An exploration of neuromarketing, psychology and simply brilliant quotes from Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide, Roger Dooley's Brainfluence, and Marketing Lindstrom's Buy-Ology and Brandwashed. Also a couple quotes from Douglas Rushkoff's Coercion. For more on the future of marketing see: http://www.strategylab.ca/.

1. 33 Lessons in Neuromarketing
Presented by: Jeph Maystruck

2. From these books

3. The physicist Niels Bohr once defined an
expert as "a person who has made all the
mistakes that can be made in a very narrow
field." From the perspective of the brain,
Bohr was absolutely right. Expertise is
simply the wisdom that emerges from
cellular error. Mistakes aren't things to be
discouraged. On the contrary, they should be
cultivated and carefully investigated.
-How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

4. Baba Shiv, a neuroeconomist at Stanford,
supplied a group of people with Sobe
Adrenaline Rush, an "energy" drink that was
supposed to make them feel more alert and
energetic.
Shivfound that people who'd paid discounted
prices consistently solved about 30 percent
fewer puzzles than the people who'd paid full
price for the drinks. The subjects were
convinced that the stuff on sale was much
less potent, even though all the drinks were
identical. "We ran the study again and again,
not sure if what we got had happened by
chance or fluke," Shiv says. "But every time
we ran it, we got the same results."
-How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

5. Mark Jung-Beeman, the scientist who studies
the neuroscience of insight, has shown that
people in good moods are significantly better
at solving hard problems that require insight
than people who are cranky and depressed.
(Happy people solve nearly 20 percent more
word puzzles than unhappy people.)
-How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

6. meet the
morgensons

8. 17 microphones
35 hidden cameras
15hidden crew members

9. ―Whether it’s shoes, jewelry, barbecue
tools, or sports equipment, there’s
nothing quite as persuasive as observing
someone we respect or admire using a
brand or product.‖
-Martin Lindstrom

10. ―The results proved beyond any doubt
whatsoever that marketers, advertisers,
and big business have nothing at all
compared to the influence weconsumers
have on one another.‖
-Martin Lindstrom

11. Joe Camel and Mickey Mouse

12. Nearly all America’s six-year-olds could
identify Joe Camel, who was just as
familiar to them as
Mickey Mouse.
-Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

13. ―Recent studies have shown that by the time
they are 36 months old, American children
recognize an average of 100 brand logos.‖
-Dr. Allen Kanner, child psychologist at the
Wright Institute in Berkley, California.

14. What’s one of the most powerful
advertising tactics used?

15. Fear

16. 1. Pinpoint a problem consumers
don’t know they have
2. Create anxiety around the problem
3. Sell the cure

17. Remember these commercials….

19. Thanks to fear-mongering,
alarm sales rose by an unprecedented
10%
in a single year, a year during which
crime rates actually decreased.
-Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

20. What have marketers done to the
supermarket?

22. For years now supermarkets have been sprinkling
select vegetables with regular dew drops of
water – a trend that came out of
Denmark. Why? Like ice displays, those
sprinkler-like drops serve as a symbolic, albeit a
bogus one, of freshness and purity. (Ironically,
that same dewy mist makes the vegetables rot
more quickly than they would otherwise.)
-Brandwashedby Martin Lindstrom

23. Yup, they’ve tested to see what colour of
bananas we tend to buy more of.
-Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

24. Believe it or not, my research found that
while it may look fresh, the average apple
you see in the supermarket is actually
fourteen months old.
-Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

25. Does Music effect your shopping patterns?

26. In department stores ―Muzak‖ with a slow
tempo makes shoppers shop for 18%
longer and make 17% more purchases
-Coercion: Why We Listen to What ―They‖ Say
by Douglas Rushkoff

27. In grocery stores, shoppers make 38% more
purchases while listening to slow tempo
―muzak‖
On the contrary, fast food restaurants play
faster ―muzak‖ to encourage a faster rate
of chewing.
-Coercion: Why We Listen to What ―They‖ Say
by Douglas Rushkoff

28. In one experiment, I asked two groups of
consumers to try two different versions of
the toothpaste (Aquafresh)-one regular
version and one that had been dyed just one
color. Sure enough, the group using the
paste with three colors not only reported that
the toothpaste worked 73 percent better, they
even claimed they believed that their teeth
looked whiter.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

29. One Cornell study looked at several
common restaurant price display
techniques: $12.00 or 12 or twelve
dollars. The researchers expected that the
written/scripted prices would perform
best, but they found that the guests with
the simple numeral prices (those without
dollar signs or decimals) spent
significantly more than the other two
groups did. -Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

30. Scents can affect behavior and consumer
perceptions. One experiment showed that
nightclub patrons danced longer when the
venue was scented with orange,
peppermint, and seawater. When
surveyed, the patrons of the scented
clubs reported they had a better time and
liked the music more.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

31. A test in a casino found that people
gambled 45 percent more money in a
slot machine when a pleasant scent
was introduced into the area.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

32. Another test found that changing a
shampoo’s fragrance but no other
performance characteristics caused
testers to find that it foamed better, rinsed
out more easily, and left their hair
glossier.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

33. 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.)
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

34. They chose a wineshop for this experiment, since
wines have identifiable origins, and proceeded to
play French and German background music on
alternating days.
The results were startling:
the French and German wines each outsold the
other by several multiples on the days the
matching music was playing.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

35. 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.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

36. An experiment in Edinburgh began by planting
hundreds of wallets on city streets. Almost half
were mailed back to the ―owner.‖ Most wallets
contained one of four possible photos: a smiling
baby, a cute puppy, a happy family, or an elderly
couple. Other wallets had no photo at all, and
some had charity papers inside.3 The results
were quite startling. Fully 88 percent of the
wallets with the baby photo were returned. The
next best rate was the puppy photo, at 53
percent. A family photo netted a 48 percent return
rate, while an elderly couple picture scored only
28 percent. Just one out of seven of the no-photo
wallets was returned. According to the principal
researcher, Dr. Richard Wiseman, the high rate of
return for the wallets that included a baby photo
reflects an evolution-driven instinct to help
vulnerable infants. Humans, in order to protect
future generations, are wired to help babies, even
the progeny of others.

37. An interesting study by German researcher Armin Falk showed
that a bigger gift amplifies the reciprocity effect. Falk’s study
involved mailing 10,000 requests for charitable donations,
divided into three groups. One group received only the letter
requesting the donation, one group received the letter plus a
free postcard and envelope (the small gift), and the last
group received a package containing four postcards and
envelopes (the large gift). The idea that sending a gift along
with a charitable donation request boosts response is well
established, and the experiment bore this out: the small gift
boosted donation totals by 17 percent. The recipients of the
large gift, though, were even more generous: they donated 75
percent more than the no-gift group. This experiment is
significant in a couple of ways. First, it tested reciprocity in
the real world, not in an academic setting with undergrads
used as inexpensive lab rats. Second, it demonstrated that
the reciprocity effect is proportional to the perceived size of
the gift or favor, even when the variations are relatively
minor.

38. If you want to convey a positive message,
use real numbers, not percentages. If you
are describing a benefit of your product or
service, expressing it in terms of absolute
numbers will maximize its impact.
Good: 90 percent of our customers rate our
service as ―excellent‖
Better: 9 out of 10 customers rate our
service as ―excellent‖
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

39. A Harris survey showed that 18 percent of
those who posted a negative review of the
merchant and received a reply ultimately
became loyal customers and bought
more.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

40. Researchers at Carleton University were
stunned to find that showing users an
image of a website for a mere 50
milliseconds—that’s just a twentieth of a
second—was sufficient for them to decide
how appealing a website was.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

41. In addition, nearly 70 percent of those
consumers receiving replies reversed the
negative content either by deleting the
bad review or posting a second positive
one. Considering the power of word of
mouth—in particular, negative word of
mouth—that’s a stunning
accomplishment.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

42. John Bargh of Yale University, found that the
temperature of a beverage makes a
difference in how one person judges
another person. An experiment gave
subjects cups of either iced or hot coffee
and then told them to rate someone else’s
personality solely from a file of information
about that person. Which group do you
think scored the person higher for
―warmth‖? The hot coffee group, of course!
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

43. Researchers found that placing the
following statement at the end of an ad for
an auto service firm caused their trust
scores to jump as much as 33 percent!
―You can trust us
to do the job for you.‖
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

44. One small but interesting study measured
sales of a liquor product in a bar. Patrons
who had the aroma of that beverage
pumped into the surrounding air while a
visual ad could be seen purchased nearly
twice as much of the product as those
who saw the ad alone.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

45. 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.
-Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom

46. 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.
-Brainfluence by Roger Dooley

47. What do companies know about you
based on yourcredit card?

48. In 2002 a Canadian Tire executive analyzed credit card
data from the previous year and found out that;
―people who bought carbon monoxide monitors
practically never missed payments, and neither did
people who bought those little soft pads that keep
furniture legs from scratching up your floor.

49. But….
―if a person bought a chrome-skull car
accessory, he was pretty likely to miss his
bill eventually.‖

50. Colin Powell made a number of mistakes in
the run-up to the Iraq war, but his advice
to his intelligence officers was
psychologically astute: "Tell me what you
know," he told his advisers. "Then tell me
what you don't know, and only then can
you tell me what you think. Always keep
those three separated."
-How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

51. Tweet Me:
@JephMaystruck
JephMaystruck@gmail.com
www.strategylab.ca