That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Advertising

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Virtually every form of modern media comes with some degree of advertising attached. From commercials on TV to product promotions on social media, we are constantly told what to buy. But how does this affect our brain? In this episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind advertising. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. In my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Well, we're bombarded with it all the time. It doesn't matter whether we're watching TV or YouTube, and we're waiting for a movie to start, listening to the radio, or even, you know, going old school and reading a newspaper. Advertising is all around us. We're constantly being bombarded and basically being told what to think, like what we should buy, who we should vote for. You know, it's just this constant bombardment of what we should buy, who we should vote for. You know, it's just this constant bombardment of what we should be doing. And, you know, sometimes it works. Sometimes there's ads

and you see them and you think, wow, all right, yeah, man, I think I really need one of those. Well, today on the podcast, we're going to talk about the neuroscience behind advertising, Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about the neuroscience behind advertising, what they're trying to do, and why it sometimes works. Well, the most obvious play that advertisers make in their advertisements is to our emotional system. Yes, yet again, the amygdala. And remember, it's not just the amygdala. For instance, if your heart rate starts to speed up,

you're getting into the autonomic nervous system and an increase in heart rate, which involves the thalamus and the hypothalamus. But the core thing is the emotional response in the amygdala. And that's why they show us what they show us. You know, how many ads have cute kittens and puppy dogs? Well, the reason, simple, it works. You know, for the vast majority of people, they see a cute kitten or a puppy dog and it evokes an emotional response. And that's supposed to make you like the product more or associate a positive emotional response with the product. And of course, it doesn't just have to be puppy dogs and kittens.

There's any number of things that create an emotional response. If you watch American television, for instance, and you look at the ads for the armed forces, and to be fair, we do this in Canada too, the imagery shows the military in this very exciting, you know, you're going to jump out of planes and fly fighter planes and be in tanks and in submarines. And the imagery is designed to get an emotional response, sort of the, yes, I want to be a part of this. And of course, people also use music. The music that is played in advertisements is generally designed specifically to elicit an emotional response. And we all know this. There's certain bits of music that you have in your life that probably

get you fired up a little bit or put a tear in your eye. And again, music is used by advertisers to set the stage and trigger the amygdala. And of course, there's also events, right? A lot of advertisers, especially in the political arena, use events. Do you remember this? Think about this. And those events trigger an emotional response. And like I said, the whole point in trying to get the amygdala to fire is it's going to build that positive emotional association between the product and you. All right. So imagine you're trying to sell batteries and you put puppy dogs in your ad. Well, obviously the puppy dogs are independent of the batteries, but the advertiser is trying to build this positive emotional association

between their product and your amygdala. Your amygdala has a little warm and fuzzy, and they believe that that link can be made. And to be fair, there's evidence that shows that it does work. Now, the emotional bit leads into something else, which is advertisers are generally trying to make their ads memorable. Now, it doesn't have to be an emotional response, but as you know from our previous chats about the way memory works, things that are emotional, we tend to remember more. So if you think about that puppy dog and battery example, you know, the fact that you had a positive emotional response to that means when you see those batteries in a store, you're more likely to tweak to them and go, hey, I remember those,

I've seen that before. And that's true, of course, of any product. But it doesn't have to be an emotional play. For instance, there might be an image that just stands out. It's just, you know, it's just this thing that just captures your attention. A factor is statistic. Again, political ads are really big on this. You know, how many people are unemployed? How much did the debt increase by, and they're just trying to make it memorable to you. And of course, the most common one with advertising are the jingles, right? How many times in your life have you caught yourself humming a jingle that you heard in an ad? All right. And it makes it memorable. This is also true, you know, at the start of television shows, for instance, right? I'm dating myself a bit here, but you know, most people in my age group could hum or at least do a

reasonable facsimile of the introductory soundtrack to Friends. And part of that is to get an emotional response, but it's also to make it memorable. It's to make sure that that stands out to you. And then that sound is associated with something. In the case of a TV show, it's the fact it's funny and you enjoyed it. So number one thing they're trying to do is play on your emotions. So I guess in a perfect world, when you were reviewing advertising, you would be Spock from Star Trek and you wouldn't be susceptible to these things. But of course, we're all Captain Kirk, so we have emotional responses. Second thing they're going to do is they're going to try to make it memorable. Something that makes that ad stand out so that you hang on to it. And if you think about back about the

things you remember in life and if you remove the emotional component, they're just things that stand out. There's something about that that stands out and works for you. Now other things that advertisers will try and do is to make it seem special. This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Oh, but it's going away if you don't act soon. You know, this is something special for you. They're going to try to figure out a way to make it seem like you're getting the deal of the century. You know, this is something that, you know, you need. It's so special. This is a secret thing or it's a special gimmick or it's a cheaper rate. And the reality is, you know, if you use cell phones as an example,

every cell phone company has a special rate. And the reality is they're all roughly the same. And if they were radically different, there's a reason why. If someone could offer you a cell phone plan for half the price of the others, there's a catch. All right. Otherwise, all the other companies would be out of business. So you have to be aware of that. If there's a special claim or limited time, like limited time only is my favorite of all time.

Here in Victoria, there was, it's actually finally closed, but for 20 years, there was an outdoor store downtown here that was going out of business sale. In their window for 20 straight years, I kid you not, they had a going out of business sale sign up. And the whole point was that if you didn't go get it right now, you're going to miss out because they're going out of business. Now, what's funny is that's in a touristy part of town. And that's why it works because everyone that was a local would laugh at it and go, oh, another year, still going out of business. So any of these deals that say limited time only and this stuff, they're trying to make it seem special and force you and sort of pressure you

into doing it. And if you think back to decision-making, that's where value comes in, right? You're going to go, oh my gosh, the value for this must be really high because it's limited time only. And that would make you more likely to buy it. Another trick that ties into value is the concept of delay discounting. This is the whole concept behind, you know, buy now, pay later. And the reason for it is simple. In a classic delay discounting study, they approach you as a stranger and they'll say something like, well, would you like $50 right now? Or would you like $100 in two days? And most people go, fine, I'll take the $100 in two days. Now, if I came up to you and said, you want $50 now or $100 two years from now,

a lot of people say, okay, I'll take the $50 now. Now, it's the same proposition except for the time delay. And what happens is the way our brains are actually wired to process value is we discount things that are far off in the future. We value them as less. And the reason for that is because the way we're hardwired from a survival perspective is to value things that are immediate and relevant to you. So advertisers will also play with value that way. Not only will they make it special, but they typically tend to use delay discounting if they can. This is true of cars and trucks, furniture, you know, buy now, pay later. And the reason

you're paying the same amount of money, in fact, you might even be paying a bit more because of interest, but you're going to value that money less because it's out there in the future. And there's some outrageous ones. I was watching one the other day where it was buy now and start paying two years from now. Now, I didn't read the terms on that, but I'm assuming in those two years, they're cranking up the interest on you and you're going to owe an awful lot of money. Now, the last thing that advertisers do is they try to make it relevant to you. This is what's called the ownership effect. And I've mentioned it before. In fact, I've done research

in this area with a good friend of mine, Dave Turk at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. And the idea is simple. Things that are relevant to you stand out more than things that are not relevant to you. When I did this work with Dave originally, we were just doing simple memory tests and we basically showed people a list of items, you know, Apple, fork, book, car. And all we did was we cued people, but the background of the screen, if it was one color, it meant it was yours. It was your Apple or your fork. And if the background of the screen was a different color, then it meant it was yours, it was your apple or your fork. And if the background of the screen was a different color, then it meant it was someone else's apple or fork. And it sounds like a really simple

manipulation, but what we found is that people were far more likely to remember things that were relevant to themselves. Now, you can use that in advertising. All right. You make it relevant to a person. This deal is for you, you and only you. And you just, an advertiser's will work to sell this, the ownership effect, make it relevant to you. Because if it's just some generic deal that's out there for other people, you don't care as much. But when it's a deal that's tailor-made for you, then it becomes incredibly important to your brain. This is why there's custom packages. We want to customize things. Yes, they care about what you actually want, but it's also a great way to make things relevant to you. Now, that's a lot on the neuroscience of advertising.

Now that's a lot on the neuroscience of advertising. Emotional plays targeting the amygdala. Memory plays targeting the hippocampus and all the systems involved in memory. Making it special, just that pop-out effect. There's this idea of delay discounting. Okay, things that you pay for in the future are worth a lot less. And of course, last but not least, there's this idea of self-relevance. Make it relevant to you. So when you're viewing advertising, try to think of those five things and see if you can spot them. And if you're falling victim to advertising, look for those

five things and see what you can do to fight it off, if you will. Now, this actually came in from a listener and I was going to do a separate bite, but I'll just throw it in here. What about subliminal advertising? Subliminal advertising, if you've never heard about it, is the notion that in a television ad, for instance, you can build in a subliminal or subconscious message. And a lot of it was hinged on a book in the night, released in 1957, called The Hidden Persuaders. It was by a guy named Vance Packard. And basically, he detailed this study where in movie theaters, they were flashing up subliminal messages to get people to buy more popcorn or to buy Pepsi over Coca-Cola.

And the way it works, at least the way it's proposed to work, is that the way most of these imagery works is they show you at least 30 images a second, frequently more modern televisions at 60. And if you have newer televisions, it's 120 images a second. But the idea is if you slipped in an image on one frame out of 30, it's too rare and too fast for your brain to process it, right? So in the movie theater, for instance, you could show 29 frames of the movie and then one frame of popcorn, then 29 frames of the movie, and then one frame of popcorn. And the idea was that this is somehow triggering your subconscious to want popcorn.

Well, I hate to ruin it for the conspiracy people out there, but there's no hard evidence that subliminal messaging is being used in any real way in a public advertising campaign. Does it work in the lab? Yes, you can actually do this in the lab and show bias, but there's no proof that anyone's actually ever done this. And in fact, a lot of advertisers seem to think that the subliminal messaging might actually go counter to the conscious messaging at times. So I hate to break it to you, subliminal advertising, it is a concept. It was based on fake research. The work by Vance Packard was basically proven to be completely fabricated, as in it never happened. Since then, works in the lab, but to the best of my knowledge and

the best of the knowledge of the people that I've spoken to, never being used in the real world. Okay, that's today's podcast on the neuroscience behind advertising. Don't forget to check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. Links to Patreon where you can support us. I talk about it every episode, but the idea is simple. Pledge a dollar a week or a dollar a month, and that money goes to students in my lab. It's really easy to set up and use.

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It really helps a lot and motivates us to keep on going. My name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll be back to you soon with another neuroscience bite.