There’s a Science to Buy-ology
Henrietta Forsyth
Published Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Issue 89 / Volume 89
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Simon Estrada / Daily Nexus
What made me grab coffee at Starbucks over Java Jones in I.V.? Why did I spend so much money on a top at Abercrombie & Fitch on State Street when exactly the same item was cheaper next door? What exactly is the science behind what drives us to buy?
For decades, advertisers, marketers and consumers have held common assumptions about what drives us to buy. Yet many of these beliefs have been shattered by one of the world’s most respected marketing gurus: Martin Lindstrom. In his latest book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Lindstrom delves deep into what he calls our buyology (“the multitude of subconscious forces that motivate us to buy”). Someone once said to me “You’ve got to think outside the box to get in the box.” This guy is in the box.
Lindstrom’s exploration was bound to be an eye-opener. Three years, $7 million and teams of men in white coats were spent making it. He used the very latest in neuroimaging technology (fMRI and SST scans) to peer inside the brains of over 2,000 people worldwide. Lindstrom claims that advertisers today know little more than they did a century ago when department store pioneer John Wanamaker proclaimed, “Half my advertising budget is wasted. Trouble is, I don’t know which half.” We learn that eight out of 10 new products launched in the United States are destined to fail in the first three months and in Japan, product launches fail 9.7 times out of 10.
So what are some of Lindstrom’s mind-boggling, brain-teasing revelations? I learned that I, for one, am an unknowing victim of Abercrombie & Fitch’s calculated neuromarketing ploys: the blown-up posters of half-naked models (and the young, sexy, hip crowd that work there or are hired to hang out by the doors), the nightclub atmosphere inside and the distinctive, cloying A&F fragrance that can be smelled a block away. Apparently, my mirror and dopamine neurons (located in the frontal cortex of the brain) are fired by these mind-games and I find myself spending money on merchandise in a subconscious effort to be equally popular and desirable. The cheaper top next door did not tickle my brain, even though it was exactly the same.
Ritual affects us all more than we think (do you check Facebook and your e-mail before starting work?) and both marketing and advertising companies know it. Rituals help our brains form emotional connections with brands and products, to adopt a sense of security, comfort and belonging in an increasingly stressful and uncertain world. Take the Corona-and-lime-wedge ritual. Did it come from Latino culture to enhance taste? A Mesoamerican custom designed to combat germs? Lindstrom cites the ritual as dating back to 1981 when a Californian bartender made a bet with his buddy that he could start a trend.
Buyology reviews the colossal product-placement industry and highlights billion-dollar mistakes. Coca-cola, Cingular Wireless and Ford Motor Company all disperse a mega $26 million a year to feature their brands in the popular TV show American Idol. Cingular and Coca-Cola both pop up repeatedly throughout: the furniture-design emulates a Coca-cola bottle with its rounded contours, contestants enter and exit a room painted an explicitly Coca-cola red and the judges sip cups of the iconic drink. Ford’s advertising assault is featured only off-stage during the 30-second ad spots, and this is where Lindstrom’s brain scanning reveals the billion-dollar blunder. The SST scans tested on four-hundred volunteers found that brands are far more memorable if they play an integral role in the storyline (like Cingular and Coca-cola) since the commercials (Ford) feature in our brains as “just” an ad, making our brains highly likely to filter the featured product.
All this is not to say marketers and advertisers are dropping old methods and running to the science lab. Quantitative and qualitative research, as well as the traditional marketing of products, is still high on the agenda despite their semi-reliability and mixed success rate. Still, the potential of neuroscience to have the final word on the human mind is clear. You may look at things in a different light as you cycle through I.V. in the future. I’ll see you at Starbucks.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Advertising not Enterprise
Android is about advertising, not the enterprise
Even though three companies hosted the launch event and the software is backed by a consortium, the introduction of the first Android phone made it very clear that Android is about one company: Google.
The advertising Model is pushing Google in order to dominate the market.
Around the world, there are 3.5 billion mobile-phone users. (Just a fraction as many have computers.)
Google and T-Mobile appear to be mainly hoping that mass-market consumers will buy the phone, even though smartphones have traditionally appealed most to business users
Google's success in the market could benefit all mobile users, be they consumers or business users, in the form of lower prices. Onlookers have speculated that Google could help subsidize Android phones using revenue earned from advertising to the devices. The G1 will cost $179 when it becomes available in late October in the U.S.
Even though three companies hosted the launch event and the software is backed by a consortium, the introduction of the first Android phone made it very clear that Android is about one company: Google.
The advertising Model is pushing Google in order to dominate the market.
Around the world, there are 3.5 billion mobile-phone users. (Just a fraction as many have computers.)
Google and T-Mobile appear to be mainly hoping that mass-market consumers will buy the phone, even though smartphones have traditionally appealed most to business users
Google's success in the market could benefit all mobile users, be they consumers or business users, in the form of lower prices. Onlookers have speculated that Google could help subsidize Android phones using revenue earned from advertising to the devices. The G1 will cost $179 when it becomes available in late October in the U.S.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Even a rich man has to work
The Labor Day holiday yesterday probably wasn’t as relaxing. As much as they may truly have wanted to focus on time with their children, their spouses or their friends, they were unable to turn off their BlackBerrys, their laptops and their work-oriented brains.
A hundred years ago the German sociologist Max Weber described what he called the Protestant ethic. This was a religious imperative to work hard, spend little and find a calling in order to achieve spiritual assurance that one is among the saved.
Weber claimed that this ethic could be found in its most highly evolved form in the United States, where it was embodied by aphorisms like Ben Franklin’s “Industry gives comfort and plenty and respect.” The Protestant ethic is so deeply engrained in our culture you don’t need to be Protestant to embody it. You don’t even need to be religious.
But what’s different from Weber’s era is that it is now the rich who are the most stressed out and the most likely to be working the most. Perhaps for the first time since we’ve kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do. Since 1980, the number of men in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work long hours (over 49 hours per week) has dropped by half, according to a study by the economists Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano. But among the top fifth of earners, long weeks have increased by 80 percent.
This is a stunning moment in economic history: At one time we worked hard so that someday we (or our children) wouldn’t have to. Today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel).
In other words, when we get a raise, instead of using that hard-won money to buy “the good life,” we feel even more pressure to work since the shadow costs of not working are all the greater.
But it turns out that the growing disparity is really between the middle and the top. If we divided the American population in half, we would find that those in the lower half have been pretty stable over the last few decades in terms of their incomes relative to one another. However, the top half has been stretching out like taffy. In fact, as we move up the ladder the rungs get spaced farther and farther apart.
The result of this high and rising inequality is what I call an “economic red shift.” Like the shift in the light spectrum caused by the galaxies rushing away, those Americans who are in the top half of the income distribution experience a sensation that, while they may be pulling away from the bottom half, they are also being left further and further behind by those just above them.
And since inequality rises exponentially the higher you climb the economic ladder, the better off you are in absolute terms, the more relatively deprived you may feel. In fact, a poll of New Yorkers found that those who earned more than $200,000 a year were the most likely of any income group to agree that “seeing other people with money” makes them feel poor.
Because these forces drive each other, they trap us in a vicious cycle: Rising inequality causes us to work more to keep up in an economy increasingly dominated by status goods. That further widens income differences.
The BlackBerrys and other wireless devices that make up our portable offices facilitate this socio-economic madness, but don’t cause it. So, if you are someone who is pretty well off but couldn’t stop working yesterday nonetheless, don’t blame your iPhone or laptop. Blame a new wrinkle in something much more antiquated: inequality.
Dalton Conley, the chairman of New York University’s sociology department, is the author of the forthcoming “Elsewhere, U.S.A.”
A hundred years ago the German sociologist Max Weber described what he called the Protestant ethic. This was a religious imperative to work hard, spend little and find a calling in order to achieve spiritual assurance that one is among the saved.
Weber claimed that this ethic could be found in its most highly evolved form in the United States, where it was embodied by aphorisms like Ben Franklin’s “Industry gives comfort and plenty and respect.” The Protestant ethic is so deeply engrained in our culture you don’t need to be Protestant to embody it. You don’t even need to be religious.
But what’s different from Weber’s era is that it is now the rich who are the most stressed out and the most likely to be working the most. Perhaps for the first time since we’ve kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do. Since 1980, the number of men in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work long hours (over 49 hours per week) has dropped by half, according to a study by the economists Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano. But among the top fifth of earners, long weeks have increased by 80 percent.
This is a stunning moment in economic history: At one time we worked hard so that someday we (or our children) wouldn’t have to. Today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel).
In other words, when we get a raise, instead of using that hard-won money to buy “the good life,” we feel even more pressure to work since the shadow costs of not working are all the greater.
But it turns out that the growing disparity is really between the middle and the top. If we divided the American population in half, we would find that those in the lower half have been pretty stable over the last few decades in terms of their incomes relative to one another. However, the top half has been stretching out like taffy. In fact, as we move up the ladder the rungs get spaced farther and farther apart.
The result of this high and rising inequality is what I call an “economic red shift.” Like the shift in the light spectrum caused by the galaxies rushing away, those Americans who are in the top half of the income distribution experience a sensation that, while they may be pulling away from the bottom half, they are also being left further and further behind by those just above them.
And since inequality rises exponentially the higher you climb the economic ladder, the better off you are in absolute terms, the more relatively deprived you may feel. In fact, a poll of New Yorkers found that those who earned more than $200,000 a year were the most likely of any income group to agree that “seeing other people with money” makes them feel poor.
Because these forces drive each other, they trap us in a vicious cycle: Rising inequality causes us to work more to keep up in an economy increasingly dominated by status goods. That further widens income differences.
The BlackBerrys and other wireless devices that make up our portable offices facilitate this socio-economic madness, but don’t cause it. So, if you are someone who is pretty well off but couldn’t stop working yesterday nonetheless, don’t blame your iPhone or laptop. Blame a new wrinkle in something much more antiquated: inequality.
Dalton Conley, the chairman of New York University’s sociology department, is the author of the forthcoming “Elsewhere, U.S.A.”
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
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