Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy

Buyology by Martin Lindstrom explores the effectiveness of marketing practices through neuroscientific studies conducted using fMRI scans and Steady State Topography (SST) readings. This book, published in 2008, makes some lofty predictions with varying degrees of accuracy.

The book begins with a foreword written by Paco Underhill that doesn’t do much to introduce the subject matter of the book but does a great job of stroking the author’s ego. Something he does a great job of himself throughout the rest of the book. Martin has multiple references in this book about how surprisingly young he looks. I found pictures of him online and (to me) he looks his age. I don’t know where this is coming from or if it’s a narrative he’s trying to create. He also brags about building a mini–Lego Land in his backyard when he was 11 like it made him a marketing wunderkind. The dirt pile I made in my yard didn’t make me a land development prodigy. Martin is an obvious authority in this space but the odd number of unnecessary brags he put in his book is so strange to me. This man also had a weird fixation with the iPod, and he gave a shout out to his website at the end of the 11th chapter. Okay, now that I got that out of my system, onto the meat and potatoes.

There were several studies mentioned throughout the book, not conducted by Martin that I was told about multiple times in A&M’s marketing department. Like how music influenced what type of wine people buy, a fake subliminal marketing study, and the importance of the Daisy political ad. I wouldn’t be surprised if this book is sitting on every one of my former marketing professors’ bookshelves.

Martin’s neuroscientific study looked at 2,081 people’s mental activity relating to brands. Participants were from the U.S., Germany, England, Japan, and China. Questions answered included: how effective are cigarette warnings, how effective are product placements, and does sex sell.

The results of research relating to cigarettes were especially surprising. The night I read it I had a dream where I got addicted to nicotine. Results of SST readings and fMRI scans showed that while smokers claimed that warning labels including the risks of smoking or even pictures depicting the results of smoking made them want to quit when it actually triggered their urge to smoke. On top of that, because cigarette companies have done such a great job of giving associations to their products, like Camel with camels or Marlboro with the color red and the cowboy Marlboro Man, seeing everyday items related to the cigarette brands could trigger smokers to light up.

When it came to product placements, it was found that they were only valuable when the product is central to the narrative of where it is being displayed. These findings came from a study where participants watched American Idol and it was discovered that while Coke and Singular were recalled easier due to their prevalence in the show, Ford was forgotten as it only had ad spots between the content people cared about. I do have some concerns about these results specifically since by Martin’s own admission, car advertisements mostly look exactly the same and are easily forgettable. What made these Ford ads different from Ram or Chevy? If it was a ChapStick commercial would that have been more memorable? Was the poor recall due to Ford’s airtime just being ad breaks or were the advertisements not particularly memorable.

Miles Morales having a Beats speaker in his dorm won’t make people want to buy one, but making his headphones, which are central to his character, Beats might get people to buy them. It was found that after the release of ET, Reese’s Pieces had an increase in sales because they were featured in the movie in a way that was central to the plot. The same goes for Ray Bands and their appearance in Risky Business and Men in Black II. This section also reminded of Waye’s World and the product placements they unnatural slide into the middle of their movie that are extremely obvious. They’re not central to the plot, but it’s also jarring and comical.  Was that edge case effective? Or how about the show Baskets which featured Arby’s strongly even though was allegedly no deal between Arby’s and the show and its placement made fun of the establishment. What kind of effect does that kind of product placement have?

Martin also discovered empathy? He found that people’s brains will go through the mental motions of some explicit actions or mimic feelings of people it observes. These mirror neurons are the reason you cringe when you something unpleasant happen to someone on tv or get uncomfortable when you imagine the idea of not having a limb. As people start to disconnect from reality, consuming content quicker and quicker, I wonder if this feeling will fade or if it will grow stronger as more people need to live vicariously through others posted experiences.

He also found the strength of ritual and a connection between brands and religion. As someone who embraces ritual, patterns, and habits, I can attest to its power over me. I default to the same pasta boxes, same sauce styles, and frozen pizzas. I live by a code. Martin found that the areas of the brain that were activated when people thought of religious experiences were very similar to ones that were activated when people thought about companies with strong brands like Apple. Many joke already that Apple is a religion, so it looks like there’s some truth to that.

The last big finding presented were somatic markers and their control over decision making. They also had a great impact on sensory marketing. Somatic markers are associations that are made and can consciously or unconsciously influence behavior. Why is your favorite color what it is? Maybe it reminds you of a childhood memory, a feeling, an object that has some kind of significance. When you tell yourself it’s yellow, you’re not remembering seeing Bumblebee in the Transformers movie and how much of an impact it had on your child brain, you just know that your favorite color is yellow. Some companies use smell and sound to create somatic markers or activate existing ones. Giving a store a scent to make users feel at ease or playing a certain music so they walk through the store quicker or slower.

Some crazy predictions made were that in 2030, times square would not be home to the many visual advertisements it contained in 2008 but instead the area would be filled with sound and smells that would attract consumers. I think this was an exaggeration but it’s still wild that he would say that. One thing that made sound and smell so effective is that they stood out compared to the crowded visual medium. I would assume making a shopping center one big stink bomb would just give people headaches. Martin also predicted that spending would never recover after the 2008 collapse and that people would be more cautious going forward no matter how good the economy got. Almost every large chain still offers a credit card and reckless spending still exists, so I don’t know about that one. Then again, I was 6 in ’08. Maybe for those who went through it as adults, they continue to live in preparation for the next crisis. Then again, COVID came and people were so not prepared to be out of work the government started giving everyone free money.

Lindstrom predicted that neuroscience marketing would be the future of marketing and that it would be used by almost every company. It would decide what was on tv, what flavors of Pringles would be made, and who would run the oval office. I don’t think, 16 years later, neuromarketing is where he thought it would be. The rise of digital quantitative data collection allowing for greater surveying and A/B testing allows for companies to continually improve their offerings and track results to a greater degree than what was possible in 2008. He also predicted that user generated advertising campaigns would become more successful over time and boy did he hit the nose with the hammer (or whatever that expression is). Social media has been a marketer’s playground for getting people to interact with brands.

Martin mentioned a Spider-Man 3 advertising campaign where movie theaters put urinals high up on the wall. The joke being you would need to climb the wall like Spider-Man to use it. I looked online and what I found was that that was for Spider-Man 2, not 3. The website where I found it published the image September 1st, 2009. Maybe they did it for both movies, maybe Martin got confused.