excerpt from The Guardian:Â “Robin Wight…is president of the Engine Group, which encompasses 13 media businesses…the future for advertising isn’t just about building organisations; for Wight it is also about brain science. He is zealous, fanatical even, about the potential of mapping brains in greater detail and discovering what makes us tick. It is the “future of advertising – of everything”, he says…The theory of memes, Wight believes, is the most interesting idea of the past 50 years; and it helps to explain how ads that make an impact …
“It’s still controversial but in the future we’ll find little synaptic connections that represent the Guardian, BMW, all these brands. You put an electrode on someone’s head and say Jennifer Aniston, for example, and one neuron fires,” Wight says. “It took 50 years after genes were conceived of to find them in the body and it may take another 50 before we find memes – but we will find little clusters, bundles of connections that represent brands.”
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If we could scientifically measure which adverts worked, he says, then there wouldn’t be any need for an “avalanche of annoying ads”… Scanning brains is no different from focus grouping, he believes – just more effective. “…
“Just imagine if you could pre-test an ad and you knew it would make people happy and it would be effective…You’d only be exposed to ads that engage with you – the products that fail won’t be offered. You’re not manipulating people, you’re just measuring which particular thing has an impact.”
‘It’s the future of advertising, of everything’. Jo Adetunji. Guardian. February 23, 2009
