Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). Social Proofing. Tribalism. What are the most powerful psychological triggers for shaping consumer behavior and beliefs? In an all-new episode, we get insights from Jake McKenzie, CEO of Birmingham, AL-based Intermark Group, one of the nation's top psychology-driven ad agencies. By blending sociology, psychology, behavioral economics, and technology, it's possible to dramatically increase the efficacy of marketing programs. The problem: Far too many marketers start with a creative concept informed by demographic data masquerading as insight. In this can't-miss episode, we explore ways to hack the human psyche to boost marketing performance.

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IN THIS EPISODE:

🧐 An introduction to applied research and "creative psychology" (at 01:01)

🛍️ Adding psychographic insights to demographic data to optimize outcomes (01:43)

🦏 Animal House: Mohawk Flooring's carpet ride to market dominance (03:33)

📍 Building a better brief: Inside the mind-mapping process to make insights actionable (06:59)

👩🏼‍🦱 The problem with marketing personas: Context is everything (08: 57)

👀 The power of psychological heuristics like Social Proofing (10:36)

🍎 Who cares about product specs? Peer pressure doesn't fall far from Apple (12:50)

😳 Juicing demand by building a sense of scarcity–and why too many brands fear it (14:15)

🤓 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and advances in neuromarketing (16:23)

👥 Focus groups: The need to get past what participants tell you (17:44)

🚭 Smoking surprise: The least and most predictive indicators of a future purchase (18:33)

🙅🏽‍♀️ Why anti-drug campaigns fail to leverage what works in changing behavior (20:13)

✊🏼 Harley-Davidson & Rita's Italian Ice: How brands can tap tribal psychology (21:03)

Approx. 24 minutes, 18 seconds. For US audiences. Review cookie and privacy policies for iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and all other streaming services.

🚙 In the conclusion this last week's episode: The Ricks look at a surprising new list of the most-loved car brands for Millennials, Gen X and more. Epic Games Takes Aim at Apple. Plus: What shoppers think about your store's mask requirement, and more. From September 6. 

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IN THIS EPISODE

⚡️This List of Top 5 Car Brands by Generation is Electrifying (at 20-seconds)

⏲ The Ricks Look Inside an Internet Minute (at 3-min, 50-sec)

🍎 Epic Games Spoof of Apple's '1984' Hits Hard (at 5:18)

⏳Christopher Nolan's Sci-Fi Actioner 'Tenet' Hits Theaters (at 5:45)

😷 What Shoppers Think About Stores That Require Masks (at 6:18)

⚖️ How Many Companies Use A/B Testing to Increase Landing Page Conversion? (at 7:09)

Approximately 9-minutes, 26-seconds. For US audiences.
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💥In Part 2 of our latest episode, the Ricks are flummoxed by Amazon's frustrating new release schedule for "The Boys" Season 2. Burger King co-opts Twitch's donation system and not everyone's happy. And HBR puts the data to why you really don't want to cut spending right now. From Sept. 1.

IN THIS EPISODE:

🦹‍♂️ "The Boys" Season 2: Three episodes up front, but then only 1 per week? Say it ain't so, Amazon! (at :20-seconds)

🥊Who'd Win a Fight Between John Wick and Neo from "The Matrix"? (at 2:07)

🍔Whopper Handout: Burger King's latest marketing stunt co-opts Twitch Streamers' donation system (at 5:39)

📊HBR on why you really don't want to cut marketing, R&D and more right now (at 8:39)

Approximately 12-minutes, 42-seconds. For US audiences.
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Dos Equis toasts its new six-foot-long social distancing cooler. The secrets of latent semantic indexing. The secret "Princess Pride" remake. And WTAF is "It Is What It Is"? The Ricks have answers—plus some Loaded Questions of their own. From July 5.

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IN THIS EPISODE

🇺🇸Fourth of July memories (at 1-min, 4-sec)

👸🏽Something to Quibi about: Celebrities stage their own "Prince Bride" fan film (at 2:32)

📱MIT Tech Review: What grown-ups don't get about teens, tech, and social media (at 4:19)

📺Mental Floss unearths cringeworthy commercials from the '80s and '90s (at 6:45)

😎Dos Equis has a new seis-foot ice cooler for a summer of social distancing (at 9:30)

🤖'b' role: The new sci-fi thriller starting an actual AI robot in the leading role (at 11:09)

🗂What you need to know about Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) (at 12:36)

👁👄👁"It Is What It Is" wasn't what you thought it was (at 14:00)

Approximately 16-minutes, 13-seconds. For US audiences.
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It's a quick round of Loaded Questions as we reveal the five most beloved brands to Millennials. From March 22.

IN THIS EPISODE

🥜 Enter: Gif Peanut Butter - but isn't it really a soft "G"? (at :25 seconds)

💘 Which 5 brands have Millennials needing a few minutes alone? (at 1:35)

💗 … And what about Generation Z? (at 3:05)

📖 Ebooks and white papers: Where do they best fit in the marketing funnel (at 3:3)

OR

Listen: ❤️ 5 Brands Millennials Love Most Gif Peanut Butter & EBooks' Spot in the Marketing Funnel

Approx. 5 minutes, 12 seconds. For US audiences. Review cookie and privacy policies for iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and all other streaming services.

IN THIS EPISODE:

Welcoming our new sponsor, Taskin—the first name in stylish, premium-quality travel gear—taskinsf.com (at 1 minute 32 sec)

Singles Day scores $1 billion in its first :60-seconds. "Arson Frog" and "Okay Boomer" have meme warfare raging among generations. Plus: Twinkies cereal ignites a social media storm, what fMRI tells us about holiday shopping behaviors, why the future of VR may stink, Loaded Questions, and more.  

IN THIS EPISODE

📺 'Prime' Evil: 'Man in the High Castle' Season 4 (at 1 minute, 43 sec)

🤯 Meme Warfare: 'Arson Frog' Catches Fire as 'Okay Boomer' Explodes (at 3:26)

💩 Smell-o-Vision: Why the Future of VR Might Stink (at 5:50)

💰 $1 Billion Sold in :60-Seconds: Our Singles Day Scorecard (at 7:16)

🤢  Turducken Pringles: Any way you stack 'em, someone's sure to cry fowl (at 8:53)

🥣 Twinkies for Breakfast: Social Media Cause Célèbre—or Cereal Offender?  (at 10:08)

👺 Why Deep Fakes Mean Real Trouble for Business in 2020 (at 11:44)

🛍 Google Data: Top 3 Best (and Worst) Holiday Purchase Influencers (at 13:06)

🧠 What fMRI Brain Scans Tell Us About True Shopping Influencers (at 13:50)

🎅🏼 Six Fewer Days for St. Nick: Online Retail's Race Against the 2019 Calendar (at 14:58)

Listen via streaming, or click here

Approx. 16 min, 5 sec. For US audiences. Review cookie and privacy policies for iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and all other streaming services.

You know the old joke: If Henry Ford had asked consumers whether they’d be interested in an automobile, they’d have told him no—they really just wanted a faster horse.

For all the targeting capabilities martech is bringing to bear these days, it may offer less than we realize in understanding, much less predicting, what products we are most likely to buy, or what we really want from a brand.

The fact is, people may not (in fact, usually don’t) really know what they prefer, or they may edit their real preferences when asked about them—revealing what they think they think, or what they'd like to think they think. Social desirability (the urge to seek approval) may shade their responses. Or they may just want to pick “the right answer” in surveys and focus groups.

Which brings in the whole field of neuromarketing and the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), or “brain scans,” to quite quickly and accurately assess the neurological impact of advertising across the parts of the brain associated with "value," "emotion," and "motivation," according to Insead Knowledge.

Ferreting Out Focus Group Fallacies

As I discussed in my book The On-Demand Brand, scientists at Baylor University, for instance, have used fMRI to determine true preference for Coke or Pepsi, and scientists at UCLA can tell whether you’re really a Republican or a Democrat. Meanwhile, Mars long ago discovered that fMRI had the most predictive of in-market ad effectiveness. Survey results didn't even come close. Put another way, fMRI "shows that when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences), rather than information (brand attributes, features, and facts)."

As Insead puts it, advances in Electroencephalography (EEG) also show promise in assessing memory processing, attention, and emotional engagement. According to Martech Advisor, for instance, Cheetos once discovered that while focus group participants said they didn't like an edgy prankvertising-style commercial, brain scans showed they actually loved the spot. Participants said they didn't want to admit liking it for fear of being judged. The prank campaign was a huge success and helped Cheetos position itself around mischievousness and thrill-seeking.

Perhaps more importantly, these technologies are helping marketers understand how to manipulate consumer emotional response as well. Harvard Business Review once famously pointed out that fMRI showed that showing a higher price tag while people were tasting identical wines made the wine taste better—by "changing the actual neural signature of the taste."

From Brand Promotion to Breaking-and-Entering?

Still, the whole notion of neuromarketing raises serious questions. What happens when guesswork is taken out of advertising?

As Campaign recently pointed out, technological advances are such that we're not far from a day when your brain's activity signals will be made available to a degree in which "brands will be able to literally read the market's mind, in real time." One can just imagine what brands—or platforms such as say, Facebook—might do with that kind of intelligence.

What happens when the same technologies that track our behavior can also scan our brains as we drive past billboards or walk into stores, to send us just the right pitch—nearly guaranteed to work—right at the most opportune moment?

What responsibility do marketers bear in protecting consumer privacy and, for lack of a better term, mental sovereignty? What do we, as a society, need to do to make sure that happens?

A haunted house that's so scary, it requires a 40-page waiver. Why lab-grown brain matter may be sentient. Kellogg's follows the Ricks lead on cereal-infused IPAs. Marvel's latest ugly Christmas sweaters, and a whole lot more.

IN THIS EPISODE:

👨🏻‍🚒 Burn Notice: Dry, windy conditions have California in the hot seat (at :52 seconds)

💀Hell House: A haunted mansion that's so scary, nobody has made it through—despite a $20K reward (at 1:41)

🧠 Is lab-grown brain matter sentient? Science says it's a nightmare possibility (at 4:07)

🥪 Love at first bite? Lays' new Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup potato chips (at 6:02)

🍺 Did the Ricks inspire Kellogg's new Corn Flakes IPA? We'd drink to that (at 6:47)

🎅🏼 Ho-Ho-Hostess: Chocolate Mint Twinkies take the holidays by storm (at 8:55)

😋 Rick W. may need a few minutes alone with his It's-It (at 9:51)

🗿Chocolate-covered Oreos for the ages (at 12:08)

👻 Sheet Hits the Fans: Marvel's new trio of ugly Christmas sweaters (at 13:00)

🧛🏼‍♂️ Halloween Sales: Flying broomsticks, or down for the count? (at 14:12)

🤢 Beware the Booger, Man: This year's best tasting Halloween candy (at 15:55)

🧙🏼‍♀️ Bloody AOL: This year's most popular Halloween costumes (at 16:50)

Or Listen Here 🎃Season 3 Premiere World's Scariest Haunted House Marvel's Horrific New Christmas Sweaters Kellogg's Corn Flakes IPA & More

Approximately 18 min, 7 sec. For US audiences. Review cookie and privacy policies for SoundCloud, iTunes, Spotify, and all other streaming services.

DIY audio deepfakes. Tinder's new choose-your-own-adventure streaming series. The new app that tells you if the people texting you are being flirtatious, or if you're strictly friendzone. Plus more. 

IN THIS EPISODE: 

💥 JJ Abrams enters the Spider-verse, with a little help from his son (at 48 seconds)

😍 Flirt-worthy, or strictly friendzone? A new app scans your text conversations to find out (at 2 min, 52 sec)

🙅🏻‍♂️ A new app allows you to create audio deepfakes of yourself—so what could go wrong? (at 4:51)

☕️ Is it Pumpkin Spice—or poison? And did a 23-year-old woman just find out the hard way? (at 5:58)

💏 Swipe left or right? Tinder's new choose-your-own-adventure-style streaming series (at 8:02)

🥤 Shake a Coke and a Smile: New Coke cans trigger cool new augmented reality experiences (at 9:18)

🎧 Thanks to Google algorithm updates, podcasts are the new webpage (at 13:03)

📰 What those Google algorithm changes mean to news aggregators may be bad news

🛒 Which generation has the most ethical shoppers? Spoiler alert: It's not the Boomers

🎅🏼 It's still summer, so of course these two brands are already running Christmas ads

Or Listen on iTunes

Approx 17 min, 34 sec.

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