We Can Now Understand How Advertising Really Works

In the Bill Harvey Consulting BHC tenyear MMM study of top automotive CPG and QSR advertisers in the US sponsored by FOX fewer than one in five brands grew market share since 2014 This strongly suggests the need to go beyond amp8220generally accepted practicesamp8221 proving that it is time to crack the code on how advertising really worksThe generally accepted belief systems in the industry are based on the assumption that questionnairebased measurements are good enough However these generally tap only the conscious verbal mind which is only one function of the mind and Jerry Zaltmanamp8217s 2003 classic How Customers Think established that this part of the mind contributes only 5 to the decision to choose your brandAlmost all large brands today rely on questionnairebased data to segment markets psychologically establishing personas that relate to the different product features in the product category Then they try to target these segments by media data demographic lookalike modelling using ID graphs which are accurate about half the time according to CIMM and TruthsetLike the guy who dropped his car keys down the street but who is looking for them under the streetlight instead the industry has tended to accept whatever tools are at hand that their competitors are using Now that billions of devices have cameras that can see the audience direction of gaze is the latest craze and a myth that is almost universally accepted is that conscious attention must be achieved in order for an ad to work However as predicted by Zaltman neuroscientists are clear in telling us that conscious attention is not a necessity for an ad to have influence because so much of our behavior is driven by subconscious factors Direction of gaze being on the screen bearing the ad does help ads work but only slightlyWhat then is most important in terms of getting the most brand growth from advertisingThe ad must resonate with the deep motivations of the audience in order to cause brand growthWhat are the deep motivations They are what drives the person to do what they do to be who they are The individual rarely has a clear picture of his or her own deep motivations They may be conscious of the product features that matter to them and advertising has focused on product features because they are amp8220mentally availableamp8221 to marketers even though everyone now knows that behavioral economics has proved that consumers do not depend upon rational reasoning to make brand choices as Jerry Zaltman tried to teach us more than two decades ago Jerry also patented the ZMET method of tapping the subconscious similar to the thematic apperception test TAT using drawings to determine the metaphors in the mind relating to brand choice in the product category or to any other decisionmaking behaviorA more scalable method was developed over a 30year period of studying the problem and attacking it with neuroscience AI ML machine learning and big data It centers on passively measuring an individualamp8217s content consumption in order to see what motivates them behaviorally It also uses experiments to test whether specific stimuli affect changes in behavior The system which I developed starting in the 20th Century is now productized by a company I cofounded RMT and its partners including Wharton Neuroscience SambaSemasio Vividata et alFOX is sponsoring a laboratory study with BHC and Wharton Neuroscience which has been producing results presented so far at two ARF annual conferences and a new paper has been accepted to be presented at ARFamp8217s AUDIENCExSCIENCE 2025 in March One recent finding is shown below Wharton has established that a specific EEG metric called amp8220synchronyamp8221 is the EEG metric that is most highly predictive of an adamp8217s sales effect The chart below establishes that direction of gaze and even the more granular amp8220fixationsamp8221 eye camera metric is only slightly predictive of synchrony whereas the RMT motivation resonance method is the most predictive metric ever found so far for synchronyamp160The first moment of truth is when the ad comes upon the scene and the viewer subconsciously experiences it through subliminal apperception If the ad resonates with the subconscious motivations of the viewer it will be brought to conscious attention Motivational resonance is what causes attention and persuasion when the ad establishes a different brand perception that resonates more with the personamp8217s deep motivations than the previous brand perception held by that person and therefore incremental sales new customer acquisition and brand growth This is illustrated in the following schematic which Wharton Neuroscience considers amp8220spot onamp8221 although a amp8220simplified approximationamp8221amp160Readers familiar with the work of neuroscientists Karl Friston andor Lisa Feldman Barrett will recognize the prediction engine in the brainmind system Some of us have fallen in love with these theories In my case it was largely because I had detected and reported the predictionmaking behavior in myself through disciplined introspection in my 1976 book Mind Magic1 In a recent Zoom salon VML Group Director amp8211 Marketing Effectiveness and Intelligence Jerry Nevins briefly introduced a gathering of RMT executives and Wharton neuroscientists to Active Inference what Karl Friston calls his theory of the Prediction Engine which I consider to be a amp8220bioAIamp8221 amp8211 the neuroscientists were of course already familiar with it Here is a 12minute video from that Zoom for you to enjoy if such things attract you as they do meWhat practical advice do these neuroscience discoveries about advertising evoke A brand marketer must put more effort into understanding the deep motivations of the prospect and the current customer RMT science sharpened by machine learning identifies 15 deep motivational clusters containing in aggregate a total of 265 feelings Interestingly Dr Michael Platt of Wharton Neuroscience indicates that neuroscience has identified about the same number of Value Signals in the brain which are electrochemical phenomena which appear to fMRI scans during a subjectamp8217s choice behavior Could there be a 11 match between these electrochemical markers and RMTamp8217s semantic markers That is Michaelamp8217s hypothesis which we will be testingIn Canada Vividata has adopted the RMT system and is regularly reporting the deep motivations of brand loyal users and occasional users as well as competitive brand users Dr Pat Pellegrini who helped validate the RMT system when he was President of Simmons in the US now is CEO of Vividata amp8220the MRISimmons of Canadaamp8221 and RMT Advisor Josh Chasin copresented RMT Vividata findings with the cooperation of Initiative Media and Horizon Media at the recent ASI annual conference in Venice Italy In the US and Canada RMT partner SambaSemasio has advanced audience IDs reflecting RMT deep motivations for 316 million people and also has deep motivations for advertiserused websites and pages as well as for apps Thus there are tools at the ready for marketers to use to learn about deep motivations that they could prioritize in their creative briefs Experiments we have reported here before indicate that using the RMT Semasio advanced audiences can nearly double the incremental sales effects of a programmatic CTV or display campaignAs advertisers and their agencies become more savvy about resonating with target audiences by focusing on their deep motivations we should expect to see an increase of the growth of brands which have not been showing growth for yearsJerry Zaltman CommentsBill here are the amp8220refinementsamp8221 I promised re my naamp239ve and grossly generous claim that only 5 of thought is conscious That statement was a consensus thought among experts at the time It isnamp8217t correct Partly because we have no way of estimating itI argue in Dare to Think Differently that a mindamp8217s complexity is such that all conscious thought ie those we are aware of has its primary residence in an unconscious inventory It dwells beneath awareness though obviously capable of reaching awareness However not everything in our unconscious inventory of thought ie below awareness can be conscious Further I argue there is just one mind or residence not two eg conscious vs unconscious Additionally not everything in it can be measured or reliably estimated Nowhere is this more correct than when it comes to a mindamp8217s contents Given the complexities of what gives rise to a mind amp8211 which is way way more than a single organ a brain amp8211 it is safer to say that in a given moment we are aware of an immeasurably tiny bit of what a mind contains that drives our actionsWe knew in 1976 that the mind is always making predictions amp8220When you are about to see something your mind automatically searches your memory for a comparable object note the distinction between you seeing something and your mind having already seen it If your mind finds something similar enough it projects the stored image onto the new object so that you do not ever see the new object but are merely dimly aware that there is a familiar type of object there Dissonance is not triggered and this allows your attention freedom to concentrate on remaining percepts for which your mind has not found a suitable match As a result of this you mostly do not perceive your environment instead perceiving mostly what you expect to perceive ie you usually see your mindamp8217s prediction Since most objects have more relevant detail than you have ever noticed this process robs you of the opportunity to add detail to your image of most objects In some cases the mental projection that you see is significantly different from the reality you do not seeamp8221 amp8211Mind Magic Chapter One The brainmindamp8217s predictions is mentioned in many chaptersPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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