The last presentation of the day came from Dr. Carl Marci of Innerscope, who explored the use of biometrics – measurement how consumers process information. His company uses eyetracking, biometric belts and talks to people to access attitudinal responses. They are seeking to find out “how do we break through the clutter…and gauge how deeply they feel about something and the timing of that response.”
Focusing on the ROI, Marci showed how use of biometrics helped them to help a US cable network achieve double digit growth in their audience. He also explained that engagement is attention to something that emotionally impacts you. For instance, in the medical world there has been found to be moments of meeting – using biometrics on doctors and patients to find that content brings people on a common journey – i.e. triggers mirror neurons. Relevance brings people in and directs them to the content and creates emotionally similar journeys, while confusion and boredom push people away i.e. retreat from content and respond to their own thoughts.
His conclusions highlighted that greater immersion leads to enhanced activity in the emotion and empathy-generating centers of the brain. We should keep in mind that higher levels of flexibility in a platform allow a greater range of interactions with and awareness of the outside world.
This session ended in a lively Q&A which touched heavily on the ethics surrounding this area. The speakers pretty much agreed that the same standards for ethics in traditional market research should apply with these emerging techniques. Like traditional MR we measure and not evoke it. Standards should be the highest ones.
Innerscope uses a International Code from the Hague and has an independent review board with outside advisors who review it. Additionally, they and many of the other presenters for not test children due to the fact that young children’s brains are not fully developed, so can cause wrongful persuasion. However, there was some disagreement about what the age cutoff should be for children and this research – since brand perceptions can be set as young as 12.
Finn Raben was also questioned on what ESOMAR’s opinion was on the issue of children and this methodology. Noting that local legislation will vary and as a general rule, ESOMAR has 16 as a threshold for parental consent. ESOMAR puts forward guidelines and promotes best practice, so as long as there is parental consent, we can only encourage practitioners to always keep in mind – that do no harm is also a part of our practice.
The day ended with an open Q&A with the audience and the speakers and brought about some challenging discussions from the panel, clients and practitioners. Some interesting closing quotes:
- We must remember that we are not just selling to a company – but to a person behind that decision and they are evaluating risk in choosing this controversial research.
- People are scared of getting results that is different than they are used to getting. But isn’t that the point…
- Some marketers believe real creativity cannot be tested.
- We have seen that with these techniques, most of the clients are early-adopters – those wanting to get answers to questions that never had answers before..
- There seems to be a fear that Neuroscience will produce more bad news for a client.. however, you run that risk with all types of market research.
- Marketing should be science. This is evolution. Some say its about hearts and minds. Some of us say it’s all about the brain.
- Is there a buy button?
- Marketers don’t want to know how we measure… they want the answer. We must get them to see that we can provide them with the answer as well….
- Do we worry too much about comparisons to traditional research?
- As for the Future – what will not change? We will still be asking the right question and will need to choose the right tool and mix.
