Anti-Smoking Warnings Make You Want to Smoke, Claims Study

Ad-industry pundit Martin Lindstrom busts commonly held beliefs about marketing, asserting that subliminal advertising does exist and maintaining that cigarette warning labels make smokers want to smoke more, not less.

Buyology: Truth and Lies About What We Buy," published by Doubleday, lays out the findings of a three-year, $7 million neuromarketing study by Mr. Lindstrom, who is chairman-CEO of Lindstrom Co. He and a team of researchers in Oxford, England, used the most up-to-date neurotechnologies. on 2,000 people from five countries in an effort to better understand consumer behavior.

Mr. Lindstrom said one of the most surprising findings of the study involved warning labels placed on cigarette packs. When project researchers asked test subjects if the warning labels worked, most said "yes." These were the subjects' conscious answers. But their subconscious answers told a different story. When researchers repeated the same question and flashed images of the labels while subjects underwent an fMRI, the images activated "craving spots" in the brain, indicating that the warnings made the smokers want to smoke more, not less.

I think this is a great way to understand consumer behavior. Neuromarketing is a tool that will help improve interaction with customers and will make it easier for marketers to understand their target market. A brain scan can tell you if a customer is truthful, telling you what you want to hear, or influenced by peer pressure. It allows you to get an uncensored initial reaction to something, as opposed to the censored version a customer actually speaks.
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