We Know What You Want And When You Will Buy It

A neuroscience technology breakthrough at the University of California, Berkeley, has major implications for the future of branding and marketing.

It finally happened. Neuroscience technology can now reliably read our minds. It’s an accepted fact that is no longer in dispute. Scientists working at the University of California, Berkeley, have successfully decoded brain activities into audible sounds. In other words, our inner thoughts can be translated into sounds clearly articulated by a computer. Needless to say, there are a whole lot of caveats attached to this claim. For a start, in order to make this kind of reading possible, it requires some 256 electrodes be surgically attached to the scalps of at least 15 volunteers. Furthermore, there’s a minefield of ethical issues attached to this endeavor that needs to be sorted out.

A couple of years ago I wrote Buyology, a book on neuromarketing that was based on 2,000 fMRI scans of volunteers’ brains. Thus I have witnessed firsthand the amazing results and the future that the neuroscientific approach is leading us to. As fascinating as it is, it can also be quite scary--particularly when combined with marketing. So, wearing my skeptic’s hat for just a moment, let me consider these questions: Will this new mind-reading research be the answer to the prayers of every advertising mogul and mainstream marketer? Will it finally provide the answer to the conundrum posed by John Wanamaker, the father of modern marketing, who famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Maybe. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The scientists in Berkeley focused on the brain’s temporal lobe--the home of the body’s auditory system--rather than the place where thoughts are formed. Although our inner voice tends to be dominated by less-articulated thoughts, it appears to be what drives our decision-making processes.

There are several companies already in the neuromarketing business--here ar...

[Source: Fast Company]