The Neuroscience of Marketing … 95% of consumer decisions are subconscious, most in less than 2 seconds, and 80% of product launches fail … so how can brands know people better than they know themselves?

July 10, 2024

As a scientist, a career in marketing seemed like a step away from the logical, evidence-based pursuit of knowledge, and its systematic application.

When I started out, marketing was all about insight and creativity. We researched markets to find average needs, and success was more measured by the love of advertising spots, than the rigorous pursuit of business performance. CEOs and CFOs seemed to be happy if ads made them feel good. And there was little way of proving or disproving their commercial impact anyway.

How things have changed. In today’s data-driven, digitally-enabled world, marketing is the scientific engine of business success.

Science is defined as “the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence. Scientific methodology includes the following: Objective observation: Measurement and data (possibly although not necessarily using mathematics as a tool) evidence.

Obviously it still requires insight and creativity. Although to be honest, science has always been a creative pursuit – to hypothesise the unknown, to explore and experiment in pursuit of a leap forward, and then to validate the outcomes.

Marketers are market-tectologists, data scientists and consumer psychologists. Marketers fuse science, creativity and strategic thinking to solve business problems to drive precision-based campaigns and deliver personal experiences – based on the use of data analytics and behavioural science.

Yet only 24% of CMOs say they use neuroscience.

But think about this:

  • Subconscious thought processing is 200,000 times faster than conscious thought processing
  • 95% of consumer’s decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind
  • 70% of FMCG purchases are made at the shelf, typically in 2.8 seconds
  • 80% of new product launches fail to deliver their predicted sales

The best marketing teams apply the best ideas of psychology, brain imaging and behavioural science to understand customers better than they know themselves:

  • Pepsico studying the female brain discovered that using the term “guilt” as in descriptors like “guilt-free snacking” is ineffective, and have since shifted to more aspirational words like “healthy”
  • Microsoft, using EEF (electro-encephalography) monitored brain activity of users during their interaction with computers in order to determine what gave them feelings of surprise, satisfaction and frustration
  • Google used biometrics to measure the effectiveness of two different types of ads on Youtube, overlays vs pre-rolls. Overlays, for example banner ads, were founded to be much more effective in engaging people
  • Daimler Chrysler used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) for a study that had men ranking the aesthetic attractiveness of cars. Logically they thought men were driven by performance metrics, but sound and scent mattered more.

The best marketers connect this knowledge with even more data, they sit in real-time data studios, with high-tech dashboards able to monitor every social post and customer interaction, to tweak brand messaging and engagement in seconds, to encourage consumers to influence each other, to customise solutions, and personalise experiences, the vast majority of markets are still hoping for the best, qualitatively.

Yet the potential benefits businesses can gain from using neuroscience to inform sales, marketing and service delivery is huge. Particularly given that science shows the majority of human decision-making and behaviour operates below the level of consciousness.

Here are three ways to tap into the neuroscience of customers:

Explore unconscious emotions

Consumer behaviour is explained by emotions, memory and recognition. But these are not metrics we find in more traditional market research, such as focus groups and surveys. Therefore asking people what they ‘think’ doesn’t get the right insights, as it can’t capture consumers’ full emotional and motivational influences. By measuring and analysing the real, subconscious forces which influence decision-making we can confidently predict what factors help us stand out and deliver more effective marketing outcomes. A neuroscientific approach can include sophisticated techniques such as EEG or galvanic-skin response, but there are also many accessible neuro-approaches. Eye tracking, facial coding or Reaction Time Testing are all relatively cost effective and rapid tools to truly measure how unconscious emotional processes impact decision making.

Drive multi-sensory experiences

Consumers are four times more likely to purchase something they pick, 50% feel more emotionally elevated when touching a product. This works in physical environments, but we can use this neuro-trigger in digital experiences too by tapping into the brain’s “mirror neurons” which make us have similar feelings to those of a person we see. Dialling up depictions of senses in branded content can trigger the same emotions and feelings of desire as if the consumer were experiencing the sensation themselves. This neuro ‘hack’ means brands should create sales and marketing content that shows customers engaging sensorily with products or services – touching a new car or seeing someone apply make-up in digital content helps create an emotional uplift and “primes” consumers to make a decision. In fact, optimizing our senses to make consumer experiences multi-sensory can drive sales increases by up to 10%.

Give customers more to think about

Effective advertising is not just about what we see. It’s much more about the process our brains undertake when engaging with creative content. New research suggests “cognitive conflict” is a powerful driver of marketing success. This suggests that having branded content that is surprising or challenges norms – think surrealism or visual trickery – that makes you do a double take is more effective than conventional content. This is because our brains get satisfaction not from specific features of creative content, but from the act of information processing. By forcing our brains to react and make sense of this cognitive conflict in our marketing content we can improve memory and brand recall.

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