Some of you may recall a post I wrote a while back on this very same subject. Well, here’s more evidence that the marketer’s dream of mind control is alive and twitching.

Introducing the mutant love-child of Neuroscience and Marketing: Neuromarketing. (bet you didn’t see that coming).

Evidently the whole Creativity thing didn’t pan out as a way to undermine free will so it’s on to neurons we go. These pioneers believe they can find the secret levers that bypass your conscious mind to make you buy just by scanning your brain while you look at ads.

A brilliant yet dastardly plan indeed, and it would have worked if it wasn’t entirely detached from reality.

First of all, brains don’t work that way. There’s no “Buy” center in the brain. Granted, certain areas do light up when you like something, but those exact same centers light up when you see something new or interesting. And, let’s say you’re testing your latest cheap beer ad comprised of, as always, of beer bottles and beer babes. The subject’s “arousal” will have nothing to do with your lame beer and everything to do with their heterosexuality.

Anyways, technical idiocy aside, the biggest failure of Neuromarketing is its premise. Even if it did work it would be nothing more than an elaborate strategy to trick people into buying a product. And in a time when word of mouth about good products spreads like a California wildfire, your product would have to be shamefully inadequate to need it. So inadequate, in fact, that tricking people into trying it would ensure a quick death through negative word of mouth.

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