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light up, while approximately 42 percent of people under sixty-five are exposed to tobacco smoke at home.3 Twelve times more British people have died from smoking than died in World War II. According to the American Lung Association, smoking-related diseases affect roughly 438,000 American lives a year, “including those affected indirectly, such as babies born prematurely due to prenatal maternal smoking and victims of ‘secondhand’ exposure to tobacco’s carcinogens.” The health-care costs in the United States alone? Over $167 billion a year.4 And yet cigarette companies keep coming up with innovative ways to kill us. For example, Philip Morris’s latest weapon against workplace smoking bans is Marlboro Intense, a smaller, high-tar cigarette—seven puffs worth—that can be consumed in stolen moments in between meetings, phone calls, and PowerPoint presentations.5

It makes no sense. Are smokers selectively blind to warning labels? Do they think, to a man or a woman, Yes, but I’m the exception here? Are they showing the world some giant act of bravado? Do they secretly believe they are immortal? Or do they know the health dangers and just not care?

That’s what I was hoping to use fMRI technology to find out. The thirty-two smokers in today’s study? They were among the 2,081 volunteers from America, England, Germany, Japan, and the Republic of China that I’d enlisted for the largest, most revolutionary neuromarketing experiment in history.

It was twenty-five times larger than any neuromarketing study ever before attempted. Using the most cutting-edge scientific tools available, it revealed the hidden truths behind how branding and marketing messages work on the human brain, how our truest selves react to stimuli at a level far deeper than conscious thought, and how our unconscious minds control our behavior (usually the opposite of how we think we behave). In other words, I’d set off on a quest to investigate some of the biggest puzzles and issues facing consumers, businesses, advertisers, and governments today.

For example, does product placement really work? (The answer, I found out, is a qualified no.) How powerful are brand logos? (Fragrance and sound are more potent than any logo alone.) Does subliminal advertising still take place? (Yes, and it probably influenced what you picked up at the convenience store the other day.) Is our buying behavior affected by the world’s major religions? (You bet, and increasingly so.) What effect do disclaimers and health warnings have on us? (Read on.) Does sex in advertising work (not really) and how could it possibly get more explicit than it is now? (You just watch.)

Beginning in 2004, from start to finish, our study took up nearly three years of my life, cost approximately $7 million (provided by eight multinational companies), comprised multiple experiments, and involved thousands of subjects from across the globe, as well as two hundred researchers, ten professors and doctors, and an ethics committee. And it employed two of the most sophisticated brain-scanning instruments in the world: the fMRI and an advanced version of the electroencephalograph known as the SST, short for steady-state typography, which tracks rapid brain waves in real time. The research team was overseen by Dr. Gemma Calvert, who holds the Chair in Applied Neuroimaging at the University of Warwick, En gland, and is the founder of Neurosense in Oxford, and Professor Richard Silberstein, the CEO of Neuro-Insight in Australia. And the results? Well, all I’ll say for now is that they’ll transform the way you think about how and why you buy.

MARLENE, ONE OF the smokers in the study, took her place lying flat on her back inside the fMRI. The machine made a little ticking sound as the platform rose and locked into place. Marlene looked a little hesitant—who wouldn’t?—but managed a gung-ho smile as a technician placed the protective head coil over most of her face in preparation for the first brain scan of the day.

From Marlene’s pretesting questionnaire and interview, I knew she was a recently divorced mother of