Captivating customer – the perks of neuromarketing

‘Har ghar kuch kehta hai (every house says something),’ an iconic brand campaign by Asian Paints has, over a decade, conveyed the love, comfort, and value people hold for their homes. The paint brand also revived the campaign during the pandemic with ‘har ghar chup chaap se kehta hai (every house quietly says something),’ emphasising the importance of staying home. Last year, it brought back the campaign with ‘iss Diwali bhi har ghar kuch kehta hai (this Diwali too, every house says something),’ tuning into the joy and spirit of the festival. In all the versions of the campaign, emotions remained constant.

Today, science-based neuromarketing along with digital marketing enable brands to create emotional marketing strategies necessary to stand out and garner consumer interest. In particular, brands have been leveraging neuromarketing to gather unmatched and accurate insights on consumer tastes and patterns that the traditional ways of marketing could not have delivered.

Consumer neuroscience probes deeper into their reactions, emotions, and preferences by accessing their brain activity. By doing so, it provides brands and marketers in-depth knowledge and guidance to design strategic and targeted marketing campaigns.

Taking a balanced view

With access to brain responses to an advertisement or marketing activity, brands and companies can lure customers into taking decisions that may have not existed in the first place.

However, a change in perspective can make all the difference. Some believe neuromarketing is as ethical as marketing in general. Brands can either choose to be truthful in their messaging or convey something false. So, it is not the marketing technique that determines ethics but the way a brand or a marketer intends to use it.

For instance, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) continue to disrupt marketing and introduce new ways of augmenting customer experience through innovation. Generative AI is the newest technology offering insights derived from customer data and behaviour. But one needs to be wary of the biases that come along with existing data used by generative AI.

The consumer-brand relation

The consumer-brand relation has been a long one and it is here to stay, mostly at the heart of business decisions. Through neuromarketing, brands have a chance to reinvent themselves, keeping pace with evolving customer demands and rapid digital transformation. Neuromarketing can predict consumer behaviour and understand what they seek, better than surveys and conventional tools in some cases.

An example of effective neuromarketing is the evolution of advertisements by Indian dairy brand, Amul. The brand uses the Amul girl, an animated figure, to stay relevant amid fierce competition in a country that loves milk and dairy products. Amul ads, through the girl, are based on pun, wit, and humour and comment on current affairs and news scenarios. This makes the ads social, emotional, and relevant, leading to top of the mind brand recall, among people of all generations.

Even in a business-to-business (B2B) setup, emotional and simple advertising has carved a niche. B2B brands and their marketers have been using visual storytelling to simplify complex ideas and capture the attention of potential, and often non-technical, clients.

Ethical as the day

Just as two marketing campaigns do not deliver the same outcome, not two neuromarketing techniques can offer the same insight. Neuromarketing techniques vary in capability and focus and, thus, it is a brand’s responsibility to take an ethical approach as well as a buyer’s prerogative to perform due diligence. Major brands across consumer-facing sectors such as automobile, electrical appliances, electronic devices, retail, consumer products, fintech, and even web services provider have been deploying neuromarketing to naturally read people’s emotions.

Besides the positive aspects of neuromarketing, brands and companies must ensure strict regulation and transparency around their practices, especially with regards to individual privacy and autonomy. They must also consider disclosing to consumers their data collection and methods to share the intent, purpose, and impact of their research. This, in turn, will build trust, increase awareness around a product or service, and encourage consumer participation.

Like every other industry, marketing too must evolve, from its traditional ways to more efficient and effective techniques. A high standard of ethics when it comes to consumer behaviour analysis will enhance a brand’s reputation and credibility. Neuromarketing is an opportunity for brands and marketers to create what works and eliminate what does not, getting a future they want.