April 4, 2014 • 36 mins
Neuromarketers claim that their techniques provide new and profound insights for consumers buying everything from soda to new cars. But can they really interpret data in a way that allows them to nudge a user's subconscious mind? And, if so, what does this mean for the future?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello everyone,
my name is Matt, and this is stuff they don't
want you to know. Nett a couple of questions for you.
(00:23):
Start the show one and you don't have to answer
if you don't want to. Look, I'm gonna answer. Okay,
what was the last thing you bought? Beatles rock band
for the three sixty That was literally last thing you
bought today? Oh no, the last thing I bought today
was food? Okay, something, but yes, something that is not
(00:46):
was not marketed to me? Okay, okay, so you're sure
it wasn't marketed to you? Oh you know what, Perhaps
it was. There is a sign. There is a sign
downstairs in our lobby that yeah is prom moating their food.
I guess. Yeah. We have a place downstairs in our
building where all the podcasters have been at least once,
(01:08):
even the vegetarians and vegans in the crowd. Uh. Wherein
they sell you know, sandwiches and wraps and yogurt and granola,
and they have a salad bar and a hot bar
and you know if you you feel very uh, very
American and in poor health sometimes if you shop at
(01:29):
the hot food bar, because they charge by the pound, yeah,
which is a quick indicator of people who eat too
much and no offense to carry in. The people that
run it, hopefully, they yeah, they're wonderful people. That's why
I go there actually, And the food is pretty good.
The food is great. But man, yeah, they charge more
than uh, let's say, their competitors around the area, right,
(01:52):
But we're also paying for the convenience before we get
too derailed. The reason I ask you you already clocked
at matt is because it is strange and frightening how
oblivious most people are to the sheer up mount, this
shear magnitude of advertising that plagues us throughout a day.
(02:14):
And maybe plague isn't a fair word, how about inning
dates existence. I think we have to become somewhat blind
to some of it, because literally, wherever you look, there's
some logo, there's something selling you something. And oh yeah, well,
looking around this room, it's not so bad. It's mostly
soundproofing and tiling. Yeah, those rocket speakers though, yeah, look
(02:36):
at that apple? Oh man, uh, dixie cup? Oh no,
they got us. So just in the space of looking around,
we've already seen several logos, and if we count logos
as advertisement, then we quickly realize that this stuff is everywhere.
I guess the fancy word for it is ubiquitous. However, however, listeners,
(03:01):
you probably have already heard Matt and I talked about
Edward Burnet's and other other things in advertising, so you
are already relatively aware. I would say they're relatively aware, right, Matt, Yeah, sure.
And if you ever listened to George Carlin, or you
know a lot of these other comedians, or watched I
(03:21):
don't know anything on NPRS website or PBS with Bill Moyers,
maybe you know more about this than we do. Or
maybe you have taken a survey somewhere at a mall
or in a grocery store and it's hit you, Oh,
these people are taking the questions they're asking me and
trying to build something that I will be much more
(03:43):
likely to buy. But do you know how far this
science has evolved in a very short span of time. Uh,
we would like to today introduce you to the concept
of neuro marketing. Neuro marketing, so Matt lay it on. Mean, man,
I want some stolen cold definition here, all right, here
(04:05):
we go. So this is the definition of neuro marketing.
It's the process of researching the brain patterns of consumers
to reveal their responses to a particular advertisement or a
brand or product, and use that to develop new advertising
campaigns and branding techniques to better influence the your consumers,
(04:25):
the human beings. Yeah weird. Huh. So this means that
they're using things like m r s and CT scans,
even measuring the amount of moisture or sweat your body admits. Uh.
The people doing this, who call themselves neuro marketers, claim
that they can interpret this data and interpret it in
(04:45):
such a way that they are able to make predictions
about what consumers should buy and what kind of products
they want to see. Now, now here's a good thing
and the bad thing. But it's still debatable whether or
not this is effective, or whether it works, or how
effective it is spoiler alert. Yeah, um, but but it
is kind of an emerging um science, I guess y um.
(05:09):
We do know that there are there are there are
several pieces of the puzzle here that we do know. Yeah,
oh yeah, we know that for instance, Uh, the brain
unconsciously prepares your decision. So before you or I Matt
or you listener would consciously decide to go left or
(05:30):
right somewhere, you know, so you're walking around a trash
can or an obstacle or something. Before you consciously realize
that you're gonna go right or you're gonna go left,
your brain has already made the decision. There's a bit
of a lag time, like you're on a crappy computer
connection or something. So in two thousand eight, some scientists
in Germany published a study showing this, and here's what
(05:53):
they did. Uh, they measured somebody using their left or
right hand for a task, and they found that several
seconds before human being consciously decides what they're going to do,
the outcome can be predicted by looking at unconscious activity
in the brain. So they have them wired up to
an e g. A real one, an academic lab level,
(06:16):
not like commercial stuff as we'll find, and they saw
that some part of their brain a couple of seconds
before they said left, some part of their brain spiked
up and the decision was already made. Spooky stuff that
comes from an article in the Telegraph by Alex Hannaford. So,
so what happens in in our brains when we're watching
(06:36):
a television commercial about a sad one about puppies and
how they need to be adopted. I mean, well, there
there's something that happens you. You might tear up, you
might um, you might laugh hilarious, something you just find
so funny, maybe a beer commercial. So what's happening in
our brains when when we're watching these things? Well, one
thing is for certain, there there are brain waves that
(06:57):
are correlated to these heightened uh states of attention and
emotional reactions. So according to the researchers who are studying
these e g s, they're really saying that when you're
watching something that's compelling like this or causing an emotional response, uh,
the the electrical responses in your brain are hyper focused
(07:18):
on some of these areas and then the other um,
the other activity kind of subsides. So you're there's less
thinking going on, less activity going on in other places
besides that focused fear or um um, some finding something's
funny or romantic or whatever whatever emotion they're going for.
(07:38):
I see, So they're kind of hacking past the critical
thinking aspect of the brain to see what triggers that
immediate emotional response. So let's think of every advertisement, every
logo as essentially a pitch or proposition, right why you
should buy this. If these pitches are going to succeed,
then they have to reach that sub just level of
(08:00):
the brain where you develop initial interest in the product,
the inclination to buy it, where you have that brand loyalty.
At least that's according to a guy named A. K.
Pre Deep, the founder and chief executive of a company
called neuro Focus. Now, neuro Focus being a neuro marketing firm,
clearly as some bias, they're not gonna They're gonna be
(08:21):
the ones on the side of the argument that says
neuro marketing does work well, sure, because that's their product, right,
their brand. And to me that okay, I just want
to pause really fast. Yeah, that's a fascinating thing to me,
and I know we're going to talk about it later,
but that the idea of selling a brand is it's
in their interests to sell their brand just as much
(08:43):
as they are looking at how these other brands are
selling their brand, and that will come into play later.
Make sure wonder, Yeah, it's a meta pitch for sure.
So we know that the neuro Focus company has done
marketing tests where they take volunteers, they give them an
e G. Sensor app and an eye tracking device and
then just have them watch commercials or you know, use
(09:05):
the internet and visit a website or even watch the trailer,
and the researchers are able to watch the volunteers brain
patterns and the the eye movements, so they know exactly
what's firing when they look at this stuff. Um, and
you can. You can go online and find videos and
look at the brain patterns and eye movements for particular commercials.
(09:29):
There are several places if you just go to YouTube
and check out neuromarketing to do a search, you'll be
able to see exactly what the readout looks like for
these scientists. And so people who believe that this does
work say stuff very similar to what doctor Predep said,
which is by measuring brain waves, were able to measure attention, emotion,
and memory. So computing the subconscious response to stimuli. UM
(09:53):
get a little poetic at the interview. If you add
all these electric patterns together, you find it represents the
whispers of your brain. I mean, yeah, buy more. Soup man,
that soup looks so good, so you know they reduced
the sodium in that soup. You can tell because it's
on the label. And this weird whispering thing we're doing
(10:17):
is a true story. It's an introduction to one of
our first examples of neuro marketing, which involves dunt da
Campbell's soup. Yeah, true story, you guys, Campbell's soup. The
company hired some researchers to study microscopic changes in skin moisture,
heart rate, and other stuff to see how consumers react
(10:39):
to everything from like pictures bowls of soup to the
design of the logo. And this neural marketing approach is
kind of a fresh attempt among these consumer goods companies
to to kind of understand how consumers really respond to
their marketing. And you know, all the money that they're
spending on marketing and advertising, and it's getting cheaper and
(11:01):
cheaper and faster and faster. Uh. There are people like
Robert Barocci from the Advertising Research Foundation who says that
this allows us to build a bridge between the raw
data of brain activity to uh, the generation of meaning,
(11:21):
you know, so that we're able to somehow divine and
interpret these signs. Yeah, it is, uh, you know, because
for years Campbell's was doing the same thing that everybody
else was doing in the game. They would, you know,
you go to a marketing research thing. I don't know
if you ever did this a little sidebar here, I have,
actually not with Campbell's in particularly, I've done this, not
(11:43):
with Campbell's, but it's a great way to make a
little extra scratch on the side, you know. So I've
done it for a number of things. Um, this market
research stuff is something you can look into if you
want a little extra sporadic money, and they'll ask you
some ridiculous questions. Anyway, I digress. Here's how it goes.
They sit you down the room, Matt, you know about this,
(12:03):
They show you some things, they ask you some questions,
and then they also ask you how you feel about stuff.
So Campbell's was doing this just like pretty much any
other company under the sun. And they were showing people
ads and saying, Okay, would this ad make you more
likely to buy soup? And they they realize over time
(12:27):
that even the ads that their marketing research folks told
them were sure fire, can't miss, full proof hits. Uh
didn't really seem to affect sales one way or the other.
You know, soup sales still went up in colder months
down in hotter months. Uh, well, you know. Been The
thing I did that with was movie trailers, or they
would show you three different edits of a movie trailer,
(12:49):
and I have you answer questions about each of them,
like what do you think this the plot of this
movie is about? Who do you think the main characters are?
Do you want to watch this movie? Because you saw
this per some more it was. It's pretty horrifying that
then that that marketing research becomes what a film that's
you know, either trying to make a statement or just
(13:12):
making some money off the back of In this case, um,
let's I don't want to I don't want to see
what movie was? It was a bad it was a
terrible movie. Tell me what movie it was? Please? It
was The Love Guru, The Love Guru? Okay with Mike Myers.
Oh man, so you're responsible? Huh? Partly? One thing. Let's
(13:34):
side by this for a second again. One thing that
gets me now I want to ask you about is
have you noticed the tendency of film trailers to become
longer and longer and tell most of the story. It waits,
it waxes in waynes okay. And I would say it
depends on the how much control the director has, because
the director doesn't want to give away all the secrets
(13:55):
of the show. Yeah, the director wants you to come
and watch his story, or you know, maybe be the
writer or in some cases of the producer. Um. But yeah,
usually they want you to come and watch their whole story,
and they want to tease you to get there. I see.
But the the the money guys just want to show
you whatever is whatever they have to show you to
get you in that theater. And that is one of
(14:19):
the things that I think separates neural marketing from other
conventional market research. Going back to our Campbell's story, this
guy Robert Woodard uh he was Campbell's vice president of
Global Consumer Sales and Customer Insights, and he said that
their regular interview style wasn't that useful because people weren't
able to fully articulate their unconscious responses. So they needed
(14:43):
Campbell's being. They they needed to figure out the neurological
and bodily underpinnings to an ad. They needed to see
how people were unconsciously reacting rather than see how people
thought they were reacting. Yeah, because you don't know, man,
it's unconscious. So by two thousand eight, Mr Woodard, he
settled on the biometric tools combined with a different type
(15:06):
of deep interview. And I'd like to know more about that.
It was the blade Runner what's your address? I wish
I could do that whole thing. I know the other
guys here could do that, but yeah, he they decided
to use this deep interview to more accurately gauge which
consumer communications worked best, so Um Campbell. Campbell's then hired
(15:31):
on Interscope Research Incorporated, which is a Boston company, and
they do the same thing. They measure bodily responses, and
they also hired a couple other firms to help conduct
this this kind of research where they're looking at it's
so weird to me bodily responses to marketing, that suit
makes people too sweaty. Put it in a blue can.
(15:52):
Uh the you know, I am joking around. I don't
know if anybody did that. But the Campbell story is
pretty fascinating, and you can read about it more in
depth than an excellent article by The New York Times
and a few other publications. I'd say try The Times first.
And speaking of huge companies, Campbell's is not the only
(16:12):
company in the game, right no, oh no, freedo lay Uh.
They've been studying female brains to learn how to better
appeal to women, and their findings show that the company
could avoid pitches related to guilt and guilt free and
uh and instead play up healthy associations like Friedo's for
your health, yes, okay uh. And Microsoft is looking at
(16:36):
E e G data to understand how users interact with computers,
specifically three feelings. This is so weird, surprise, satisfaction, and frustration.
I just don't understand. Uh, I don't understand, Ben alright, whatever,
I'm satisfied by that. But Microsoft isn't the only tech
(16:57):
company getting into this racket. Oh gosh. Okay. So Google
made some waves when it partnered up with this company
called Media Vest and they they're using biomet biometrics to
study and measure the effectiveness of YouTube overlay ads as
well as pre roll ads and kind of what's the
effectiveness with the pre roll versus overlay. Well, here's the result.
(17:21):
Overlays were much more effective on the subjects because, as
you all know what happens when you see a pre
roll ad. You wait for that five seconds to pass
and you click it as quickly as you can. Yeah,
and that makes sense. I hope they didn't pay too
much money for that. I know we could have told
them another company, diam Ler. Right, it might be familiar
(17:44):
with people if you've heard Chrysler. Diame learned Diamlar Chrysler.
They employed F M R I research to inform a
campaign featuring car headlights, and they found that it hits
the rewards center of the brain when the car's headlights
help it look like human face. Wow, that's some people
buy cars. I yeah, I mean, how do you think?
(18:06):
Was it the bug? The bug was hugely popular back
in the day. I bet that's why I've been And
one more example, maybe before we go to commercial, Yes,
bend the Weather Channel uses and they used e g.
Eye tracking and skin response techniques to measure viewer reactions
to three different promotional pitches for this popular series they
(18:26):
were putting on. And I don't know exactly what they found,
but just knowing that even the Weather Channel is going, Okay,
this is a new thing. We need to get on this. Yeah,
how how do we how do we bring uh sexy
back to tornadoes? Yeah, I hope they don't talk that way.
I hope they don't talk that way. Maybe it's a
(18:47):
different show. We can dig in and get more information
on that. But now we are going to take a
brief break and we will return very soon after a
word from our sponsor. The conscious and intelligent manipulation of
(19:07):
the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an
important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the
true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our
minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely
(19:31):
by men we have never heard of. This is a
logical result of the way in which our democratic society
is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in
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smoothly functioning society. From propaganda by Edward Burnet's to learn
(19:53):
more about public relations, advertising and human brain read propaganda.
This announcement paid for as a result of ongoing litigation
on the part of Illumination Global Unlimited. This advertisement in
no way reflects the personal opinion of Illumination Global Unlimited,
its shareholders, corporate overlords, or secret society leaders. This advertisement
(20:14):
is in no way a denial nor confirmation of contact
with extra dimensional entities. This advertisement is in no way
an emission of guilt nor test and implication that you
are being controlled. This advertisement and no way relates to
from Saigon to Jakarta until the fire was contained. Illumination
Global Unlimited, Turn on the light. All right, Ben, we're
(20:42):
back um that one. That was an interesting pultro. Thereel
like some serious litigation going on with our sponsors. I mean,
I guess they're just now required to tell people about
propaganda by Edward Burns, which is a good book. We've
recommended it. Did you did you notice that part at
the end where their talking about extra dimensional entities. I'm
(21:02):
just glad we have a sponsor. Man, don't dig too deep, Okay, alright, alright,
I guess you're right. The money is good. So how
are you getting paid? Well, I mean our show is
still on. I'll sleep in my car, man. Well, yeah,
we both sleep in our cars. But the lights are
on in the studio and the mics are working. Yeah. Yeah.
But speaking of working, there's a big question about neuromarketing,
(21:24):
and that is this does it work? Does it work?
Skeptics aren't convinced that there's any proven correlation between brain
activity and ultimate predictions of what someone will buy. So
just because some part of your brain is lighting up
as seen by an e G doesn't mean that we
have solved the secret of what makes people buy Raisin brand.
(21:46):
For instance. Speaking of e g s, remember we were
talking about earlier how those researchers were using the legit
e g s, or at least the ones we are
speaking of earlier. Well, e g s can vary widely
in their effectiveness because there are you know, like any
product you can get the top of the line jagua
(22:07):
or you know, maybe someone's rolling around, I don't want
to use another, uh, like the geo metro of the
there you go, there's a geo metro of e G s,
and it can just it's just not as good unfortunately.
And another thing that we need to remember is that
e e g s need to be applied by professionals
(22:28):
who know what they're doing. And there's a reason that
in an actual study, you know, in like a medical
study or a clinical psychology study. The people applying the
e G spent a long time putting them on correctly.
So there's also a question of how how high quality
or low quality the data is. Yeah, you have, that's
(22:51):
something you have to be trained for a long time
on how to do it effectively because really you're just
getting numbers outputs in graphs and if you don't know
how to do that. And for the companies they're doing this,
the private companies, whatever you do or don't think about them, uh,
we know that their primary selling point is their methods
(23:11):
of interpretation. That's what differentiates them from one another. That's
what lets company A get better results in company B. Right, supposedly, Yeah,
here's the data, we collected it scientifically, and uh, enjoy
it's it's real until you ask, hey, how does that work?
Because that is one of the most difficult things for
(23:32):
skeptics about neuromarketing, which is that the companies are required
to keep their methods secret, you know, kind of like
a trade secret. The way that Coca Cola's actual recipe
is still a big secret, so they can't reveal their methods,
which means there's no way for somebody to independently verify
(23:53):
the results, which means that we can't really know because
reproducing result is part of what makes something real. Science. Yeah,
that's how you test the scientific method. Well okay, Ben,
Now let's really let's really get down to brass tacks here. Okay,
brass tacking. What does all of this mean, the studying
(24:15):
of our brains to even further convince us that we
need to buy products? What? What is neuro marketing? What's
it gonna do overall to advertising and marketing? Okay? Do
you want to ProCon this? I do? Okay? Uh no,
if we could have some utopian music, okay. So one
(24:39):
of the first things is that there will be better advertising.
You won't see as many ads that don't apply to you. Guys,
your days of sitting through ads for feminine hygiene products
are probably over unless your your female partner, mothers, whoever
it is, is sitting next to you. Ah yeah, but
then it's kind of aimed at them. So there will
be better advertise. Uh. There will be this use of
(25:01):
predictive data, and it will also be easier to learn
about things you might enjoy. So if you like, uh,
if you like a film or you would like a
film or a book that you would not ordinarily have
heard of. Then having this data will enable these companies
to tell you about this amazing thing that you miss.
(25:22):
And I wanna jump on this point really fast, this
utopian thing. I think this might be something that we
have to go towards because there is so much media
being generated, there are so many products being created. If
we this specialization is at the point now where if
we don't get targeted by these things, we will just
(25:43):
like you said, we will be inundated even further by
just products being thrown at us and films being shown
in television shows and YouTube shows. That's a really good point, Matt,
and I'm glad you say it because something interesting this
is not completely related to neuro marketing, but something interesting
about this is that you know, in the days of old,
(26:05):
before information was so cheap to move around the world,
the way that people kept a secret was by reducing
the amount of content in the field. So you wanted
something secret, you locked the file away, right, and you
don't tell anybody. Maybe he kills somebody if they know
about it. And now that switch is flipped. Now instead
(26:27):
of slowing things down to a trickle, or even stopping
the trickle. We've opened the floodgates, and it turns out
that in some ways it's equally difficult to find the
needle in the haystack. Um, then it is, you know,
as opposed to searching in in the dark for something
that doesn't exist. So I now I think it's time
(26:50):
for some dystopian music, right, what's the bats? All? Right,
here's the dystopian angle everybody. So constant advertising and predictive
data and lack of privacy, uninformed consumers, possible predictive mistakes.
(27:14):
How does this interact with other predictive data that's being
collected about you right now? And what are the applications
outside of the ad world? Oh, I can tell you
what war? War? Yeah? Yeah, I remember. In our stuff
on Edward Burnet's we explored how he used the same
(27:35):
advertising techniques that made bacon and breakfast food true story,
made women smoke, lucky strikes true story, and then he
transferred those skills to win support for an invasion of Guatemala. Okay,
we talked about this before, and I don't want to
belabor the point too much, but uh, the United States
(27:56):
didn't really have a compelling interest to go into Guatemala
for the good of either Guatemala's citizens or the average
Jane and Joe public In the United States, it was
for the advantage of the United Fruit Company, and he
was able to convince people using these marketing techniques that
(28:18):
this was a stand against um. What was it was
the boogeyman at the time, Communism. It's usually the boogeyman.
I can't recall. Yeah, I believe it was Communism. Four,
This invasion happened because a very convincing admin was on it.
So with the use of neuromarketing, it may be possible
(28:40):
to hack somebody's brain tapped directly into the ideas of
fear and anger and boom in another war. When I
see it's, oh man, I completely I completely see where
you're going there. It's just so tough. I don't know,
(29:01):
unless they're really good, I don't know how they're going
to convince people our age and younger than us that
we're still the way to go. I feel like we've
become we're becoming much more and more skeptical of how
the warring nature of at least our country in the
United States right well, people may be more cynical for sure. Also,
(29:25):
there might be a little bit of fatigue amid the
people who would ordinally go to war. Um, the people
who would actually serve in the military may feel that
they they've been betrayed in some ways by the leadership.
But also people may feel that it is their duty regardless.
(29:49):
You know, I can't remember the old the old poem.
Ours is not the reason why ours is but to
do and die? Um, it's pretty pretty bleak. Yeah, I
can't remember the name of the poem, but I do
remember that line sticking with me. So I guess it
just depends ben on how well this stuff works. And
if if they can convince me that we need to
(30:10):
go to war, then it's working. Okay, Yeah, and I'll
report back. I'll let you know. You're not a big
fan of war, who is? Well, yeah, there aren't a
lot of people that are. But I think especially you
and I after digging into so much of this information
and just start to realize the the external reasons for war,
(30:31):
and it's not the ones that they're telling you. Yeah. Historically,
the reasons that a group of people are told to
go to war by their leaders are often not entirely
the I'm not saying they're untrue, but they're not the
entire truth. Uh. There's another thing we should talk about here,
which would be possible mistakes, predictive mistakes. So we know
(30:55):
that in neual marketing. Again, if this actually works, they'll
be able to market towards people based on their past.
Uh data, So everything from your Facebook likes to where
your phone goes via GPS, plus what parts of your
(31:16):
brain fire when you see, you know, an xbox. And
here's where it gets strange. What if they get it wrong?
You know what happens if there's some faulty gear or
maybe when they read your data you're having an off day,
then you just spend your time doing what like constantly
(31:36):
being bombarded by you know, let's see, you're hungover. When
you somehow get your data entered, then for what what happens? Then?
Do you just for the rest of your time get
bombarded by iberproof and ads or whatever. Here here's the
messed up thing. It's probably I'm assuming that it's once
it comes into full swing and your television or your
(31:59):
xbo X or your PS four is monitoring you at
all times when you're sitting in front of your screen.
It's going to see that one day as possibly an anomaly,
and but it will still take I'm assuming this is
messed up, but I'm I'm assuming it will still take
that into consideration. That this guy gets drunk maybe on
this certain day, Yeah, maybe advil is something to this person.
(32:24):
Saturday night will advertise some sort of beer, and Sunday
morning will advertise it's it's And if you look out
in the future, you can really see. I don't know
that dystopian view hits home with me. Here's a here's
another concern about neural marketing. Um. The idea that this
(32:44):
would be continual monitoring, which you do bring up continual
biometric monitoring, which could happen is ways away for now,
but it will probably happen in our lifetimes. It'll at
least be possible for large groups of people to be
followed that way. But one other question that I have
here is is how predictive can this data be? To
(33:07):
what degree does it predict and what if any uh
legal rights or do do average consumers have Because here's
one of the worst things if we're going for the
dystopian view, and that is that with neural marketing, if
somebody has found the silver bullet, then what they're doing
(33:29):
is taking advantage of people without their knowledge and without
their consent. Um. My next question, then, going back to
the predictive data idea, is you know, how does this
how does this coalesce with privacy or with other things?
Like there was a rumor for a while and a
(33:49):
and a worry that I think is well founded when
people were on Facebook said, you know what happens if
Facebook works with out reporting agencies and then gives me
a score of some sort based on not my credit score,
but the aggregate of the people who know me? And
(34:10):
does that and and could that make the banks in
turn decide to give me a lower or a higher
interest rate? Could it affect my insurance? That's interesting? So
looking at the your closest associates to see how to
judge you building a network. You know. Oh, when I
(34:33):
first found out about it, I went through, Um, when
I saw that Facebook account, I went through and liked
a bunch of investment banks and you know, uh wealth
equity management stuff. Uh and high end cars. Oh yeah, sure.
Changed all my movies over to the Wall Street movies.
(34:54):
Uh yeah, Yeah, that's a great idea. And the only
the only groups I like our humanitarian right. We have
one other thing to do before we get out of here, uh,
and that is to issue a correction the resort we
talked about in our podcasts on deep underground military bases.
We said it was in Virginia. That is incorrect. It
(35:17):
is in West Virginia. And no offense to the people
of Virginia or the people of West Virginia. And thank
you to the great folks who wrote in to let
us know about that correction. Yeah, if you ever hear
anything like that, um, that we got wrong, just let
us know. We're not perfect, but we try to be. Yeah.
And I had a couple of shout outs that we're
supposed to give, but I'm going to hold those over
(35:38):
for the next day because I think we're pretty good
on our time here, Matt. So, so what we're gonna
do is send it to you. Guys. What do you
think what's the solution to neural marketing? Is it okay
or you're all right with it? Do you want to
have your advertising more targeted towards you? Is that a
good thing? Or should we all just turn off our
(35:59):
TVs and get rid of the internet. And go outside
and plant an orange tree. I I don't know, I
don't have the answers, but I want to hear what
you think, So write to us on Facebook. We are
conspiracy Stuff. On Twitter, we are at conspiracy Stuff. You
can find us on Stuff they Don't want you to
Know dot com. That's our home base. You can get
all of these audio podcasts there. If you're not already
(36:20):
listening to it on there. Thank you if you are.
And if you don't like any of that stuff and
you just want to send us an email, you can
do that. We are conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From
more on this topic and now they're unexplained phenomenon. Visit
test tube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
(36:42):
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello everyone,
my name is Matt, and this is stuff they don't
want you to know. Nett a couple of questions for you.
(00:23):
Start the show one and you don't have to answer
if you don't want to. Look, I'm gonna answer. Okay,
what was the last thing you bought? Beatles rock band
for the three sixty That was literally last thing you
bought today? Oh no, the last thing I bought today
was food? Okay, something, but yes, something that is not
(00:46):
was not marketed to me? Okay, okay, so you're sure
it wasn't marketed to you? Oh you know what, Perhaps
it was. There is a sign. There is a sign
downstairs in our lobby that yeah is prom moating their food.
I guess. Yeah. We have a place downstairs in our
building where all the podcasters have been at least once,
(01:08):
even the vegetarians and vegans in the crowd. Uh. Wherein
they sell you know, sandwiches and wraps and yogurt and granola,
and they have a salad bar and a hot bar
and you know if you you feel very uh, very
American and in poor health sometimes if you shop at
(01:29):
the hot food bar, because they charge by the pound, yeah,
which is a quick indicator of people who eat too
much and no offense to carry in. The people that
run it, hopefully, they yeah, they're wonderful people. That's why
I go there actually, And the food is pretty good.
The food is great. But man, yeah, they charge more
than uh, let's say, their competitors around the area, right,
(01:52):
But we're also paying for the convenience before we get
too derailed. The reason I ask you you already clocked
at matt is because it is strange and frightening how
oblivious most people are to the sheer up mount, this
shear magnitude of advertising that plagues us throughout a day.
(02:14):
And maybe plague isn't a fair word, how about inning
dates existence. I think we have to become somewhat blind
to some of it, because literally, wherever you look, there's
some logo, there's something selling you something. And oh yeah, well,
looking around this room, it's not so bad. It's mostly
soundproofing and tiling. Yeah, those rocket speakers though, yeah, look
(02:36):
at that apple? Oh man, uh, dixie cup? Oh no,
they got us. So just in the space of looking around,
we've already seen several logos, and if we count logos
as advertisement, then we quickly realize that this stuff is everywhere.
I guess the fancy word for it is ubiquitous. However, however, listeners,
(03:01):
you probably have already heard Matt and I talked about
Edward Burnet's and other other things in advertising, so you
are already relatively aware. I would say they're relatively aware, right, Matt, Yeah, sure.
And if you ever listened to George Carlin, or you
know a lot of these other comedians, or watched I
(03:21):
don't know anything on NPRS website or PBS with Bill Moyers,
maybe you know more about this than we do. Or
maybe you have taken a survey somewhere at a mall
or in a grocery store and it's hit you, Oh,
these people are taking the questions they're asking me and
trying to build something that I will be much more
(03:43):
likely to buy. But do you know how far this
science has evolved in a very short span of time. Uh,
we would like to today introduce you to the concept
of neuro marketing. Neuro marketing, so Matt lay it on. Mean, man,
I want some stolen cold definition here, all right, here
(04:05):
we go. So this is the definition of neuro marketing.
It's the process of researching the brain patterns of consumers
to reveal their responses to a particular advertisement or a
brand or product, and use that to develop new advertising
campaigns and branding techniques to better influence the your consumers,
(04:25):
the human beings. Yeah weird. Huh. So this means that
they're using things like m r s and CT scans,
even measuring the amount of moisture or sweat your body admits. Uh.
The people doing this, who call themselves neuro marketers, claim
that they can interpret this data and interpret it in
(04:45):
such a way that they are able to make predictions
about what consumers should buy and what kind of products
they want to see. Now, now here's a good thing
and the bad thing. But it's still debatable whether or
not this is effective, or whether it works, or how
effective it is spoiler alert. Yeah, um, but but it
is kind of an emerging um science, I guess y um.
(05:09):
We do know that there are there are there are
several pieces of the puzzle here that we do know. Yeah,
oh yeah, we know that for instance, Uh, the brain
unconsciously prepares your decision. So before you or I Matt
or you listener would consciously decide to go left or
(05:30):
right somewhere, you know, so you're walking around a trash
can or an obstacle or something. Before you consciously realize
that you're gonna go right or you're gonna go left,
your brain has already made the decision. There's a bit
of a lag time, like you're on a crappy computer
connection or something. So in two thousand eight, some scientists
in Germany published a study showing this, and here's what
(05:53):
they did. Uh, they measured somebody using their left or
right hand for a task, and they found that several
seconds before human being consciously decides what they're going to do,
the outcome can be predicted by looking at unconscious activity
in the brain. So they have them wired up to
an e g. A real one, an academic lab level,
(06:16):
not like commercial stuff as we'll find, and they saw
that some part of their brain a couple of seconds
before they said left, some part of their brain spiked
up and the decision was already made. Spooky stuff that
comes from an article in the Telegraph by Alex Hannaford. So,
so what happens in in our brains when we're watching
(06:36):
a television commercial about a sad one about puppies and
how they need to be adopted. I mean, well, there
there's something that happens you. You might tear up, you
might um, you might laugh hilarious, something you just find
so funny, maybe a beer commercial. So what's happening in
our brains when when we're watching these things? Well, one
thing is for certain, there there are brain waves that
(06:57):
are correlated to these heightened uh states of attention and
emotional reactions. So according to the researchers who are studying
these e g s, they're really saying that when you're
watching something that's compelling like this or causing an emotional response, uh,
the the electrical responses in your brain are hyper focused
(07:18):
on some of these areas and then the other um,
the other activity kind of subsides. So you're there's less
thinking going on, less activity going on in other places
besides that focused fear or um um, some finding something's
funny or romantic or whatever whatever emotion they're going for.
(07:38):
I see, So they're kind of hacking past the critical
thinking aspect of the brain to see what triggers that
immediate emotional response. So let's think of every advertisement, every
logo as essentially a pitch or proposition, right why you
should buy this. If these pitches are going to succeed,
then they have to reach that sub just level of
(08:00):
the brain where you develop initial interest in the product,
the inclination to buy it, where you have that brand loyalty.
At least that's according to a guy named A. K.
Pre Deep, the founder and chief executive of a company
called neuro Focus. Now, neuro Focus being a neuro marketing firm,
clearly as some bias, they're not gonna They're gonna be
(08:21):
the ones on the side of the argument that says
neuro marketing does work well, sure, because that's their product, right,
their brand. And to me that okay, I just want
to pause really fast. Yeah, that's a fascinating thing to me,
and I know we're going to talk about it later,
but that the idea of selling a brand is it's
in their interests to sell their brand just as much
(08:43):
as they are looking at how these other brands are
selling their brand, and that will come into play later.
Make sure wonder, Yeah, it's a meta pitch for sure.
So we know that the neuro Focus company has done
marketing tests where they take volunteers, they give them an
e G. Sensor app and an eye tracking device and
then just have them watch commercials or you know, use
(09:05):
the internet and visit a website or even watch the trailer,
and the researchers are able to watch the volunteers brain
patterns and the the eye movements, so they know exactly
what's firing when they look at this stuff. Um, and
you can. You can go online and find videos and
look at the brain patterns and eye movements for particular commercials.
(09:29):
There are several places if you just go to YouTube
and check out neuromarketing to do a search, you'll be
able to see exactly what the readout looks like for
these scientists. And so people who believe that this does
work say stuff very similar to what doctor Predep said,
which is by measuring brain waves, were able to measure attention, emotion,
and memory. So computing the subconscious response to stimuli. UM
(09:53):
get a little poetic at the interview. If you add
all these electric patterns together, you find it represents the
whispers of your brain. I mean, yeah, buy more. Soup man,
that soup looks so good, so you know they reduced
the sodium in that soup. You can tell because it's
on the label. And this weird whispering thing we're doing
(10:17):
is a true story. It's an introduction to one of
our first examples of neuro marketing, which involves dunt da
Campbell's soup. Yeah, true story, you guys, Campbell's soup. The
company hired some researchers to study microscopic changes in skin moisture,
heart rate, and other stuff to see how consumers react
(10:39):
to everything from like pictures bowls of soup to the
design of the logo. And this neural marketing approach is
kind of a fresh attempt among these consumer goods companies
to to kind of understand how consumers really respond to
their marketing. And you know, all the money that they're
spending on marketing and advertising, and it's getting cheaper and
(11:01):
cheaper and faster and faster. Uh. There are people like
Robert Barocci from the Advertising Research Foundation who says that
this allows us to build a bridge between the raw
data of brain activity to uh, the generation of meaning,
(11:21):
you know, so that we're able to somehow divine and
interpret these signs. Yeah, it is, uh, you know, because
for years Campbell's was doing the same thing that everybody
else was doing in the game. They would, you know,
you go to a marketing research thing. I don't know
if you ever did this a little sidebar here, I have,
actually not with Campbell's in particularly, I've done this, not
(11:43):
with Campbell's, but it's a great way to make a
little extra scratch on the side, you know. So I've
done it for a number of things. Um, this market
research stuff is something you can look into if you
want a little extra sporadic money, and they'll ask you
some ridiculous questions. Anyway, I digress. Here's how it goes.
They sit you down the room, Matt, you know about this,
(12:03):
They show you some things, they ask you some questions,
and then they also ask you how you feel about stuff.
So Campbell's was doing this just like pretty much any
other company under the sun. And they were showing people
ads and saying, Okay, would this ad make you more
likely to buy soup? And they they realize over time
(12:27):
that even the ads that their marketing research folks told
them were sure fire, can't miss, full proof hits. Uh
didn't really seem to affect sales one way or the other.
You know, soup sales still went up in colder months
down in hotter months. Uh, well, you know. Been The
thing I did that with was movie trailers, or they
would show you three different edits of a movie trailer,
(12:49):
and I have you answer questions about each of them,
like what do you think this the plot of this
movie is about? Who do you think the main characters are?
Do you want to watch this movie? Because you saw
this per some more it was. It's pretty horrifying that
then that that marketing research becomes what a film that's
you know, either trying to make a statement or just
(13:12):
making some money off the back of In this case, um,
let's I don't want to I don't want to see
what movie was? It was a bad it was a
terrible movie. Tell me what movie it was? Please? It
was The Love Guru, The Love Guru? Okay with Mike Myers.
Oh man, so you're responsible? Huh? Partly? One thing. Let's
(13:34):
side by this for a second again. One thing that
gets me now I want to ask you about is
have you noticed the tendency of film trailers to become
longer and longer and tell most of the story. It waits,
it waxes in waynes okay. And I would say it
depends on the how much control the director has, because
the director doesn't want to give away all the secrets
(13:55):
of the show. Yeah, the director wants you to come
and watch his story, or you know, maybe be the
writer or in some cases of the producer. Um. But yeah,
usually they want you to come and watch their whole story,
and they want to tease you to get there. I see.
But the the the money guys just want to show
you whatever is whatever they have to show you to
get you in that theater. And that is one of
(14:19):
the things that I think separates neural marketing from other
conventional market research. Going back to our Campbell's story, this
guy Robert Woodard uh he was Campbell's vice president of
Global Consumer Sales and Customer Insights, and he said that
their regular interview style wasn't that useful because people weren't
able to fully articulate their unconscious responses. So they needed
(14:43):
Campbell's being. They they needed to figure out the neurological
and bodily underpinnings to an ad. They needed to see
how people were unconsciously reacting rather than see how people
thought they were reacting. Yeah, because you don't know, man,
it's unconscious. So by two thousand eight, Mr Woodard, he
settled on the biometric tools combined with a different type
(15:06):
of deep interview. And I'd like to know more about that.
It was the blade Runner what's your address? I wish
I could do that whole thing. I know the other
guys here could do that, but yeah, he they decided
to use this deep interview to more accurately gauge which
consumer communications worked best, so Um Campbell. Campbell's then hired
(15:31):
on Interscope Research Incorporated, which is a Boston company, and
they do the same thing. They measure bodily responses, and
they also hired a couple other firms to help conduct
this this kind of research where they're looking at it's
so weird to me bodily responses to marketing, that suit
makes people too sweaty. Put it in a blue can.
(15:52):
Uh the you know, I am joking around. I don't
know if anybody did that. But the Campbell story is
pretty fascinating, and you can read about it more in
depth than an excellent article by The New York Times
and a few other publications. I'd say try The Times first.
And speaking of huge companies, Campbell's is not the only
(16:12):
company in the game, right no, oh no, freedo lay Uh.
They've been studying female brains to learn how to better
appeal to women, and their findings show that the company
could avoid pitches related to guilt and guilt free and
uh and instead play up healthy associations like Friedo's for
your health, yes, okay uh. And Microsoft is looking at
(16:36):
E e G data to understand how users interact with computers,
specifically three feelings. This is so weird, surprise, satisfaction, and frustration.
I just don't understand. Uh, I don't understand, Ben alright, whatever,
I'm satisfied by that. But Microsoft isn't the only tech
(16:57):
company getting into this racket. Oh gosh. Okay. So Google
made some waves when it partnered up with this company
called Media Vest and they they're using biomet biometrics to
study and measure the effectiveness of YouTube overlay ads as
well as pre roll ads and kind of what's the
effectiveness with the pre roll versus overlay. Well, here's the result.
(17:21):
Overlays were much more effective on the subjects because, as
you all know what happens when you see a pre
roll ad. You wait for that five seconds to pass
and you click it as quickly as you can. Yeah,
and that makes sense. I hope they didn't pay too
much money for that. I know we could have told
them another company, diam Ler. Right, it might be familiar
(17:44):
with people if you've heard Chrysler. Diame learned Diamlar Chrysler.
They employed F M R I research to inform a
campaign featuring car headlights, and they found that it hits
the rewards center of the brain when the car's headlights
help it look like human face. Wow, that's some people
buy cars. I yeah, I mean, how do you think?
(18:06):
Was it the bug? The bug was hugely popular back
in the day. I bet that's why I've been And
one more example, maybe before we go to commercial, Yes,
bend the Weather Channel uses and they used e g.
Eye tracking and skin response techniques to measure viewer reactions
to three different promotional pitches for this popular series they
(18:26):
were putting on. And I don't know exactly what they found,
but just knowing that even the Weather Channel is going, Okay,
this is a new thing. We need to get on this. Yeah,
how how do we how do we bring uh sexy
back to tornadoes? Yeah, I hope they don't talk that way.
I hope they don't talk that way. Maybe it's a
(18:47):
different show. We can dig in and get more information
on that. But now we are going to take a
brief break and we will return very soon after a
word from our sponsor. The conscious and intelligent manipulation of
(19:07):
the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an
important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the
true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our
minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely
(19:31):
by men we have never heard of. This is a
logical result of the way in which our democratic society
is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in
this manner if they are to live together as a
smoothly functioning society. From propaganda by Edward Burnet's to learn
(19:53):
more about public relations, advertising and human brain read propaganda.
This announcement paid for as a result of ongoing litigation
on the part of Illumination Global Unlimited. This advertisement in
no way reflects the personal opinion of Illumination Global Unlimited,
its shareholders, corporate overlords, or secret society leaders. This advertisement
(20:14):
is in no way a denial nor confirmation of contact
with extra dimensional entities. This advertisement is in no way
an emission of guilt nor test and implication that you
are being controlled. This advertisement and no way relates to
from Saigon to Jakarta until the fire was contained. Illumination
Global Unlimited, Turn on the light. All right, Ben, we're
(20:42):
back um that one. That was an interesting pultro. Thereel
like some serious litigation going on with our sponsors. I mean,
I guess they're just now required to tell people about
propaganda by Edward Burns, which is a good book. We've
recommended it. Did you did you notice that part at
the end where their talking about extra dimensional entities. I'm
(21:02):
just glad we have a sponsor. Man, don't dig too deep, Okay, alright, alright,
I guess you're right. The money is good. So how
are you getting paid? Well, I mean our show is
still on. I'll sleep in my car, man. Well, yeah,
we both sleep in our cars. But the lights are
on in the studio and the mics are working. Yeah. Yeah.
But speaking of working, there's a big question about neuromarketing,
(21:24):
and that is this does it work? Does it work?
Skeptics aren't convinced that there's any proven correlation between brain
activity and ultimate predictions of what someone will buy. So
just because some part of your brain is lighting up
as seen by an e G doesn't mean that we
have solved the secret of what makes people buy Raisin brand.
(21:46):
For instance. Speaking of e g s, remember we were
talking about earlier how those researchers were using the legit
e g s, or at least the ones we are
speaking of earlier. Well, e g s can vary widely
in their effectiveness because there are you know, like any
product you can get the top of the line jagua
(22:07):
or you know, maybe someone's rolling around, I don't want
to use another, uh, like the geo metro of the
there you go, there's a geo metro of e G s,
and it can just it's just not as good unfortunately.
And another thing that we need to remember is that
e e g s need to be applied by professionals
(22:28):
who know what they're doing. And there's a reason that
in an actual study, you know, in like a medical
study or a clinical psychology study. The people applying the
e G spent a long time putting them on correctly.
So there's also a question of how how high quality
or low quality the data is. Yeah, you have, that's
(22:51):
something you have to be trained for a long time
on how to do it effectively because really you're just
getting numbers outputs in graphs and if you don't know
how to do that. And for the companies they're doing this,
the private companies, whatever you do or don't think about them, uh,
we know that their primary selling point is their methods
(23:11):
of interpretation. That's what differentiates them from one another. That's
what lets company A get better results in company B. Right, supposedly, Yeah,
here's the data, we collected it scientifically, and uh, enjoy
it's it's real until you ask, hey, how does that work?
Because that is one of the most difficult things for
(23:32):
skeptics about neuromarketing, which is that the companies are required
to keep their methods secret, you know, kind of like
a trade secret. The way that Coca Cola's actual recipe
is still a big secret, so they can't reveal their methods,
which means there's no way for somebody to independently verify
(23:53):
the results, which means that we can't really know because
reproducing result is part of what makes something real. Science. Yeah,
that's how you test the scientific method. Well okay, Ben,
Now let's really let's really get down to brass tacks here. Okay,
brass tacking. What does all of this mean, the studying
(24:15):
of our brains to even further convince us that we
need to buy products? What? What is neuro marketing? What's
it gonna do overall to advertising and marketing? Okay? Do
you want to ProCon this? I do? Okay? Uh no,
if we could have some utopian music, okay. So one
(24:39):
of the first things is that there will be better advertising.
You won't see as many ads that don't apply to you. Guys,
your days of sitting through ads for feminine hygiene products
are probably over unless your your female partner, mothers, whoever
it is, is sitting next to you. Ah yeah, but
then it's kind of aimed at them. So there will
be better advertise. Uh. There will be this use of
(25:01):
predictive data, and it will also be easier to learn
about things you might enjoy. So if you like, uh,
if you like a film or you would like a
film or a book that you would not ordinarily have
heard of. Then having this data will enable these companies
to tell you about this amazing thing that you miss.
(25:22):
And I wanna jump on this point really fast, this
utopian thing. I think this might be something that we
have to go towards because there is so much media
being generated, there are so many products being created. If
we this specialization is at the point now where if
we don't get targeted by these things, we will just
(25:43):
like you said, we will be inundated even further by
just products being thrown at us and films being shown
in television shows and YouTube shows. That's a really good point, Matt,
and I'm glad you say it because something interesting this
is not completely related to neuro marketing, but something interesting
about this is that you know, in the days of old,
(26:05):
before information was so cheap to move around the world,
the way that people kept a secret was by reducing
the amount of content in the field. So you wanted
something secret, you locked the file away, right, and you
don't tell anybody. Maybe he kills somebody if they know
about it. And now that switch is flipped. Now instead
(26:27):
of slowing things down to a trickle, or even stopping
the trickle. We've opened the floodgates, and it turns out
that in some ways it's equally difficult to find the
needle in the haystack. Um, then it is, you know,
as opposed to searching in in the dark for something
that doesn't exist. So I now I think it's time
(26:50):
for some dystopian music, right, what's the bats? All? Right,
here's the dystopian angle everybody. So constant advertising and predictive
data and lack of privacy, uninformed consumers, possible predictive mistakes.
(27:14):
How does this interact with other predictive data that's being
collected about you right now? And what are the applications
outside of the ad world? Oh, I can tell you
what war? War? Yeah? Yeah, I remember. In our stuff
on Edward Burnet's we explored how he used the same
(27:35):
advertising techniques that made bacon and breakfast food true story,
made women smoke, lucky strikes true story, and then he
transferred those skills to win support for an invasion of Guatemala. Okay,
we talked about this before, and I don't want to
belabor the point too much, but uh, the United States
(27:56):
didn't really have a compelling interest to go into Guatemala
for the good of either Guatemala's citizens or the average
Jane and Joe public In the United States, it was
for the advantage of the United Fruit Company, and he
was able to convince people using these marketing techniques that
(28:18):
this was a stand against um. What was it was
the boogeyman at the time, Communism. It's usually the boogeyman.
I can't recall. Yeah, I believe it was Communism. Four,
This invasion happened because a very convincing admin was on it.
So with the use of neuromarketing, it may be possible
(28:40):
to hack somebody's brain tapped directly into the ideas of
fear and anger and boom in another war. When I
see it's, oh man, I completely I completely see where
you're going there. It's just so tough. I don't know,
(29:01):
unless they're really good, I don't know how they're going
to convince people our age and younger than us that
we're still the way to go. I feel like we've
become we're becoming much more and more skeptical of how
the warring nature of at least our country in the
United States right well, people may be more cynical for sure. Also,
(29:25):
there might be a little bit of fatigue amid the
people who would ordinally go to war. Um, the people
who would actually serve in the military may feel that
they they've been betrayed in some ways by the leadership.
But also people may feel that it is their duty regardless.
(29:49):
You know, I can't remember the old the old poem.
Ours is not the reason why ours is but to
do and die? Um, it's pretty pretty bleak. Yeah, I
can't remember the name of the poem, but I do
remember that line sticking with me. So I guess it
just depends ben on how well this stuff works. And
if if they can convince me that we need to
(30:10):
go to war, then it's working. Okay, Yeah, and I'll
report back. I'll let you know. You're not a big
fan of war, who is? Well, yeah, there aren't a
lot of people that are. But I think especially you
and I after digging into so much of this information
and just start to realize the the external reasons for war,
(30:31):
and it's not the ones that they're telling you. Yeah. Historically,
the reasons that a group of people are told to
go to war by their leaders are often not entirely
the I'm not saying they're untrue, but they're not the
entire truth. Uh. There's another thing we should talk about here,
which would be possible mistakes, predictive mistakes. So we know
(30:55):
that in neual marketing. Again, if this actually works, they'll
be able to market towards people based on their past.
Uh data, So everything from your Facebook likes to where
your phone goes via GPS, plus what parts of your
(31:16):
brain fire when you see, you know, an xbox. And
here's where it gets strange. What if they get it wrong?
You know what happens if there's some faulty gear or
maybe when they read your data you're having an off day,
then you just spend your time doing what like constantly
(31:36):
being bombarded by you know, let's see, you're hungover. When
you somehow get your data entered, then for what what happens? Then?
Do you just for the rest of your time get
bombarded by iberproof and ads or whatever. Here here's the
messed up thing. It's probably I'm assuming that it's once
it comes into full swing and your television or your
(31:59):
xbo X or your PS four is monitoring you at
all times when you're sitting in front of your screen.
It's going to see that one day as possibly an anomaly,
and but it will still take I'm assuming this is
messed up, but I'm I'm assuming it will still take
that into consideration. That this guy gets drunk maybe on
this certain day, Yeah, maybe advil is something to this person.
(32:24):
Saturday night will advertise some sort of beer, and Sunday
morning will advertise it's it's And if you look out
in the future, you can really see. I don't know
that dystopian view hits home with me. Here's a here's
another concern about neural marketing. Um. The idea that this
(32:44):
would be continual monitoring, which you do bring up continual
biometric monitoring, which could happen is ways away for now,
but it will probably happen in our lifetimes. It'll at
least be possible for large groups of people to be
followed that way. But one other question that I have
here is is how predictive can this data be? To
(33:07):
what degree does it predict and what if any uh
legal rights or do do average consumers have Because here's
one of the worst things if we're going for the
dystopian view, and that is that with neural marketing, if
somebody has found the silver bullet, then what they're doing
(33:29):
is taking advantage of people without their knowledge and without
their consent. Um. My next question, then, going back to
the predictive data idea, is you know, how does this
how does this coalesce with privacy or with other things?
Like there was a rumor for a while and a
(33:49):
and a worry that I think is well founded when
people were on Facebook said, you know what happens if
Facebook works with out reporting agencies and then gives me
a score of some sort based on not my credit score,
but the aggregate of the people who know me? And
(34:10):
does that and and could that make the banks in
turn decide to give me a lower or a higher
interest rate? Could it affect my insurance? That's interesting? So
looking at the your closest associates to see how to
judge you building a network. You know. Oh, when I
(34:33):
first found out about it, I went through, Um, when
I saw that Facebook account, I went through and liked
a bunch of investment banks and you know, uh wealth
equity management stuff. Uh and high end cars. Oh yeah, sure.
Changed all my movies over to the Wall Street movies.
(34:54):
Uh yeah, Yeah, that's a great idea. And the only
the only groups I like our humanitarian right. We have
one other thing to do before we get out of here, uh,
and that is to issue a correction the resort we
talked about in our podcasts on deep underground military bases.
We said it was in Virginia. That is incorrect. It
(35:17):
is in West Virginia. And no offense to the people
of Virginia or the people of West Virginia. And thank
you to the great folks who wrote in to let
us know about that correction. Yeah, if you ever hear
anything like that, um, that we got wrong, just let
us know. We're not perfect, but we try to be. Yeah.
And I had a couple of shout outs that we're
supposed to give, but I'm going to hold those over
(35:38):
for the next day because I think we're pretty good
on our time here, Matt. So, so what we're gonna
do is send it to you. Guys. What do you
think what's the solution to neural marketing? Is it okay
or you're all right with it? Do you want to
have your advertising more targeted towards you? Is that a
good thing? Or should we all just turn off our
(35:59):
TVs and get rid of the internet. And go outside
and plant an orange tree. I I don't know, I
don't have the answers, but I want to hear what
you think, So write to us on Facebook. We are
conspiracy Stuff. On Twitter, we are at conspiracy Stuff. You
can find us on Stuff they Don't want you to
Know dot com. That's our home base. You can get
all of these audio podcasts there. If you're not already
(36:20):
listening to it on there. Thank you if you are.
And if you don't like any of that stuff and
you just want to send us an email, you can
do that. We are conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From
more on this topic and now they're unexplained phenomenon. Visit
test tube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
(36:42):
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
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