Is the future of advertising all in your head... or a bit lower?

According to Marketing Magazine—my go-to source for trivia and 26 pages of Fall TV previews—the boomers are the segment to go after not the young people.  The piece quotes Michael Smith from Nielson Neurofocus who says that big brainy brain neuroscience guys studying whole bunch of pictures and graphs with squiggly lines from electroencephalograms are learning the way consumers respond to things. And, (better sit down) they've discovered that "older brains respond to things differently than younger brains." Smith says that as people get older the brain changes, sometimes caused by disease or degeneration and "There are differences in the ease with which the brain can recall words and memories.  There are changes in the way the brain responds to emotionally loaded information."

Good Heavens, Captain Obvious, what are we supposed to do and how are you planning to cash in on this? Well…

“It is becoming more and more important to understand how best to target that demographic,” he says. That could mean surveys, market research and focus groups to try and figure them out. But if you really want to know what they think, don’t ask them. Read their mind. That’s just basic neuromarketing.

There are some obvious steps – think, repetition in ads – for advertisers to make their ads more resonant, says Smith. But marketers need to think about the implications for an older marketplace at a more basic level – like product names. Many new products or online-based services want to come up with names that are unique to stand out online. “But that often results in names that have odd spellings or that may be hard

Much advertising follows the time-tested format of presenting a problem and then offering a solution with the product. The flaw in that format, says Smith, is that the problem is often presented in a very emotional way and, simply put, older brains don’t react the same way to those messages. “They are less easily frightened or less easily prone to be worried about negative information,” he says. “As a result they pay less attention to that sort of thing and you are less likely to hook them…Where as they respond relatively well to positive information.”

In a nutshell: to succeed, say your message often as Boomers tend to forget (because they might have brain damage); don't get to clever with brand names as Boomers get confused with all this hipster talk (brain damage, again) and; don't try emotional messaging or negative stuff because Boomers have no real feelings (possibly caused by brain damage) and aren't affected by guilt, so keep it bright and sunny

Neuroscience is the latest in a long line of pseudosciences that consumes marketers every few years.  My favourite was subliminal advertising.  You remember, the one that said advertisers were putting subliminal pictures of tits and dicks in ice cubes to make consumers unconsciously buy Pavlov's Vodka so they can get laid more often. Unfortunately, this epic example of academic phrenology has the persistence of antibiotic-resistant clap because it flares up occasionally to infect those unprotected from rational thought.

For the sake of argument, say in 20 years time Michael Smith and his neuroscience experts find the combination of brain chemicals and wiring that explains how consumers react to advertising.  This may help us target people better or make us more relevant, but it will never explain why it does.  It will never explain why art and music affect us, or why certain words or images can fill our heart with sadness or make us laugh out loud.  It will never explain why true love can happen when two people lock eyes for the first time. 

The how isn't important. No, it is the why that makes us human. And knowing the why can only come from understanding the human heart.  Good luck with that.