Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [73]
But when it came to Quizmania, despite their unanimously unfavorable responses, our subjects’ brains, all two hundred of them, had liked it. They might have said they hated the phony palm trees, the giant ice cream cones, the manic hostess, and the Hangman-on-speed premise, but their brains indicated otherwise.
The SST scans showed that although our subjects rated the unaired pilot program Quizmania as the show they were least likely to watch, viewers’ brains were actually more engaged when watching Quizmania than when watching The Swan, a show they had claimed to have liked, proving to me, once again, that what people say and how they really feel are often polar opposites.
In short, based on viewers’ brains’ responses to the three programs we tested that day in Los Angeles, The Swan was the least engaging, How Clean Is Your House? the most engaging, and Quizmania lay somewhere in between the two. Therefore, we concluded (with a 99 percent degree of statistical certainty) that Quizmania—if and when it ever aired—would be more successful than The Swan, but less successful than How Clean Is Your House?
And indeed, in the U.K. it was. In other words, the brain scans accurately predicted the show’s U.K. performance. And while the program now airs in Australia, Brazil, and a long list of other countries, FremantleMedia is holding off on airing the program in the United States. Based on the results of test runs, they are convinced that the show would, indeed, perform just as our brain scans predicted. But is it worth it?
Which leads me to wonder: What might have happened if neuromarketing had been around a decade or two ago? Would New Coke have ever appeared on a supermarket shelf? Would Premium smokeless tobacco have made it out of the lab? Would a single Segway or Sinclair have rolled past our windows?
I believe the answer is no. Instead, the companies would have been able to foresee that these products would fail, would have halted production, and saved hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. Which then begs the question, now that companies do have this powerful tool at their fingertips, how will they use it? I predict that soon, more and more companies (at least those who can afford it) will be trading in their pencils for SST caps. That traditional market research—questionnaires, surveys, focus groups, and so on—will gradually take on a smaller and smaller role, and neuromarketing will become the primary tool companies use to predict the success or failure of their products. And what’s more, I predict that as neuromarketing becomes more popular and more in demand, it will become cheaper, easier, and more available to companies than ever before. And in turn, it will become even more popular and more widespread.
ARE YOU AT all interested in sex? That got your attention, didn’t it? We’re about to take a look at whether sex in advertising works in seducing our interest in a product or whether it in fact backfires. From Calvin Klein to an Italian ad campaign that will make you (I hope) shudder, we’re about to put an age-old question to the test: Does sex sell?
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LET’S SPEND THE NIGHT TOGETHER
Sex in Advertising
A YOUNG WOMAN SPRAWLS across the hood of the new 1966 Ford Mustang. Surrounding her, delicate flower petals spell out the number six (in reference to both the year and the car’s six-cylinder engine). The tagline underneath? Six and the Single Girl.
A National Airlines stewardess makes come-hither eyes at readers from the pages of a glossy magazine, circa 1971. “I’m Cheryl,” reads the tagline. “Fly me.” A year later, a 23 percent increase in passengers prompts National Airlines to release a series of follow-up ads in which a pack of beautiful stewardesses vows, “I’m going to fly you like you’ve never been flown before.”
The year is 1977. A seductive Scandinavian blonde bites down suggestively on a pearl necklace before purring, “For men, nothing takes it off like Noxzema medicated shave.” As the man in her life vigorously shaves his beard, the blonde adds, “Take it off.