эксперименту). Не правильно поняв, не правильно интерпретировав вопрос или эксперимент, можно в дальнейшем иметь ошибочное представление, а это в маркетинге – не допустимо. Поэтому ещё раз: читайте нормальные, не супер сжатые книги по психологии.
Итак, автор предлагает 100, даже не знаю, как это правильно назвать, советов или наблюдений. В общем, эта сотня должна помочь в бизнесе в целом и маркетинге - в частности. Да, всё что описывает автор, имеет место, и все эксперименты действительно были проведены (кстати, по сути, автор описывает старый материал). Это советы из серии, ставьте ценник, который оканчивается на цифру 9 или большой выбор одного продукта может вести к снижению продаж, а не наоборот (парадокс выбора). Однако важным является тут то, что большая часть экспериментов происходила в искусственных условиях, а не в реальных, а бизнес или акт совершения покупки потребителем у нас существуют как раз только в реальных условиях. Поэтому может произойти известная (для всех специалистов) проблема, когда эксперимент, выйдя в реальную жизнь, показывает совсем другие результаты. Автор данной книги не слишком это афиширует.
Второй момент заключается в том, что все подобные нововведения нужно тестировать для каждой новой ситуации. Если у одних что-то сработало, это вовсе не значит, что существует 100% гарантия, что это же сработает и у вас. Поэтому все профессиональные маркетологи всегда повторяли: всё тестируйте, проверяйте все нововведения. Автор также об этом не говорит, что странно. Обычно каждый профессиональный маркетолог об этом знает и помнит.
Третий момент заключается в том, что чуть ли не половину описываемых советов можно заменить практикой бенчмаркинга. Если самые успешные компании используют определённый стиль текста, то и вам следует взять данный стиль на заметку. У крупных компаний большие ресурсы и большие возможности для проведения собственных разнообразных исследований, но у них нет защиты от того, что более мелкие конкуренты (прямые и нет) могут воспользоваться их находками. Это обычная практика и данное решение намного эффективней половины всего того, что описывает книга.
I want to say straight away that no neuromarketing has ever existed and does not exist (this will be confirmed by any marketer working in the appropriate department of any large company). All such words are invented only to sell something. If you look at more authoritative authors or books on MBA, you will not find any neuromarketers there.
In fact, the author describes usual experiments taken from books on psychology in general and social psychology in particular. All the author writes is an abridged version of academic textbooks and pop books on psychology. Nothing new or something that would be carried out exclusively by marketers is in the book. Everything the author writes about was created exclusively by psychologists (the author will almost always mention such psychologists as Dan Ariely, Robert B. Cialdini, etc.). Therefore I strongly recommend reading if not primary sources and if not academic textbooks on psychology/social psychology then at least popular books on the given theme, and not to be satisfied with splinters, like this book. Marketers should read books on psychology with the same obligation as they read books on management or advertising. For here it is important to see the picture as a whole, rather than a brief paraphrase of the topic at 4-5 lines (that's how much the author often devotes to one experiment). Having misunderstood, misinterpreted a question or an experiment, it is possible to have an erroneous idea in the future, and this is not acceptable in marketing. Therefore, once again: read normal, not super-compressed books on psychology.
So, the author offers 100, I do not even know how to name it correctly, tips or observations. In general, this hundred should help in business in general and marketing in particular. Yes, everything that the author describes takes place, and all the experiments were carried out in reality (by the way, the author describes the old material). These are tips such as place a price tag that ends with the number 9 or a large choice of one product that may lead to a decrease in sales, not the other way around (the paradox of choice). However, what is important here is that most of the experiments took place in an artificial environment, not in a real one, whereas the business or act of buying by the consumer exists only in a real environment. Therefore, a well-known problem may occur (for all specialists), when the experiment in a real situation shows very different results. The author of this book does not say much about it.
The second point is that all such changes should be tested for each new situation. If some people have something that works, it does not mean that there is a 100% guarantee that it will work for you. That's why all professional marketers have always repeated: test everything, check all the changes. The author also does not say about it, which is strange. Usually, every professional marketer knows and remembers this.
The third point is that almost half of the described tips can be replaced by the practice of benchmarking. If the most successful companies use a certain style of text then perhaps you should also adopt this style. Large companies have great resources and opportunities to conduct their diverse research, but they have no protection against the fact that smaller competitors can take advantage of their findings. This is a common practice and is a much more effective solution than half of what the book describes.
Хочу сразу сказать, что никакого нейромаркетинга никогда не существовало и не существует (это вам подтвердит любой маркетолог работающий в соответствующем отделе любой крупной фирмы). Все подобные словечки придумываются только с целью что-то продать. Если посмотреть более авторитетных авторов или те же книги по MBA, то вы никаких нейромаркетологов там не встретите.
На самом деле автор описывает обычные эксперименты, взятые из книг по психологии в целом и социальной психологии - в частности. Всё, что пишет автор, это сокращённый вариант из академических учебников и поп-книг по психологии. Ничего нового или чего-то, что было бы проведено исключительно маркетологами, в книге нет. Всё, о чём пишет автор, было создано исключительно психологами (автор почти постоянно будет упоминать таких психологов как Ариели, Чалдини и пр.). Поэтому я настоятельно рекомендую читать если не первоисточники и если не академические учебники по психологии/социальной психологии, то хотя бы популярные книги по данной теме, а не довольствоваться огрызками, подобно данной книги. Уж кто-кто, а маркетологи должны читать книги по психологии с такой же обязательностью как они читают книги по менеджменту или по рекламе. Ибо тут важно видеть картину в целом, а не краткий пересказ темы на 4-5 строчек (именно столько автор часто посвящает одному эксперименту). Не правильно поняв, не правильно интерпретировав вопрос или эксперимент, можно в дальнейшем иметь ошибочное представление, а это в маркетинге – не допустимо. Поэтому ещё раз: читайте нормальные, не супер сжатые книги по психологии.
Итак, автор предлагает 100, даже не знаю, как это правильно назвать, советов или наблюдений. В общем, эта сотня должна помочь в бизнесе в целом и маркетинге - в частности. Да, всё что описывает автор, имеет место, и все эксперименты действительно были проведены (кстати, по сути, автор описывает старый материал). Это советы из серии, ставьте ценник, который оканчивается на цифру 9 или большой выбор одного продукта может вести к снижению продаж, а не наоборот (парадокс выбора). Однако важным является тут то, что большая часть экспериментов происходила в искусственных условиях, а не в реальных, а бизнес или акт совершения покупки потребителем у нас существуют как раз только в реальных условиях. Поэтому может произойти известная (для всех специалистов) проблема, когда эксперимент, выйдя в реальную жизнь, показывает совсем другие результаты. Автор данной книги не слишком это афиширует.
Второй момент заключается в том, что все подобные нововведения нужно тестировать для каждой новой ситуации. Если у одних что-то сработало, это вовсе не значит, что существует 100% гарантия, что это же сработает и у вас. Поэтому все профессиональные маркетологи всегда повторяли: всё тестируйте, проверяйте все нововведения. Автор также об этом не говорит, что странно. Обычно каждый профессиональный маркетолог об этом знает и помнит.
Третий момент заключается в том, что чуть ли не половину описываемых советов можно заменить практикой бенчмаркинга. Если самые успешные компании используют определённый стиль текста, то и вам следует взять данный стиль на заметку. У крупных компаний большие ресурсы и большие возможности для проведения собственных разнообразных исследований, но у них нет защиты от того, что более мелкие конкуренты (прямые и нет) могут воспользоваться их находками. Это обычная практика и данное решение намного эффективней половины всего того, что описывает книга.
I want to say straight away that no neuromarketing has ever existed and does not exist (this will be confirmed by any marketer working in the appropriate department of any large company). All such words are invented only to sell something. If you look at more authoritative authors or books on MBA, you will not find any neuromarketers there.
In fact, the author describes usual experiments taken from books on psychology in general and social psychology in particular. All the author writes is an abridged version of academic textbooks and pop books on psychology. Nothing new or something that would be carried out exclusively by marketers is in the book. Everything the author writes about was created exclusively by psychologists (the author will almost always mention such psychologists as Dan Ariely, Robert B. Cialdini, etc.). Therefore I strongly recommend reading if not primary sources and if not academic textbooks on psychology/social psychology then at least popular books on the given theme, and not to be satisfied with splinters, like this book. Marketers should read books on psychology with the same obligation as they read books on management or advertising. For here it is important to see the picture as a whole, rather than a brief paraphrase of the topic at 4-5 lines (that's how much the author often devotes to one experiment). Having misunderstood, misinterpreted a question or an experiment, it is possible to have an erroneous idea in the future, and this is not acceptable in marketing. Therefore, once again: read normal, not super-compressed books on psychology.
So, the author offers 100, I do not even know how to name it correctly, tips or observations. In general, this hundred should help in business in general and marketing in particular. Yes, everything that the author describes takes place, and all the experiments were carried out in reality (by the way, the author describes the old material). These are tips such as place a price tag that ends with the number 9 or a large choice of one product that may lead to a decrease in sales, not the other way around (the paradox of choice). However, what is important here is that most of the experiments took place in an artificial environment, not in a real one, whereas the business or act of buying by the consumer exists only in a real environment. Therefore, a well-known problem may occur (for all specialists), when the experiment in a real situation shows very different results. The author of this book does not say much about it.
The second point is that all such changes should be tested for each new situation. If some people have something that works, it does not mean that there is a 100% guarantee that it will work for you. That's why all professional marketers have always repeated: test everything, check all the changes. The author also does not say about it, which is strange. Usually, every professional marketer knows and remembers this.
The third point is that almost half of the described tips can be replaced by the practice of benchmarking. If the most successful companies use a certain style of text then perhaps you should also adopt this style. Large companies have great resources and opportunities to conduct their diverse research, but they have no protection against the fact that smaller competitors can take advantage of their findings. This is a common practice and is a much more effective solution than half of what the book describes.
October 17, 2018
Anything about us is interesting. Our brain for example.
Who do we think, how do we choose?
Understanding our brain makes a better use of it.
This book provides a better understanding of our brain applied to marketing, that means to make better ads, and to sell products better.
We may not be interested in marketing, but that's still interesting.
When I was a kid, I was told we are manipulated by ads. Of course, I didn't want to get manipulated myself, so everytime I saw an ad, in the street or on TV, I was thinking: you fool think I would want to buy this because of you?
The person told me we are manipulated subconsciously, without being aware of it. We all get bombarded with input and without knowing it, our decisions and actions are influenced by those inputs we see all days.
In a sense, it makes sense: ads producers spend millions putting them everywhere, from tv to newspapers, and now from the web to mobile App. They sound intrusive and annoying. And they sound to us that we are not that easily manipulated, so why put them?
Again, the secret relies on the "unconscious": we think we're not manipulated, but we do.
It always worked, centuries ago, and it will continue centuries ahead. It even works so well that dictators like Hitler used them as a propaganda to spread his ideas and doctrine to people.
The author defends himself: "Any marketing tool can be “evil” if the company behind it misuses it."
Who do we think, how do we choose?
Understanding our brain makes a better use of it.
This book provides a better understanding of our brain applied to marketing, that means to make better ads, and to sell products better.
We may not be interested in marketing, but that's still interesting.
When I was a kid, I was told we are manipulated by ads. Of course, I didn't want to get manipulated myself, so everytime I saw an ad, in the street or on TV, I was thinking: you fool think I would want to buy this because of you?
The person told me we are manipulated subconsciously, without being aware of it. We all get bombarded with input and without knowing it, our decisions and actions are influenced by those inputs we see all days.
In a sense, it makes sense: ads producers spend millions putting them everywhere, from tv to newspapers, and now from the web to mobile App. They sound intrusive and annoying. And they sound to us that we are not that easily manipulated, so why put them?
Again, the secret relies on the "unconscious": we think we're not manipulated, but we do.
It always worked, centuries ago, and it will continue centuries ahead. It even works so well that dictators like Hitler used them as a propaganda to spread his ideas and doctrine to people.
The author defends himself: "Any marketing tool can be “evil” if the company behind it misuses it."
December 27, 2021
Don’t Sell like a Sushi Chef! This book has 100 short paragraphs (stories) which summarizes very practical tips for marketing such as pricing, branding and promotions from in-person sales to online or offline ads. Each story has some scientific evidence of neuroscience, following key takeaways for marketers. All stories are very concise, insightful and practical. You will get some aha! moments, such as realize why the iPhone has 3 models or understand Stabucks’s strategy on appealing sensory experience at the coffee shop. You will also find many tips for building a brand with full brand experience from expressive elements such as colors, music, jingles, celebrities, fonts and symbols to conceptual elements such as taglines and product information, concepts and value propositions.
Roger Dooley was using the most modern neuroscience research in this book, but you will not find the details of the research. Otherwise, the book focused more on the practical tactics from the result of the research. Roger is the founder of Dooley Direct, a consultancy, and co-founded College Confidential, the leading college-bound website. That business was acquired by Hobsons, a unit of UK-based DMGT, where Dooley served as VP Digital Marketing after the acquisition.
If you are familiar with Roger’s popular blog of Neuromarketing or his column at Forbes, this book is a must-read for you.
Roger Dooley was using the most modern neuroscience research in this book, but you will not find the details of the research. Otherwise, the book focused more on the practical tactics from the result of the research. Roger is the founder of Dooley Direct, a consultancy, and co-founded College Confidential, the leading college-bound website. That business was acquired by Hobsons, a unit of UK-based DMGT, where Dooley served as VP Digital Marketing after the acquisition.
If you are familiar with Roger’s popular blog of Neuromarketing or his column at Forbes, this book is a must-read for you.
June 7, 2017
If behavioural economics and advertising had a love child, it would be neurological marketing strategy (aka this book).
A few years ago I read Buy•ology by Martin Lindstrom and as someone who works in advertising, I remember being fascinated by how much of an influence people's inner psychology has on purchasing decisions. (I know, I know, duh). Whereas Buy•ology did a deep dive on a few prominent neurological studies within the marketing field (two of the most notable being the Coke vs Pepsi test, and the Cigarette Packaging study), Brainfluence gives a summary of 100 top studies that show a correlation between subtle environmental trends and how they impact human perception. This book covers everything from how to use numbers to prime people to spend more money, to why a picture of a baby enacts an altruistic part of our conscious, to how opposite genders change buying behaviour, and almost everything in between.
The reason I love this book is because it gives context to humanistic occurrences we take for granted or have become numbed to. Advertising and marketing strategies shouldn't be based on guesses when there has been so much research in the field and this book is a great summary of tangible ways and brand can enhance their market saturation and awareness.
A few years ago I read Buy•ology by Martin Lindstrom and as someone who works in advertising, I remember being fascinated by how much of an influence people's inner psychology has on purchasing decisions. (I know, I know, duh). Whereas Buy•ology did a deep dive on a few prominent neurological studies within the marketing field (two of the most notable being the Coke vs Pepsi test, and the Cigarette Packaging study), Brainfluence gives a summary of 100 top studies that show a correlation between subtle environmental trends and how they impact human perception. This book covers everything from how to use numbers to prime people to spend more money, to why a picture of a baby enacts an altruistic part of our conscious, to how opposite genders change buying behaviour, and almost everything in between.
The reason I love this book is because it gives context to humanistic occurrences we take for granted or have become numbed to. Advertising and marketing strategies shouldn't be based on guesses when there has been so much research in the field and this book is a great summary of tangible ways and brand can enhance their market saturation and awareness.
August 5, 2017
Our purchase decisions are more than rational and intellectual decisions. There are hiden factors that greatly contributed to the purchase decisions; factors that most of us, buyers, are not aware of. Hence, making the purchase decisions more complicated than we think. These factors evovle around the affecting the subconscious.
In this book, there are ways that can be used to affect the buyers' decisions making them more likely buy from you.These ways can be very valuable to a businessman who wants to increase sales.
In this book, there are ways that can be used to affect the buyers' decisions making them more likely buy from you.These ways can be very valuable to a businessman who wants to increase sales.
September 2, 2018
Solid book on Neuromarketing - the science how our brains treat and associate various selling and marketing techniques.
I loved this book because it is very practical - if you are in Sales or Marketing I am sure you will find useful tips how to do things better.
The book is very easy to read, the chapters are short, but there are references to follow up (usually other books and articles that explain that particular tip).
I was happy to recognize some methods and realized why they worked even on me (as a customer).
Great practical insights, well done Mr Dooley!!!
I loved this book because it is very practical - if you are in Sales or Marketing I am sure you will find useful tips how to do things better.
The book is very easy to read, the chapters are short, but there are references to follow up (usually other books and articles that explain that particular tip).
I was happy to recognize some methods and realized why they worked even on me (as a customer).
Great practical insights, well done Mr Dooley!!!
June 8, 2019
As a marketing professional, I’ve always been in pursuit of a good read to teach me something new about my craft. This is it. Most marketing books regurgitate the same marketing tips and never expand or elaborate on why the actually work. This book dives into more of the psychology of tactics and vividly depicts examples of how and why they illicit certain behaviors and feelings. A great read for the business profession and anyone interested in learning more about how we respond to visual and verbal stimuli.
June 17, 2019
This is an excellent book. Each chapter is short, concise, without waste, there are no unnecessary words. In each chapter, the author simply goes straight to the point in a very clear and easy way, saying what should be said. And what makes this book excellent is that each chapter has many (serious) references to what it says, yes, we all know that the subject of the book is not an exact science, but in reality it has a great research work behind it. Nothing has been invented. I recommend it completely.
February 20, 2020
Brilliant book!
I finished this book in 6-hours. This book has greatly combined Marketing and Science together and got some real value to deliver to the reader. Every business person or marketing guy will learn something new yet valuable lesson in every chapter of this book.
The one thing that made this book so good while a little weak is the length of every chapter. Every chapter is like a conclusion, so you might miss some details, but it's not a big deal, you still get a huge impact from this book.
I finished this book in 6-hours. This book has greatly combined Marketing and Science together and got some real value to deliver to the reader. Every business person or marketing guy will learn something new yet valuable lesson in every chapter of this book.
The one thing that made this book so good while a little weak is the length of every chapter. Every chapter is like a conclusion, so you might miss some details, but it's not a big deal, you still get a huge impact from this book.
April 1, 2024
As the book was written in 2012, there’s a few things that won’t make sense in today’s marketing anymore and a lot of things that have progressed and won’t apply today.
Something that threw me off a bit was the concept that using women as models is encouraged as it would encourage men to buy. Not a big fan of this idea in 2024 (of course it applies in certain markets such as lenjerie, that’s a given).
However, for someone who’s just starting in marketing and wants to get into the consumers mindset, it’s a great read.
Something that threw me off a bit was the concept that using women as models is encouraged as it would encourage men to buy. Not a big fan of this idea in 2024 (of course it applies in certain markets such as lenjerie, that’s a given).
However, for someone who’s just starting in marketing and wants to get into the consumers mindset, it’s a great read.
December 12, 2019
neuroscience in marketing? It has to come from psychology. otherwise, marketing to me is empty. marketing without digging deep into the reasons why we do what we do is just numbers, statistics, empty and cold. add a couple of layers of psychology, neuroscience, social psychology and we may actually get a glimpse at what makes us human, and what truly motivates us, and why we make the buying decisions we make.
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