Beating the Brain Game Communications success in the new era of Neuroscience

1. Beating the Brain GameCommunications success in the new era of Neuroscience

2. Which advert do you like best?

3. Which advert do you like best?

4. Which advert do you like best?

5. Let’s ask the question differently: • Which advert is working hardest? • What does ‘working hardest’ actually mean? 6

6. Contents

7. 1 Learning from neuroscience

8. Current ‘industry standard’ measures • Sales focus • Traditional AIDA framework • Information-processing model – clear message with strong recall and is believable and understood Purchase intent Liking Interest Believability Recall Message Take-out 8

9. ‘The Primacy of Affect’ – feelings come first • Poets have known this for centuries… Neuroscientists have long called for this truth to be embraced in understanding human behaviour Wundt (1907), Zajonc (1980), Damasio (1996), Heath (2008), Ratnayake (2010) 9

10. The importance of long term brand building goals SOURCE : Binet & Field (2013) The Long and the Short of it – Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies. Institute of Practioners of Advertising (UK) in association with Thinkbox, 10

11. A holistic view of advertising success Short term sales activation Long term brand impact 1 2 Standard industry measures are good at capturing the short-term sales impact of adverts –the ability to activate Measures around the ad’s ability to build the brand based on the primacy of affect 11

12. 2 Remember ‘memory’

13. Memories aid decision making Autobiographical memory Semantic memory Brand information associated with self-relevant, personal lifetime experiences. Results in hedonic brand choices over rational evaluations. Feeds into System 1 decisions. Brand knowledge about features and attributes with little connection to self-identity systems. Involves abstract information about the brand that leads to rational choices. Feeds into System 2 decisions. 13

14. 1 Effective communications ease decision making by creating memories that embed the brand into meaningful, personally relevant contexts Long term goal of ad: embed the brand in the autobiographical memory. 2

15. Information that gets embedded into long-term memory has to pass 3 gateways RELEVANCE Relevant to current goals NOVELTY The difference between expectations and reality AFFECTIVE IMPACT The affective value of the information (does it personally connect) ‘To what extent, if at all, did this ad convey something better than you expected?’ ‘How vividly, if at all, does the ad you’ve just seen remind you about things you personally care about?’ ‘When you think about which <category> is best for you, to what extent, did this ad contain something that is relevant to you?’ SOURCE : Lisman & Grace (2005). The Hippocampal-VTA Loop: Controlling the Entry of Information into the Long-Term Memory. 14

16. Two key questions • Are we able to reflect the unconscious response to the ad? • Do these questions ad an additional layer of understanding? 1 2 15

17. 3 Neuroscience ‘stamp of approval’

18. Research methodology • EEG Twenty black female participants Partnered with HeadSpaceNeuromarketing* Three mobile network adverts and three decoy ads (randomised) • Quantitative survey Memory filter questions Traditional questions *HeadSpaceNeuromarketing is TNS’s partner in neuroscience research. We would like to thank them for their contribution to this research. : 17

19. EEG shows Vodacom being a better all-rounder 18

20. Memory filter questions reveal the same Vodacom CellC Novelty + Affective + Novelty + Relevance Novelty + Novelty Affective Affective + Novelty + Relevance Novelty Affective Affective Affective 44% Memory 13% 7% 6% Memory 54% 46% Potential Potential MTN Novelty + Novelty + Affective + Affective Novelty Relevance Affective 44% 31% Memory 50% Potential Top 25% Below norm SAMPLE SIZE: n. 72 // CUSTOM FILTERS APPLIED: (Q3. Race is Black), and (Gender is Female) 19

21. There is a statistical model fit between the EEG findings and memory filter questions Energy in the Alpha band decreases over the anterior regions. Statistical model fit 40% of the variance explained in survey measures are explained by the changes in alpha power over the frontal regions Your text Your text High Rating – Vodacom viewer High Rating - Vodacom viewer baseline 20

22. 4 An additional layer of understanding

23. Traditional survey findings 22

24. Comparing open ended responses – traditional versus new • Traditional • ‘Tell me everything about ad’ • New • ‘What things that you care about does the ad bring about?’ 23

25. SummaryTo embrace neuroscience, the industry should... Too much focus on sales activation; not enough focus on long term brand impact. Acknowledge limitations of traditional measures Tap into passive, non-survey measurement systems (e.g. EEG, fMRI) Fully nuanced, granulated view of the neurological effects. Develop survey measures that capture neuroscience truths Affective memory filters to access the brain’s autobiographical memory. 24

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