Neuromarketing Abuse with Super Bowl Ads

Thank god for this analysis at Mind Hacks on the brain scan analysis of the recent Super Bowl commercials. I was reading the stories on the interpretation of what the fMRI scans tells us about their subjects' reactions to the Super Bowl ads with skepticism, even though I don't know a whole lot about the neurimaging field. Mind Hacks confirms my suspicions that the work was bad science and not to be given any heed. Neuromarketing takes on a scar with this snake oil abuse--hopefully future uses won't abuse and misuse the data so badly.

Comments

[Paul Dybala]

Hi Brent, just found your blog, nice!
I guess what strikes me funny about the Super Bowl ad research is: Why do we need to conduct a fMRI when we could just ask people what ads they like? Occam's Razor strikes again!

[bwedwards]

Hi Paul! Glad that you like the blog--I don't tell too many people about it because it's a personal site and not associated with my company.

I agree that the scientists who interpreted what their subjects thought of the commercials could have done better by simply asking the subjects. What's interesting is that they didn't appear to validate their interpretations of scans with subjective responses from the same subjects. Occam would have sliced this study up for sure!