The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (21 page)

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At the end of this chapter, you’ll know and be able to use the
following:

r Groundbreaking new research currently underway that shows how our brains react to or “mirror” what we see in others r Ways to engage the Mirror Neuron System of your consumers to invite them to experience your brand, product, package, message, or environment “first-hand”

The quaint little town of Parma, Italy, is justifiably famous for its weather, architecture, culture, and food. Near the center of the top of Italy’s boot, Parma is the sunny, warm home to Parmigiano reggiano cheese, Prosciutto di Parma, many medieval castles, and, of course, the University of Parma, founded in the eleventh century. I give you this little tour of a quaint Italian town, not because I am on their board of tourism (although I’d certainly like to visit), but because it provides me with the opportunity to introduce a bit of irony.

Our ironic story begins on a hot summer day in 1991, within the old stone walls of the university. Biding his time in the 1,000-year-old building sat a macaque monkey (see Figure 9.1), with an electrode implanted in his cranium, specifically in the areas that dealt with planning and carrying out movements.

The monkey was calm and happy, quite accustomed to the electrode and to the staff and assistants in the lab, who treated him like a bright and amiable friend.

It was a hot day, so the monkey lulled in his chair, daydreaming. It was a nice day for the monkey, sitting in a university that was around when the British Isles were being invaded, and America was undiscovered, helping with twentieth century research on the deepest workings of the subconscious brain.

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Figure 9.1

A macaque monkey helped with the discovery of Mirror Neurons.

Source:
Photo courtesy of Dreamstime.com Less ironically, given the day’s temperature, a lab assistant returned from his break, eating an ice cream cone. The monkey’s interest was piqued. Nothing to write home about there. But, remember, this particular monkey watching this particular ice cream cone being consumed had an electrode implanted in his cortex. As the staff member raised the ice cream to his lips,
electrical
activity in the monkey’s brain went crazy
—off the charts. That monkey, in his brain, was enjoying a delicious gelato, including all of the physical movements needed to make that happen. In concert with the ice-cream-eating staff member, the monkey’s brain signaled its arms to raise foods to its lips, to salivate, to prepare for some major primate satisfaction. It was a true

“monkey-see-monkey-do” experience, except the monkey wasn’t actually P1: OTA/XYZ

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doing anything more than watching. But to his brain—his Mirror Neurons, specifically—the monkey was in the midst of a salacious moment of pure primate gluttony. And so, by the way, was the lab assistant.

Giancomo Rizzolatti, a world-renowned scientist, was in charge of the monkey experiment happening in his laboratory. He wondered if the ice cream incident was unique, or had it actually uncovered a wonderful, previously undiscovered ability of the primate brain? So Dr. Rizzolatti did what great scientists do. He and his team developed a series of studies, recruited more monkeys, and the world’s first work on Mirror Neurons began.

To no one’s surprise, the monkeys had a similar response with peanuts.

When a monkey saw another monkey or human eat a peanut, the neurons in his brain fired as if he, too, were shelling and eating a snack. In case after case, neurons in the prefrontal cortex reacted to the perception of the actions they observed.

In 1994, Rizzolatti published his first research on the newly-discovered area of Mirror Neurons. Found in two areas of monkey brains, the premotor and parietal cortexes, these Mirror Neuron networks also have important links to the superior temporal sulcus (STS), located above the ear toward the back of the head (in monkeys and in humans). The STS helps process facial and body movements and hand actions.
Mirror Neurons
in the STS track body movement like walking and arm swinging and are dedicated to detecting biological motion, a threat, or movement that might become either. They are a subset of our motor command neurons, representing some 20 percent of these. Research on Mirror Neurons is far from complete and represents one of the most exciting areas within neuroscience. There is so much more to be learned! In the following discussion, let’s look at extending what we have learned from using the Mirror Neuron system to gain insights into the minds of consumers.

Human See, Human Do

Using a variety of brain imaging techniques, scientists went on to study Mirror Neurons in humans. Their results are remarkable, and ongoing. So by all means, stay tuned.

Basically, the Mirror Neuron theory says that when you watch someone perform an action, say washing a dish,
you automatically simulate
the action in your own brain. You have a template for dishwashing in your databanks, just as you have brain-wired templates for most things you do often. When you see someone throw a ball, your ball-throwing template is activated in the

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brain. The same thing with jumping rope, cooking a steak, and so on. What your Mirror Neurons are doing is adopting the other person’s point of view.

Neuroscientist V. Ramachandran argues that the reason we have Mirror Neurons is to help spread useful information quickly. For example, at about 100,000 years ago, humans suddenly developed the makings of culture (tool use, fire, shelter, language, Theory of Mind, and so on). Dr. Ramachandran argues that, during this time period, we also developed Mirror Neurons to help us duplicate the actions of others. Instead of learning and relearning how to build a fire, for example, several people could watch a fire being built, and, as they watched the building, their Mirror Neurons caused them to feel as if they themselves were building the fire. As a result of this ability to
jump into
another’s experience,
key, species-enhancing skills spread quickly through the culture. Spreading both horizontally (teaching an entire tribe to build fire, and having them recall the steps immediately), vertically (teaching one member of a younger generation and having that person embrace and spread the knowledge), and, ultimately, exponentially (cooking shows today practice the same principle).

Activating the Mirror Neuron system is one of the most effective ways to connect with your consumer. Show products being consumed. Celebrate the effervescent sip of water, the sip of warm coffee. Let the consumer revel in the action being performed, for example, wince with the tart pleasure of a crisp green apple. When they are in-store, those fantastic feelings of desire will be subconsciously accessed.

Following is an example of how Mirror Neurons impacted one of our own studies.

Mirror Neurons and Motor Vehicles

There are an infinite number of ways that the Mirror Neuron phenomenon discussed in this chapter can be put to work, including for fun and profit and in marketing. Those miraculous “mirrors” in our brains are capable of mimicking just about anything that we can experience in our environments.

One of my favorite examples of how we applied knowledge of that amazing capacity is work we did for an import car manufacturer. We had completed neuromarketing research studies for this company on pricing and P1: OTA/XYZ

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interior/exterior styling combinations, and they turned to us again when they were striving to increase the effectiveness of their in-showroom marketing materials.

Like many other retail businesses today, in-store video was proving to be an increasingly popular and useful marketing tool for this client. Their models ranged from sport utilities to minivans to performance-oriented sport com-pacts, but as has been true now for many decades in the automotive industry, the “sizzle” cars are what help to sell the more standard offerings. It’s called the “
halo effect,
” where the presence of a sexy sports car in the showroom serves as a magnet that can help attract prospects, who really end up buying the more practical people-mover they needed all along.

This carmaker had some beautiful footage of their particular hot model in full performance mode. The video was great to look at, and showed the vehicle off to real advantage as it traveled through scenic settings. Even if you were actually in the market for a more mundane minivan, the idea was that this presentation would capture your attention in the showroom and lend some of that sizzle to the sales process.

Except the video wasn’t holding showroom visitors’ attention long enough to have the desired result. The production values were certainly there, but the halo effect wasn’t kicking in as expected in terms of retaining shoppers in the sales arena. Conventional research hadn’t turned up any reason for this—focus group participants praised the content, which showed the car zooming here and there in alluring ways, so what was lacking?

Knowing what we know about the Mirror Neuron phenomenon, we decided to test a revised version of the video to determine if our theory about the solution was correct. We had the footage recut to incorporate scenes showing the driver actually piloting the car—swinging the steering wheel, rowing through the gears, opening the moon roof, operating the windows and sound system, and similar hands-on activities that demonstrated an actual human being fully enjoying the driving experience.

The results not only confirmed our hypothesis—
they sent the numbers
off the charts
in terms of Attention, Emotional Engagement, Memory Retention, Purchase Intent, Novelty, and Awareness. Every single one of our primary and derived NeuroMetrics showed dramatic improvements over the baseline data recorded when we tested the original footage, which had shown mostly exteriors of the car, and almost no driver interaction.

The true test was back in the showroom. The company had told us that the average amount of time spent viewing the original footage in the showroom setting had been 87 seconds. The new version held shoppers’ attention for P1: OTA/XYZ

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an average of 143 seconds. Moreover, the client reported that the video was now attracting and holding visitors’ attention far better across age and gender demographics as well.

The solution had been found by applying the Mirror Neuron effect—essentially, enabling passive observers to experience “driving” the car deep in their subconscious, while actually standing in front of a monitor in the dealer’s showroom. We had purposely incorporated enough of a variety of activities, performed by a real driver, to trigger that response—and keep the viewers’ attention long enough so that they might feel that residual glowing

“halo” as they roamed around the more practical models on offer.

The discovery of the Mirror Neuron network for brain modeling of movements and biological motions made enormous inroads in the neuroscientific and the scientific community at large. Soon, however, another bombshell was ready to fall. Scientists lately have found
strong, pervasive mirror networks
for emotions.
For example, when your friend chokes up when telling a sad story, your brain simulates a similar level of distress. You empathize with the story, precognitively and subconsciously. As Rizzolatti says, “our survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions, and emotions of others. We simulate these automatically, without logic, thinking, analyzing.”