Your brain is unique.
Your brain is universal.
Your brain is fussy.
Unique, because it forms thoughts and feelings and memories about things that you experience as an individual.
Universal, because human brains are amazingly similar in terms of physical structure and electrochemical processes. There are exceptions -- such as the fact that men's and women's brains are different in some respects, as are young children's and seniors' -- but those aside, the truth is that we are far more alike than we are dissimilar, from a neurological standpoint.
Fussy, because brains like things to be certain ways. And by the same token, they don't like (or respond as well to) certain other things.
For example: Your brain prefers to have images on the left hand side of your visual field. But it prefers to have words on the right.
Your brain really likes puzzles. But it prefers simple puzzles that take no more than 2-4 seconds to solve. And numerical or quantitative puzzles are its least favorite.
These are just three basic examples of neuroscience research findings that can offer value to marketers and content creators. By incorporating these kinds of neurological truths into the creative process at the outset, marketers and content creators can improve the possibility that their messages will gain consumers' attention, engage them emotionally and be retained in their memories.
Why are those three criteria important? Because we know -- thanks to recent advances in neuroscience -- these three factors are critical to the formation of purchase intent in the consumer's mind.
What is making neurological testing so exciting and so attractive to marketers and content creators today is that ability -- to measure, with unprecedented precision and reliability, how consumers "consume" messages; more explicitly, it shows how their brains perceive, react to and remember those messages.
Here comes the science
The science of neurological testing stems from research into diseases of the brain such as Alzheimer's and neurological conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder and ADD/ADHD. Findings from this research have given us breakthrough insights into not only how the brain functions, but which specific portions of the brain are linked to processes like attention, emotions and memory.
As a result, we can now track, at lightning speed and with extreme degrees of accuracy, the brain's response to visual, aural and tactile stimuli, and we can know when certain specific sectors of the brain are being activated as a result of those stimuli. We can measure that response to anything that someone can see or hear, touch, taste or smell.
How it works
The physical aspects of this testing involve three separate but complementary methods. First and foremost is what we describe as high-density arrays of EEG sensors. The term stands for electroencephalography -- the same sensors that are used to measure your heart rate when you have a physical exam.
We apply a cap that has up to 128 individual EEG sensors on it. Each one tracks a specific portion of the brain. We combine that process with sophisticated eye movement tracking technology so that we know exactly what the test subject is looking at as we capture his or her brain's reactions to what's on a screen. The third process is GSR, which stands for galvanic skin response. In layman's terms, this is measurement of the skin's electrical conductance.
Analyzing the volumes of data that stream from these procedures, we arrive at clear results revealing the level of attention, the degree of emotional engagement and the extent to which specific elements of stimuli were retained in memory.
Three key metrics
But it doesn't stop there. Three additional metrics can be gathered from this data: persuasion, awareness and novelty. Awareness is self-explanatory; persuasion, as noted above, is a key indicator of purchase intent and novelty is a very interesting phenomenon.
As we define the word, novelty is a measure of the extent to which a message has formed a defense within the consumer's mind against competitive messages. So, for example, if we test a car company's commercial, we can tell that client the degree to which the consumer will be predisposed to be relatively "immune" to a competitor's message. If your goal is to drive your prospects to your dealers' showrooms, you want them to be impacted as little as possible by your competitors' marketing messages and their own showrooms along the way.
Speed and efficiency
Another key advantage that neurological testing offers to marketers and content creators is its speed and efficiency. Because the human brain is so remarkably consistent from individual to individual, neurological testing is far more efficient than conventional methodologies.
A prime example is the sample size required to arrive at statistically sound results. If a traditional survey must reach 200 people in order for its findings to be statistically viable and projectable, the comparable neuromarketing test need involve only 20 subjects. So the savings in cost and time between the two disciplines can be considerable.
There are two other fundamental reasons why neuromarketing research is more precise, reliable and insightful than conventional surveys and focus groups.
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