A+New+Way+To+Get+Inside+Of+Our+Brains+by+Natalie+Cipolle

Natalie Cipolle

Precis

NeuroFocus.com (MYND) knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1295.pdf ("Shades of Meaning: The Effect of Color and Flavor Names on Consumer Choice")

This project is happening in an interesting time for my topic. On March 21, 2011, NeuroFocus (an American Multinational neuromarketing company) unveiled MYND. MYND is a head device that uses EEG's - a brain imaging technique that charts levels of attention, retention, and emotion. The volunteer wears a cap covered with sensors that hook up to a laptop. After viewing a commercial, video, clips of images, the computer software monitors the brain activity focusing specifically on attention, retention, and emotion throughout viewing the footage. Algorithms then calculate which scenes from the commercial, video, clips of images ingnited the most response. Market researches are attempting to incorporate this device to find what consumers really want and think.

Some may argue this is just another form of subliminal persuasion by the messages streaming directly into our subconsciousness. A.K. Pradeep is the Chief Executive Officer of NeuroFocus and attempts to reassure peopel that MYND was not created to read people's minds, rather it is intended to figure out the things people feel they struggle to articulate. NeuroFocus supports this type of marketing (neuromarketing) because it can provide critical insights into the way consumers perceive ads, brands, labels, and so on, at the subconscious level in 'real' time.

The classical debates is whether advertisers are attempting to manipulate //our// brains with //their// dreams or perhaps, if neuromarketing was used as a **product review process** rather than how to sell a product. Furthermore, this device allows advertisers to tap into our inner most desires. This poses another debate: Why do we have these desires in the first place? Will advertisers use this marketing scheme in a harmful or helpful way? Supporters of MYND go on to praise that the device can tell their brain exactly what it likes without consciously being aware.