Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [85]
So be mindful.
P.S.: If you want to continue this journey into your Buyology, log on to www.MartinLindstrom.com and step into a world—with its truths and lies—which we’ve just begun to understand.
APPENDIX
Most research experiments on the scale of those that make up Buyology involve months, if not years, of planning, discussion, and evaluation. Typically, a researcher comes up with a hypothesis, researches it, refines it, then designs a model to test it, all before finally proceeding to the actual experiment.
The studies that underlie Buyology were no different. I began with a number of hypotheses, all based on what I’d learned and observed in my two decades of helping companies build lasting brands. One hypothesis was that cigarette warning disclaimers actually encouraged smoking. Another was that product placement is largely useless. Yet another was that there exists a strong alliance between brands and ritual and religion. Then I took these hypotheses, and after doing the necessary research, thought up a way to test them, using cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques.
But of course, I lacked both the equipment and the scientific background to do this alone. That’s why I enlisted the help of two top researchers, Dr. Gemma Calvert and Professor Richard Silberstein.
Dr. Calvert, who holds a Chair in Applied Neuroimaging and is Director of the new fMRI Centre at the Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick, and co-founder of Neurosense in Oxford, spear-headed our fMRI experiments. FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanning is a safe, non-invasive technique that records and measures brain activity associated with perception, cognition, and behavior. When a task is performed, the neurons involved in the task become active, or “fire,” emitting electrical impulses. Energy in the form of oxygenated blood (a magnetic substance produced from the iron in blood) then flows to these active brain areas, changing the magnetic properties of these regions by tiny but measurable degrees. Using a large magnet (about 40,000 times greater than the earth’s magnetic field), fMRI measures these changes in the distribution of oxygenated blood during and after the task. With the help of sophisticated computer programs that analyze associated changes in the magnetic properties across the whole brain, Dr. Calvert and her team are able to pinpoint and quantify changes in brain activity in response to various stimuli with extraordinary spatial resolution (i.e., within one to two mm.) Though not without its critics, fMRI is generally considered to be one of the most accurate and reliable brain imaging tools available today.
With a staff of four full-time researchers and five part-time staff, Professor Richard Silberstein, who holds a Chair of Cognitive Neuroscience and is the CEO of Neuro-Insight, conducted the Steady State Topography (SST) portions of our experiment. SST, which Professor Silberstein developed, is a technique that uses a series of sensors to measure minute electrical signals in a dozen discrete areas of the human brain (the posterior parietal cortex, anterior cingulate gyrus, prefrontal cortex, basal forebrain, mediodorsal nucleus, amygdala, hippocampus, inferotemporal cortex, right prefrontal cortex, right parietotemporal cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex). Because the brain is specialized, with specific physical regions clearly associated with specific cognitive functions, SST offers clues as to what cognitive functions (arousal, engagement, etc.) are taking place in response to various stimuli. Because it measures these electrical signals up to thirteen times per second, SST, unlike fMRI, provides what amounts to a real-time activity log for those dozen brain regions.
Each one of the fMRI experiments in Buyology was approved by the Central Ethics Committee in the United Kingdom. First we submitted an application describing what visual stimuli we planned to show a certain number of volunteers, as well as how we planned to recruit these