Jaffe Juice: The left inferior prefrontal cortex

May 14, 2006

The left inferior prefrontal cortex

Oh yummy....I'm eating this one for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In my book, I make one of the four cases against the 30-second spot from a consumer centric perspective i.e. consumers aren't as stupid as they used to be i.e. they're a lot smarter than we often give them credit for i.e. they're not buying what we're selling.

One of the last bastions of rationale behind advertising as we know it is the weak argument for emotion or the delusional belief that brands are human beings and our ability to transfer human personality traits on top of these products and services will somehow bestow magical and mystical powers on our ability to move product.

Hat tip to Being Reasonable and MIT Ad Lab for the Seed Magazine article which reflects on a study that essentially concludes that consumers aren't responding to all the fluff and warm fuzzy hype that is usually crammed into traditional advertising.

During the study—the first ever to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),to examine how different regions of the brain are affected when thinking about certain qualities of brands—20 subjects were asked if 450 adjectives, like "down-to-earth," "sophisticated" or "warm-hearted," were applicable to themselves and other people. Then they were asked if those same human-like qualities could be judgments about brands they know and use.

The research team found that while the same words were being used to describe people and products, different regions of the brain were activated when subjects were talking about one or the other. The fMRI scans detected that there was a greater neural response in the medial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain when applying the adjectives to people. But when focusing on brands, like Wal-Mart, Starbucks or Ben & Jerry's, the left inferior prefrontal cortex was activated, an area of the brain known to be involved in object processing.

Bottom line: The finding indicates that the anthropomorphizing of brands often used in commercials isn't humanizing a product, and thus, the ad is falling on deaf ears.

It's time to make advertising relevant again...or risk the realization of a new reality: a world without advertising.

Posted at 03:43 PM in Consumer Central , Creativity, From the "I told you so" files, Make advertising relevant again, New Branding | Permalink

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During the study—the first ever to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),to examine how different regions of the brain are affected when thinking about certain qualities of brands—20 subjects were asked if 450 adjectives, like "down-to-earth," "sophisticated" or "warm-hearted," were applicable to themselves and other people. Then they were asked if those same human-like qualities could be judgments about brands they know and use.

The research team found that while the same words were being used to describe people and products, different regions of the brain were activated when subjects were talking about one or the other. The fMRI scans detected that there was a greater neural response in the medial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain when applying the adjectives to people. But when focusing on brands, like Wal-Mart, Starbucks or Ben & Jerry's, the left inferior prefrontal cortex was activated, an area of the brain known to be involved in object processing.

Bottom line: The finding indicates that the anthropomorphizing of brands often used in commercials isn't humanizing a product, and thus, the ad is falling on deaf ears.

It's time to make advertising relevant again...or risk the realization of a new reality: a world without advertising.