Maybe companies should pay less attention to what small "focus groups" say and more to what their brain scans reveal.
To predict reactions of a broader public, 31 subjects interested in quitting smoking were recruited for a focus group to evaluate samples from three antismoking ad campaigns: A (a humorous effort that empathized about the difficulty of the task), B (more serious but also empathetic), and C (lighthearted). Ads in each campaign ended by posting a hotline number for help quitting smoking. Researchers measured the viewers' neural activity as they watched. The viewers, rating the ads for their power, helpfulness, grabbiness and so on, ordered them B, A, C. But levels of brain activity in a region tied to behavioral change suggested the ranking C, B, A. That ranking better captured real-world performance. For example, Campaign C caused a 32-fold increase in calls to the hotline, in contrast to only a threefold rise for Campaign A. "From Neural Responses to Population Behavior: Neural Focus Group Predicts Population-Level Media Effects," Emily B. Falk, Elliot T. Berkman and Matthew D. Lieberman, Psychological Science (forthcoming)
No comments:
Post a Comment