I have to tell you, when Steve called me and said I have a new book for you to read and he sent me The Buying Brain, not only was I fascinated by the title, but also everything that you put in there. I’m beginning to think this is a whole new field that you’re creating.
I’m happy you think that way. If you think about it, throughout history, we have all been buying various things. Sometimes we are conscious of buying through the exchange of cash. Sometimes it’s an exchange of ideas. Sometimes it’s an exchange of philosophies. Sometimes it’s just an exchange of happiness and laughter.
You find that whether we like it or not, our brains are constantly in the business of buying and selling throughout time, throughout every hour of everyday. Isn’t it interesting and nice to kind of take a step back and to look to see if buying and selling or persuading and being convinced are such an integral part of human existence. How can the overt mechanisms of business give us a clue to the underlying mechanisms that form every other facet of life?
Obviously, without question Dr. Pradeep, you have really created something that will change the paradigm of business and marketing but I think most of us have yet to hear the term, neuromarketing. Why don’t you start by just clarifying just what that term means in a general context so our listeners will have an opportunity to know the proper definition as we move forward.
Absolutely, thank you very much Moe. That’s a very good question, what is neuromarketing? Today, marketing is focused on what people do. A little later, marketing gets it’s inspiration from what people say. A little later, marketing gets its inspiration for what people look at. But, neuromarketing is getting marketing to be inspired by how people think and feel.
So really, if marketing was driven not just what people do, not just by what people say, not just by what people look at, but being inspired by what people feel and think. That is the world of neuromarketing; using our neurological responses as a prime driver and input into marketing and therefore, the output of a measurement of marketing effectiveness. So, utilizing our inner feelings, our thoughts as a guide to help us market better, to sell better, to service better, and even to design better.
I say that using the brain as the primary source of inspiration to perform all marketing and using the brain as a primary source of measurement of marketing effectiveness becomes a very clear scientific way to understand how to do any of these things better. Be it to market better or to measure the results of marketing better. That is the world of neuromarketing.
But there is a twin sister to that and I would like to, if you don’t mind, talk about the twin sister to neuromarketing. I called it neurodesign. Because so far, our designs, be it the design of your cellphone, of your TV, of the remote in your house, of the blender, of the automobile, have a lot been based on what people said they wanted. Design was based on what people did and said. Design used to be based on what people looked at.
Today, we are having designs based on how people think and feel – neurodesign. The best example of neurodesign I would say is your little flip camcorder or your video recorder. It has one big button in it. And just in case you would miss it, the button is also red. The iPod’s user interface is a classic example of neurodesign. Understanding how the brain likes to see design and designing things in a way that truly engage the human brain.
So be it marketing, designing marketing, to design it in a way to engage the human brain or having product designs that engage the human brain. Neuro, is the operative word. Instead of hearing people, instead of seeing what they do, instead of looking at their eyes, we merely listen to the whispers of their brains.