Neuromarketing: The Future of Marketing | Prince Ghuman & Dr. Matt Johnson

28:01But yeah, suffice to say that there are different ways which marketers or any sort of experienced designers can optimize the experience in a way where it's more likely to give rise to a memory. So not all experiencers are weighted as equally in memory as any others. And Prince is highlighting a few examples here where you add a little bit of friction, which really forces the person to think. It forces them to pay attention. And the more we're paying attention to something, the more we're actually giving those memories, those experiences, the opportunity to be laid down into memory. You can also look at other types of sort of memory boosters.

28:38So we've talked in the book about the use of analogy, for example, which is a great way to make elements in our experience stick. So if I were to ask the audience, how would you describe the movie Speed in a single sentence, they might come up with a range of things, but this is actually how Speed was described when it was originally pitched back in the 90s. It was Die Hard, but on a bus. And that is just like the perfect distillation of the movie Speed. And it's leveraging analogy. You know the movie Die Hard. You know, it's sort of the, you know, this is Bruce Willis, this is, you know, action pack.

29:21This is the action movie of the 90s, maybe of all time, some would argue. And it's Die Hard, but on a bus. Yeah, there's some nuances, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, et cetera, but it's basically Die Hard on a bus. I mean, that basically captures the whole movie. And that's really the power of analogy. Not only does it really crystallize what you're trying to describe in a nice, crisp way, but it also leverages this fact of our brain's memory system, which is that it's fundamentally about connections. You can't learn something which doesn't connect with something you already have. So another memory booster, which again, we sort of dive into a bit more detail in the book, is using analogy to hammer home these connections.

30:01I think one thing I do want to make sure we cover here, and especially Prince, right, with your marketing background in the book, one concept most readers and myself included and definitely a lot of marketers weren't familiar with was essentialism. Can you guys impact this for us a little bit, especially to those who maybe haven't heard of it before? Absolutely. So essentialism is sort of this unspoken layer that is in all of the objects that we interact with without us fully recognizing it. So it sounds strange to say, but ordinary objects have souls. We see them as being greater than their simple sort of physical nature.

30:43Just like we sometimes think that people have souls or some sort of essence to a person that transcends the physical. When the person dies, the soul lives on. We sort of think the same way when it comes to objects. So if you were to find yourself in possession of, I don't know, a George Clooney sweater or Travis Scott sweater or insert celebrity thing here, that would cease to be more. It would cease to simply be a sweater. It would be more than that. Even if you washed it, it would still be George Clooney's sweater. It would still be Travis Scott's sweater. It would still be something. There's still an essence there that, again, transcends the physical.

31:24And there has been a bit of interesting science on this. This is Paul Bloom and Bruce Hood's work, which has looked at why exactly things have essences and how can we give an object an essence. And it really sort of comes down to the story about the object. So it was an experiment which was done blicking on the exact year, but it was sometime in the early 2000s called the Ordinary Objects Experiment. What they did is they took these objects could not be any more ordinary. They took all these these sort of like rubber duckies and paperclips and water bottles. They bought these from eBay for their listing price of like two dollars, three dollars.

32:02And then what they did is they recruited a team of storytellers. They recruited a team of fiction writers and authors to write stories about these objects. So this little rubber ducky, for example, this was, you know, something that, you know, a two year old clutched, you know, every night as he as he went to sleep and his mom gave it to him. And it was, you know, originally got it from his uncle who fought in some, you know, some background story to to the object. And then what they did is they relisted them on eBay. And now with these stories attached, these went for 200, 300, 500 dollars sometimes.

32:37saw a massive increase just by putting a story there. So we do see this sort of hidden essence in the objects we interact with. It's something that, again, we don't tend to sort of think about unless we find ourselves in possession of a George Clooney sweater, and then we sort of understand the essence of it. But it's something that is also well within the wheelhouse of what marketers are capable in terms of how they're able to inject that into their products. Yeah. I mean, think about Etsy in an e-commerce world where Amazon has eaten everyone's lunch and dunked all over them. Etsy has grown.

33:12And it's because you're buying the essence of the artist. You're buying the essence of their product and their story. And I love that Paul Bloom did that seminal research on this. There's a bunch of other research as well, but it just really speaks to the soul of something, the brand, the product. I love the example. This happened while we were writing the book where I'm sure some of the audience members would know about it. Maybe you do too, Anya. It's the Banksy story where it was at an auction, big graffiti piece, not big, normal size graffiti piece at an auction. Banksy had actually hit a shredder in there.

33:45And as they're bidding on it and it's sold, it just boom, tricks on and it sheds it. But in that moment, the essence of that piece changed. Right. Right. And and Matt and I would argue there's a story there now. And that story adds to the soul of that piece. And you can see the objective valuation of that piece went up immediately after it was shredded, which is super ironic. Right. But you see this a lot with brands. You see this with I love Under Armour because they went from making underwear for high school football kids to being sponsoring Steph Curry. Right. But they didn't jump straight to Steph Curry.

34:20They went and got Misty Copeland because they couldn't afford big name athletes, but also Misty Copeland fit the the essence of an underdog. Misty Copeland was rejected by the American Ballet Academy for not having the right body type and should rather go to. And they were suggested this is a 13 year old girl they're speaking to go. You're better suited for dancing in Vegas. Right. This is the rejection letter. that's actually public. And she said, to hell with that. She replied and she actually got in and she was a first mixed race ballet, American ballet acceptee, which Under Armour found out about and doubled down on it.

35:04And that in effect added to Under Armour's essence as a brand for the underdog. And, you know, we've seen this happening quite often. We see this happening with Red Wing, one of the oldest still made in America shoe companies and they have an entire heritage line and it's all branded Iron Ranger and Iron Ranger. And there's a story about the Iron Ranger that used to work in blah, blah, blah mines and did this, this and this. And this shoe represents that person. Right. And then they have a lager shoe and it's all the way they used to make it. But they have this entire essence that's baked in. And it might sound so subjective until you look at the research that shows what happens when people buy into the essence or the soul and use these products, right?

35:48So you might think, oh, someone who really loves Red Wings might feel more confident wearing them, right? But they've actually done research where you give people three golf clubs, no name, a generic brand, a Nike, and people, it's the exact same golf club, but people hit further with the Nike golf club. And that, to me, is the soul of a brand. This subjective, soft, untouchable thing is actually having objective impact on behavior. And I think essentialism and storytelling is a big part of that. This was this is a true story. I was at a vineyard and there was a bottle served to me. It was called Shannon.

36:30And I was like, well, what's the story here? And it was the best story ever. It's like, oh, the winemaker's youngest daughter, Shannon, did not like cabs at all. And his goal was to make her the cab that she would fall in love with. And on her wedding, he presented her with a case of Shannon because he was that convinced that this is going to be the cab you're going to like. Right. Oh, my God, it tastes better already. And it's not even on my table yet. That's the power of essentialism and storytelling when it comes to the soul of a product or brand. Yeah. And it really kind of takes this full circle, right?

37:03So we talked in the beginning about mental modeling, right? So we don't experience the world's objectively, we experience our brain's mental model. And so if we're trying to alter the visual aesthetics of something that influences our mental model, even if we're operating the gucatory domain, but one way which very clever marketers can deeply sculpt our mental model is through storytelling. that that really fills in this mental model, the essence of an object, what we come to believe about the story, the hidden essence, the origin story of the products we interact with, the brands we interact with, that influences our mental model.

37:40And as Prince's example really exemplifies, this does have very objective consequences. So if you believe that you're hitting with a Nike golf club, you'll actually hit farther. And that's pure brand. That is the power of the brand. Similar findings are found with Ray-Ban sunglasses. So if you're led to believe you are putting on Ray-Ban sunglasses instead of a generic sunglass, even if it's the same exact sunglasses, you'll actually report that it blocks the sun better. So it is pretty wild how this can go. We can look at this as we don't experience the world objectively. There's a subjectivity to everything.

38:16But this gap, which is the marketer's playground, this does have very, very objective consequences. in the real world. Yeah, I love the Banksy example. And that was, I think, a plot twist for sure, as well as some of the ones you provided, Prince. And for the audience, we do have a couple more questions. But in a couple minutes, we'll actually be moving to audience questions. So please add your questions in the YouTube live, and Matt and Prince will answer. Prince, do you want to ask you before we get to those audience questions, right? I think, you know, we bring up, this is a marketers playground, right?

38:51And the ways that we go approach this with everything that you've learned and everything within the book, where does this put you as a marketer and how do you kind of, you know, marketers use centralism, storytelling to collectively get this right? Oh, that's a good question. Where does this put me as a marketer? Well, right now in the hot seat is where it puts me. I think that, well, there's, it's, it's a life of dissonance, honestly, Anya. On one hand, I love being a marketer. I love creating brand experiences, events, products that charm the pants off people. Right. I love creating that product.

39:28And as a consumer, if I'm being honest, I love being charmed by brands and companies. I like arguing about, you know, Nikon versus Sony or Xbox versus PlayStation. Right. And that's part of the life that our society has created. Right. So but occasionally there is this level of distrust. And I think, you know, there's a couple of things I wish. One thing I wish is us as marketers and consumers, I wish we could agree on the definition of marketing. That was actually fair. That tracks back to the old days when before there were logos and tracks to today when we have a way more complex way of tracking each other.

40:09And I think the best that I've come up with is trading value. I wish marketers and consumers really looked at consumerism and marketing as trading value because ultimately that's what we're doing. Right. And, you know, back in the old days, you had a shop that had goods to sell and you had a buyer money product done. And then evolved to a couple of years later, you have the shop that has a bigger selection, a higher form of providing value. At the end of the day, a buyer comes in and pays and gets a product. Fast forward to today. it's a complex world. We have more product options than we have needs to fulfill.

40:47And consumers can provide value with user-generated content, with reviews. Consumers have other ways besides money or Bitcoin to pay for stuff now, right? And I think understanding that responsibility and that balance is key. And I think the second thing, and this is more speaking to marketers in the room, we think we are scientific, right? Because frankly, for a while we did, we adopted, we adopted research in the fifties and sixties, and we adopted user experience. We adopted AB testing and that's sort of a stalemate. And it's not often we get to go beyond that. And there are fMRI and EEG research we can do, but most of us don't get the opportunity to do that.

41:30I'll bring that up because we think that is understanding the consumer, but it's not. We think that I can test for early adopters for a new product I'm launching. That was over a decade ago when Christensen said that in crossing the chasm and Gladwell made it popular in his book. But ultimately, why is it that early adopters adopt products early? Is there science behind it? Well, of course, There is this psychological impact of newness and safety. Right. We call it new and safe. And and that is understanding how that hits at the level of the brain helps marketers and product managers have a much deeper understanding than just let's test for early adopters.

42:22Right. So so I guess my first thing is. Understand neuroscience, because it's going to make you a better marketer. It's going to make you find more genuine, new, engaging ways to connect with the consumer and for the consumers. You don't want to be that passenger in the plane. Right. It doesn't feel good to be taken for a ride. And if anything, if consumers know a little bit more about their own psychology when it meets marketing, they might appreciate all the stuff that we all the effort that we put into marketing. So that's that's that's a big thing for me. Thank you for asking that question, despite it being on the hot seat.

43:02Absolutely. And final question here. Right. So with Popnero, with your book, what is the impact you both kind of and I feel like I have a guest, but would love you to speak to it. What is the impact you guys want to have in the world? And what do you want people to kind of take away from, you know, not only today, but also kind of from the book and your research? Yeah. So I think we both have maybe a slightly different answer for this. So for me, it is to really appreciate marketing. So as Prince said, marketers are flirting more with consumers now than ever in history. So I think as consumers, we sort of take marketing for granted.

43:39So brands come into our lives, brands come out of our lives, products come into our life, and we don't really think twice about it. But there's a design behind all of this. There is a thought and human ingenuity that goes into all of our consumer experiences that we don't fully appreciate. So there's a lot of conversation that's worth having about the ethics of marketing. And we do talk about that in the book. But at the end of the day, we're all consumers. So if we're sitting here complaining about marketing, that's like the fish complaining about water. It's definitionally within our environment.

44:16And so I think we should grow to understand it as people and grow to sort of see the power we have as consumers to shape the consumer world because it is in reaction to us. If everybody suddenly snaps their fingers and goes vegan, that changes the consumer world. That puts meat companies out of business. And now who can sell the best vegan burger becomes the richest person in the world. So that's a massive impact that is actually in control of consumers. And so there is a back and forth there that I think needs to be realized as well. For me, it really is about going beyond A-B testing. It really is about the next evolution of the marketer, right?

44:59We have a ton of data and that's great, But I think there is still a blind spot for marketers with neuroscience. And I think understanding that, and I think our big audacious goal, if I'm allowed to dream out loud in a public sense, is I hope neuroscience today is what user experience was 10, 15 years ago. Right. You go get your CogSide degree and you go get your design degree and you put the two together. Right. And now there's at least one user experience person in almost every company. why is it that we don't have one person who knows the behavior science game or the neuromarketing game, right?

45:34We don't have that. So I think that is going to be great for marketing, but I think it's going to be great for consumers too, because ultimately consumers are getting smarter. And ultimately we both want to create amazing products as marketers. And we both want to fall in love with amazing products. And neuroscience is only going to help bridge that gap. And that would be up the giant audacious goal. So more EEG stuff, more neuroscientific rigor in marketing campaigns. I love the moonshot and the best of both worlds. Great. With that, I think we're ready for our first audience question. So from David, how is the understanding of memory affected by people with edict, edict, memory, or by the use of memory palaces?

46:18Yeah, it's a really great question. So So this is some interesting research. Ed Cook has done some really interesting pioneering work on it about really tapping in. Everybody's sort of tapping into their potential when it comes to memory. So there's this sort of technique in memory where if you're able to imagine, if you're losing your keys, you don't know where your keys are and you put it down somewhere. One of the best things you can do from a tactical standpoint to remember them is imagine your keys and then just imagine it like exploding. And that's a really highly salient visual image, which will be weighted very heavily in memory.

47:00So this is a way of another tactic that can be used to really try and give experiences the best opportunity of being laying down in memory. So one thing is there are certain tactics that all of us can do to sort of tap into our potential in terms of our memory abilities. But there are also all sort of genuine individual differences in terms of memory abilities as well. So there are sort of grandmaster memory people that what you or I, you know, here would do in, you know, taking a day to memorize, you know, these people can do in, you know, 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Uh, there's also really interesting examples of what's called HSMA, which is highly superior autobiographical memory, uh, where individuals remember, uh, this morning, uh, they remember rather events that happened three years ago, like you or I remember this morning.

47:57So they remember, you know, February 9th, 1986. They remember, uh, you know, they have this vast compendium of memory. They never, ever, ever forget. So there are genuine individual differences when it comes to memory as well. So it's one of those mental faculties where there is a general science to it. And there's things that all of us in the general population can do to further augment our memory abilities. But there are people at the ends of these extremes as well. Great. Thanks, Matt. And our next question from Mason, can you offer any tips for recognizing the impacts of marketing on our brains in real time?

48:34I try to live mindfully, but marketing seems to work at a different level than our awareness for mindfulness. Oh, man, it's such a good question, Mason. And I try to implore a similar philosophy as well. I like to sort of think of this from the standpoint of mindfulness, because I think that is a really good perspective. So there is this perspective for mindfulness when it comes to food consumption, for example, where you really out of a love for yourself and out of an appreciation for food and the appreciation for your circumstances, is that you should appreciate and enjoy each bite of food and understand as much as possible how that food impacts your physiology and your health.

49:16And you should really be mindful of that process as much as possible. And I think that that's a great analogy for how we should look at us as consumers in the digital space specifically. Just as when we're consuming food, food science is what it is right now. We can't be fully sure how these nutrients are being assimilated into our body. It's this incredibly complex system, which involves our genetic endowment, as well as our lifestyle, etc. So it's very, very complex. But we have some general understanding, the more mindful we are, of how this is impacting our physiology and how we feel. And I think the same type of perspective can be applied to digital consumption.

49:57So when you go on Twitter, for example, and you're scrolling down, you might not know exactly how this is impacting yourself and your sort of state of mind and your self into the future. But you know that it may have an impact. You may fully never understand the complexity of it. But the more mindful we are about consumption, the same way we can be when it comes to food, I think gives us the opportunity to see these interactions sort of unfold. So long story long, I don't think there's a way for us to fully grasp with the complexity of how consumption influences us, especially in the digital domain.

50:34But I think the more mindful we can be about consumption, the more we can sort of notice these things in this interaction. And I think if I could add to that, it's a great question. I think the mindfulness piece works, and this is going to sound odd, if you know what to be mindful about. Right. And what I mean by that is understanding the different ways marketing interacts with you is one way you sort of have to do that homework ahead of time. And I hate to use the term homework, because then when you sit down and you really go, well, why am I buying more Tesla stock? It's extremely overpriced.

51:11Well, then you think about, you know, the neuroscience of empathy and human connection and what you learned about that. And then when you're practicing mindfulness during these marketing times, you're able to see, well, we're programmed to empathize more with a single person than we are multiple people. And Elon Musk is Tesla. Right. And little things like that. Once you understand what psychological elements are at play behind marketing, the mindfulness piece is going to be more effective or effective in general. So hope that helped answer your question a little bit. But if you're curious about what those neuroscientific principles are, there's a book called Blindsight.

51:49You should check it out. Quick plug. Can't turn off the marketer. There's no off button on him. Awesome. Thank you, Matt Prince. Next question from Mark. How do you deal with the lack of replicability for many of the social psych studies you mentioned that's led to a big reckoning for the field of psych? Yeah, it's a great question. There certainly has been concerns about replicability for sure. We were fairly careful in the book to try and not cherry pick the science and not cherry pick these sort of highly salient examples, which, you know, they show a cool effect once, but then they never get replicated.

52:32And we really can't, if we're being rigorous, have confidence in them. The temperature water study, I believe, has been replicated. replicated, that one in particular. Our main insight from that is not that temperature can impact attractiveness. That may not have been replicated, but it's really this idea that we're never really fully aware of why we do what we do. And that was the main insight we took from that paper. And to that effect, there's massive, massive literature. I think that is a finding we can be very, very confident in, for sure. So if we're, you know, moving away from the water study, we can look at, you know, stocking studies, replace water with stockings, get a very, very similar effect.

53:21And this has been noted in the literature since the 1970s and 80s. So yeah, it's a great question. This is a massive issue that the field is reckoning with. Absolutely. We did our diligence to really try and extract the signal, which is coming out of all of the research, not to cherry pick it, but to define the most consistent findings and have that inform our understanding of consumer neuroscience for the book. Thank you, Matt. And our next question from David, what ethical obligation do marketers have given all these easily manipulated parts of human psychology? More uncomfortably, what can be done if people choose not to proceed ethically?

54:04That's a good question. Do you want to start that one, Matt? You go for it. You're the marker in the hot seat. I think, thank you for asking that, David. And that's something that, you know, we have done research in ethics and it is ongoing. We are trying to put together some sort of a framework for this because that is often how it happens, right? Innovation, consumers eventually catch up in public policies, where the hell down here. And that happens over and over. I think the one place to start is trading value as a philosophy for marketers, right? And it's really about being fair in that trade of value.

54:46What do I mean by that? When we are restricting

54:55cognitive ability in the consumers, let me give you an example, right? You wouldn't advertise to a six-year-old, right? Because they don't have the cognitive ability to make that decision. You, and some countries allow this, right? But you wouldn't advertise to an alcoholic. You wouldn't, there are certain things you don't do because you are acting upon a infringed autonomy, cognitive autonomy. So that's the second pillar, right? Be mindful of the cognitive autonomy. me. But I think it comes back to having a fair trade of value and hiding certain terms behind terms and conditions that are written in something that requires me to get a JD to understand.

55:41I would argue that that is a form of limiting that cognitive ability. And I think ultimately, it's us as marketers owning this, right? Consumers will have to own the cost of free with free products, right? But us as marketers, we have to own this as well, right? We have to own that we have, like Matt said, if we're on a branding team, the ability to create reality, right? We can alter perception. So with that comes responsibility and the fact that we don't think about ethics in general and having a conversation about ethics and starting with the fair trade of value and not infringing upon cognitive autonomy, that's one of the steps.

56:24And the rest, Matt and I are doing active research on this exactly to see if we can unearth some other pillars to this framework. Yeah, it's a great question. It really does cut to a lot of the research we're doing right now. I think looking at marketing as a trade of value is a great perspective. So the respect for autonomy is certainly recognized at the level of industry. So this is why antitrust laws and anti-competitive laws exist. You can't have a monopoly because that reduces consumer autonomy. They don't have a choice when there's one player. But this is not yet recognized so much at the level of marketing tactics.

57:03So autonomy, we recognize to be an important value at the level of industry, but not at tactics, at least not so far. And that's a lot of the research that Prince and I are doing right now. The one thing I would add above and beyond any specific ethical precepts is just the orientation to what we're doing as marketers. So as marketers, we say we're marketing to consumers. But really, what's a consumer? Consumers are human. And there is something a little bit dehumanizing about calling them a consumer because it reduces their complexity. So you can, of course, aggregate humans together. And once you put them into a large group and sort them by demographic features, psychographic features, data profiles, etc., they do seem to go in this direction or that direction.

57:48But at the end of the day, people are still people. And we have to recognize human complexity and markets with that in mind if we're truly going to be ethical. I don't think we can fully say what we're doing is ethical as marketers if we don't understand the full psychological reality, not just behavior of the types of tactical advertisements or whatever we're doing as marketers has on the consumer. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Prince. Very interesting question and look forward to see kind of the research that you guys continue to do. Next question. And our final one for today will be from Lauren. Matt and Prince, thank you for coming today.

58:25How do you see marketing, neuromarketing evolving in the next 20 years, taking into account emerging technologies? Lauren, I love that question. I think marketing is going to get, I think the testing methodologies for marketing will change. I think that we have personally, I'm sure maybe some of you have in your professional lives, seen the limitations of current market research. And I think when just as marketers as a profession, when you're able to find and test using EEG and not just surveys and focus groups to see if people like something, that is the proverbial game changer when it comes to marketing.

59:06Right. So I do see that changing. I do think I firmly believe that behavior science is going to be more common in an average marketing team. Right. Not just Google or Facebook or Apple. Apple, I'm talking a 50-person shop that sells auto parts and they make$100 million a year. There's going to be a behavior science person there. I think this is the next sort of evolution or frontier and very similar to what user experience was a few years ago. Matt, anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I think really behavioral economics opened up everything. So this is pioneered and popularized by Kahneman Tversky.

59:47I think it fast as low as probably the best distillation of this that's accessible and popularized. And this is really this realization, of course, that we're not rational entities. We're not rational when we think we are. We think we're rational beings. We think our decisions are well-informed, but they're clearly not. And there's a really robust science to that. I think this was a great conversation starter, but we can go a lot deeper. We can look at not only the fact that we're not rational, but we don't really understand even how the sensory information that we're receiving actually impacts us on a perceptual level and on a memory level.

1:00:23We're not working with a full realization of human fallibility when it comes to decision-making. We're also not layering in a conversation about sensation and perception and how we can create amazing experiences that may not result in a direct behavior, but may nonetheless change attitudes and emotional orientations towards a brand or towards a product. It hasn't layered in yet conversations about human sociality, how tribalism plays a role in decision-making and in marketing. So I think behavioral economics was a fantastic conversation starter and really busted this open. But now that it's open, there's so much more to this conversation, which fully takes into account human complexity.

1:01:09And so that's, I think, where the field is going next. And I think we accidentally glossed over the second half of Lauren's question, which was about emerging technologies. I love that question, right? I think that having a foundational understanding of the human condition, right, is only going to help as we maybe live our lives via VR or augmented reality or whatever else is going to come in the next 15 years, like you said. But right now, we're at a point where our understanding of the neuroscientific experience is anemic already. So although there are people coding for Oculus and creating apps, not having any idea of the psychological impact of it, right?

1:01:49These are just, you know, garage coders who are making money trying to create apps for VR. That's a perfect example. And that's going to continue happening. But if you actually want to have a leg up in this world, this emerging tech aspect of the changing world we live in, the foundational understanding of neuroscience is only going to help you as a consumer and a marketer be better prepared for what comes next. Great. Thank you, Prince and Matt. I think that's a very interesting point to end on. And a lot of questions still remain, I think, for all of us. This will be the end of our session. So thank you, audience, for joining us.

1:02:24And big thank you, Matt and Prince, for joining us today and sharing more with us. Thank you, guys, for having us. Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.