Point of view: Reading minds
Joe Mandese
As long as ad agencies have been making and placing ads, Madison Avenue has been trying to figure out how they influence the way consumers think, feel and are motivated about brands. But, until recently, most ad executives had to rely on proxy research that either asked people what they thought, or tracked how they behaved.
As sophisticated as those methods may be, they don't really deal with the most fundamental thing influencing how humans behave: our brains. Breakthroughs in neuro-science over the past decade have led to better understanding of how our...