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Neuroscience Research
New research in neuroscience
Reflecting on the Mirror
Here's a prediction: in the coming years, we'll see mirrors popping up in the entryways of churches and other places of worship. And the reason won't be to let those entering fix their hair. As we'll see, the mirror has a rather magical…
Do We Process Skipped Commercials?
Television advertisers have a lot to worry about these days. The traditional networks have lost market share to an explosion of specialty channels, and television as a whole is threatened by other powerful entertainment choices like the…
Marketing to the Senior Brain
Marketers know that older buyers frequently behave differently than younger ones. They tend to experiment less with new products, and often exhibit strong loyalty to the brands they have used in the past. Conventional wisdom would say these…
The Handshake – Brain Connection
Sales and business experts have always talked about the power of a handshake to make a good first impression and start building a relationship. Researchers at the University of Iowa showed that to be the case when they found that job…
Banking Mess: Blame Our Brains
As the current financial chaos moves toward some kind of resolution, there will no doubt be plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking to explain what went wrong. One group that one wouldn't expect to have explanations are neuroscientists. As…
Shake Up Your Copy
In Surprising the Brain, I wrote about a copywriting technique that replaces an expected word with an unexpected one to grab the listener's or reader's attention:
Advertising copywriters have for years used a similar technique to jar the…
Smell Better, Sell More
Does a better-smelling product work better? Probably not, but people will THINK it does. Research shows that people rated a better-smelling product higher in completely unrelated performance areas. Reading Whiff! The Revolution of…
Are Political Views Hard-wired?
We know that political marketing - the art of persuading voters to support your candidate - is perhaps the most challenging and least productive form of marketing. A couple of years ago in The Neuroscience of Political Marketing, I…
A Whiff of Our Smelly Future
Book Review: Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age
C. Russell Brumfield, author of Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age, along with co-authors James Goldney and Stephanie…
Small Favors, Big Success
Most of us need to persuade people that we don't know personally to do things. A salesperson wants to close a deal. An office worker needs to persuade the new computer guy to fix her computer first. A fundraiser wants to get a potential…