NORWALK, CT – After making fast and well-documented inroads into advertising, imaging, and messaging, the concept of neuromarketing has entered the province of customer strategy. Companies have moved past brain wave tests and visual field heat mapping to predict whether the pretty girl reaching for the beer will increase purchase intent. Now those tests are being used to predict customer-centric attitudes, such as trust, loyalty, and advocacy.

In other words, neuromarketing, the science of measuring how the brain reacts to sensory stimulus, is helping to give marketers a more scientific look at the creative side of their craft. Just as marketing is about the three-pronged approach of product, advertising, and customer strategy, neuromarketing will follow that same pattern.

"By understanding the way a customer reacts biologically to your product and brand, you understand more about the customer," says Andrew Pohlmann, managing partner for neuromarketing company NeuroFocus. Consequently, he believes customer strategy is a logical next step for this discipline. "You understand all the touchpoints at a much different level than you would by simple surveys. If you understand the underlying reactions within the brain, it's easier to push the envelope with loyalty programs or even simple ads. And it's also easier to understand when you should dial things back."

The brain's reaction to trust
NeuroFocus measures respondents' brain activity through a baseball cap fitted with 64 sensors that calculates brain activity 2,000 times per second. Whenever a person wearing the cap watches an ad or examines a package, the sensors pick up the precise moments their minds become active and the reactions are broken down to reveal how memorable the advert was, how engaged the viewer was and how likely they are to make a purchase. Nielsen and NeuroFocus recently completed a study on what brainwave monitoring and measurement revealed about how consumers really think and feel about financial service institutions. It tracked EEGs for more than a dozen consumers as they reacted to reading marketing materials, viewing ads, and listening to marketing messages.

The study found that some messaging actually produced feelings of "trust." Consumers had a positive neurological reaction to the company's images and messages through seven dimensions: form, function, feelings, values, benefits, metaphors, and extensions. Example: If a consumer senses relevant benefits such as low interest rates, the brain registers that as a trusted value of the brand. Feelings of stability, solidity, partnership, empathy, and understanding scored highest among comparable positioning statements that emphasized experience, understanding, compassion, and empathy with the consumer. Statements that focused on sacrifices and hard work by the banks were shunned.

Frito-Lay gets inside customers' heads
This evolution into customer strategy also has huge implications for how brands can target specific customer segments. Frito-Lay, for example, used neuro-research to identify a deeper reaction to complex ad messages and packaging among its female snack product customers. It found that some women are wired to feel guiltier than men, and snack products could trigger that guilt.

So, as reported in The New York Times in March, Frito-Lay used its neuromarketing research to address the "guilty women" product segment. It also found through testing that this guilt could be somewhat alleviated. For example, the company could alter the packaging for healthy snack brands such as Sun Chips by toning it down from bright yellow to brown, and highlighting the healthy ingredients. The new packaging, with new websites and "webisodes" showing women considering their snack purchases in-store, hit in late March. No data on results has been released yet.

Neuromarketing also has potential to improve the customer experience in contact centers as well. Agents trained to use key phrases can mollify an angry customer and use messages that resonate with the goals of specific outbound campaigns. If the bank that learns customers trust the benefits of low interest rates on credit cards, contact center agents can be given scripts that key on phrases that communicate that value. They can also avoid phrases that have been found to produce negative reactions such as "well Mr. Smith, you know we work very hard here to look out for your best interest." Neuroresearch has shown consumers don't care about that.

Other developments show the potential of neuromarketing for studying customer engagement. Microsoft's presentation at the recent Advertising Research Foundation conference focused around "neurometrics." Pavan Lee, mobile advertising senior research manager, told attendees that customer engagement metrics could be built around brain wave measurement. She presented a study that showed positive brain wave activity was equivalent for online video and TV commercials, suggesting that engagement for both was roughly the same.

The push for neuromarketing insights shows that marketers hunger to truly "understand" customers. And it represents an intriguing blend of both the art and science of marketing.

Copyright 2009 Peppers & Rogers Group. All rights reserved. From http://www.1to1media.com. By John Gaffney.
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