Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
by Martin Lindstrom
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Book Reviews of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
Book Review: Infomercial?
Summary: 2 Stars
This book has a very interesting premise - using MRI to examine, not cognition, memory, or emotion, but advertising. And some of the results are rather interesting. For example:
- Negative messages (anti-smoking ads, say) can activate desires just as easily as positive ones.
- Strong brands can activate the same brain centers as do religious topics.
- Indirect advertising (the coke glasses sitting in front of the American Idol judges) can be more effective than direct advertising.
Probably the biggest takeaway is that what people say and how they really feel are not the same. Actually, having written all this out, I'm not sure that these results really are all that unexpected and interesting after all. ;^)
My biggest beef with the book is how thin it is beyond the basic reporting of results. Yes, it actually is over 200 pages (just barely), but there is an awful lot of padding in there. Part of that is going over some very basic ideas (subliminal advertising, e.g.) ad infinitum, but also being extremely anecdotal. I like anecdotes, and feel they make for a great read, but the author really goes overboard - especially when it comes to anecdotes about himself.
In fact, the author's ego really gets in the way here. Here are some samples:
"But this study wasn't going to come cheap, and I knew that without corporate backing, it was dead in the water. But when I get an idea in my head that keeps me up at night, I'm persistent. Politely pushy, you might call it. Those twenty-seven messages on your answering machine. They're all from me (sorry)."
and
"By way of profession, I'm a global branding expert. That is, it's been a lifelong mission (and passion) to figure out how consumers think ... If you look around, chances are you'll find my branding fingerprints all over your house or apartment ... As a branding expert and brand futurist (meaning that the sum of my globe-hopping experience gives me a helicopter view of probable future consumer and advertising trends) ..."
and
"I've been told more times than I can count that my appearance is as unconventional as what I do for a living ... My features [he has a baby face], my raked-back blond hair, and my habit of wearing all black give a lot of people the impression that I'm some kind of quirky child evangelist, or maybe some precocious, slightly wired high-school student who got lost on the way to the science lab and ended up in a corporate boardroom by mistake. I've gotten used to it over the years. I suppose you could say it has evolved into my brand."
Overall, the tone of the book is more one of simply trying to drive business (including a URL to his site in the book's last sentence) than actually reporting anything seriously. A little sad, given the premise and all the hype and expectation the author tries to generate.
This also brings up the issue of ethics, which the author barely touches on. Apart from the issue of the book being basically a long infomercial, I also wondered about the intrusiveness and manipulation that would be inherent in applying some of the findings. It really only gets an oops-almost-forgot two sentences at the end of the book:
"Because that is a world in which we, the consumers, can escape all the tricks and traps that companies use to seduce us to their products and get us to buy and take back our rational minds. And I hope that by writing Buyology, this is the world I have helped bring about."
A much better read would be Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters - same large topic, but much more interesting, informative - and modest.
Book Review: Really cool to read, but be a bit skeptical of the explanations
Summary: 5 Stars
So, do you enjoy books with titles that have multiple levels of meaning? Buy-ology - is it merely the study of how people buy? Or is it also the marriage of marketing and psychology. Is it also a wordplay on biology since the book is, in part, about brain function. Good title, huh?
If, like me, you are interested in what brain researchers are learning about brain function and our behavior you will enjoy this book. Martin Lindstrom combines this brain research with marketing to tease out what people actually do versus what they say they do. Even more, he looks at reasons for why thy do what they do and compares that the explanations people provide for their own behavior. Needless to say, the book is interesting because people behave quite differently than they think they do and for reasons different than the explanations they make to themselves and others.
The author retells many well known marketing stories, but interprets them in terms of what brain activity seems to indicate. One thing you must keep in mind as you read this book is that the study of brain activity, while interesting, does not directly supply the answers and explanations Lindstrom provides. These are deductions, inferences, reasonable guesses, and wild crazy hopes. Being able to chart brain activity is fairly new and some things do seem quite clear. For example, when you face a choice or want to remember something, a great deal of brain activity goes on before you are consciously aware of the material you are recalling or choosing. Some say this means that consciousness is not much more than a figment our brain activity gives us and the choice is simply an illusion. While brain activity external to consciousness is clear, what it all means remains, I think, less well explained. For example, when I want to type these words a lot of brain activity has to be generated to choose the words, to spell them, to press the keys, to check my typing. Only some of this is conscious. Yet, it all resulted because I made a choice to type this review and how I wanted to fashion it. Beware of those who would explain away choice. The author talks about how anti-smoking commercials cause smokers to crave a cigarette. Fine. But the smoker who is properly motivated can still resist the craving to not smoke.
You should also beware of a trap that befalls many new technologies. You spot something strange and ask why. Picking up your shiny new technological hammer, you fashion a likely or plausible, or just well sounding explanation. We all nod our head in agreement, but our agreeing to your notions in no way makes it true, right, or consistent with the facts. As these new miracle explanations get tried out and other questions arise, they seem to always become less miraculous, less shiny, and have less explanatory power than we first thought. Some of the things we were hammering we find our weren't even nails!
Even with these cautions, the book is a terrific read and a very useful way to get up to date information about what marketers are trying to do to you. You should read this book to become better armed against the designs these unscrupulous types (not the author) have on you and your wallet. Forewarned is forearmed. Don't believe for a minute that companies who want you to buy their wares care much about how they get you to buy or whether or not their product actually benefits your life. They just want you to buy and will do pretty much anything to manipulate you to do what they want.
Fine read, just don't take every explanation as gospel and take the time to tease out what is actually demonstrated by the brain scans and what is added to them to make a snazzy story that sells.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
Book Review: Why you should buy this book
Summary: 5 Stars
The Summary
Martin Lindstrom has written an excellent book on an important subject - Neuromarketing - why we buy what we do. He presents the findings from one of the largest scientific studies conducted scanning the brains of consumers as they are exposed to marketing, branding and products. The results of this study are eye-opening and will not only change marketing but hopefully consumer buying patterns and product development.
The Audience
I realize that a book about marketing and neuroscience might not be immediately appealing to everyone, but I am confident that you will enjoy it and come away with a new understanding about yourself and why you buy. Being aimed at a broad audience does mean it lacks some of the depth that marketers would like to see, but the conclusions alone are worth the price of entry for the business crowd. Don't expect to come away with practical strategies as a consumer or marketer but I am confident there will be a lot more books on this subject over the next few years. It is intentionally designed and marketed in the `Tipping Point' mold and for once I actually think it warrants this categorization.
The Details
There have been a few books recently that look at marketing through the lens of neuroscience. Leveraging the new technologies that allow us to see what is going on in the brain when we are exposed to marketing messages and products. Martin Lindstrom, a marketing expert and consultant to some of the largest companies in the world, takes neuromarketing research to a new level. He conducted the largest study of consumers and how they really react/respond to products and their marketing. The results go far beyond and actually contradict some of the current market research and thinking.
Buy-ology is a well written book that not only explains the research without getting too technical but also explains some of the conclusions and implications. Even though this is a marketing book it will appeal to a broad audience since we are all consumers and should be interested in the findings of this book. Not only did the research contradict current thinking about marketing, but it actually contradicts our own perceptions of why we buy.
By aiming at a broad audience Lindstrom has sacrificed some of the juicy technical details behind the research; but he covers enough of neuroscience to explain the experiments and findings. The book is full of anecdotes and reads more like a page-turning thriller than your standard business book.
I am not going to spoil the book by revealing the findings, but as a consumer it will make you think twice about what you buy, and as marketer it will definitely change your strategy and hopefully your products.
The Take-Aways
This is an important book on a subject that all of us should know about. Even though this is a marketing book and will appeal to marketers, I feel this should be read by everyone. We are all consumers and should understand how and why we buy what we do.
The fear about this book is going to be that `evil' marketers will exploit this information to sell us things we don't need, want or care about. My hope is that this information will actually:
a) Make us more aware of our own buying decisions and
b) Help companies create products that we want.
I am not sure if this will be the next `Tipping Point' but it has all the right ingredients: important topic, new counter-intuitive information, subject with broad appeal and well written to the point of being hard-to-put-down!
I highly recommend this book if you want to understand the advances in neuroscience and how it will change marketing.
Kes Sampanthar
Inventor of ThinkCube
Book Review: A Look at the Future of Marketing
Summary: 5 Stars
John Wanamaker, considered the father of modern advertising and the founder of Wanamaker's the first department store in Philadelphia, is reported to have said, "Half my advertising budget is wasted. Trouble is, I don't know which half."
If Wanamaker were alive today, he might well have a different view about the percentage of his advertising budget being wasted. As Martin points out, so much of the current advertising is totally wasted. Consumers are overwhelmed with the amount of advertising they are subjected to. As a result, we cannot remember most of the ads we saw last night.
And Wanamaker would certainly be amazed at the tools available to understand why some of his ads were not working or worse yet, driving potential customers away. Martin Lindstrom has written a very interesting look at the future of marketing.
Buy ' ology is the scientific study of why we buy. Marketers have long known that buying decisions are not rational. That we make buying decisions based on emotion and then try to rationalize the decision with logic. But until now, we have not had any good methods of screening ads or even products to determine how they appeal to our emotions.
Martin Lindstrom undertook a massive three year study, involving studying volunteers using fMRI (Functional Magnetic resonance Imaging) and SST (steady state typography) both techniques to look at brain wave activity. He understood that people cannot tell you what they are feeling at the subconscious level. But using the brain scanning technology, the researchers were able to determine a person's reaction to ads at a subconscious level. They were able to determine which area of the brain was activated while viewing the ad and/or the product.
There are plenty of fascinating studies in the book. One involved Ford Motor's spending $26 million advertising on American Idol ... and according to Lindstrom's research, it was totally wasted.
There was the study of the warning labels on cigarette packages. What he found was that instead of curbing desire, the labels actually triggered the craving part of the brain - so instead of decreasing the desire for smoking, it actually stimulated the desire.
And there were plenty of other findings. That sex, while attracting attention, actually gets people to focus on the sex object and not the product. So sex does not sell.
The book is a fascinating look at the future of marketing. There are certainly lots of implications for large companies. - understanding and implementing the lessons in this book should save large companies millions and millions of dollars.
There are lots of lessons for smaller companies also. We need to understand what our prospects really want. We need to focus more on the emotional needs of our prospects and less on our desire to create ego based ads.
One very startling finding was that most money spent on developing and plastering logos all over the place is wasted. Logos have very little selling power.
This book will be very valuable to two groups - those who buy products and those who sell products or services. That covers most of the population that could benefit from reading this book.
It is easy to read and because it is filled with plenty of examples we can all relate to, it is extremely interesting. It will appeal to and benefit a very wide audience.
Book Review: Imperfect, but a real page turner
Summary: 4 Stars
In spite of all the criticism here (much of which I either agree with or can understand) I enjoyed reading this book. Since market research is one of the tools I rely on heavily for my job the premise of this book, studying the brain to better understand why we buy, was very compelling. Like others in my field I agree that the research techniques we so often use, like focus groups, ethnographies, and quantitative surveys, are imperfect and that what people say they do and actually do can sometimes be two different things.
What I enjoyed about this book was that it was very conversationally and approachably written, much in the style of books by Steven D. Levitt (Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything), Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference), and Jon Steel (Truth, Lies and Advertising : The Art of Account Planning). It's very digestable and in no way dry or boring. It also does a good job of selecting case studies that are likely to illicit interest and hypotheses like whether or not sex sells or whether subliminal messages are more effective than overtly branded messages. All of this made for a book that was a pleasurable read and that made me stop to think every step of the way. Many of the findings aren't radical, but it's interesting to see them proven out.
While enjoyable, this book does have some flaws as others have mentioned. The biggest missed opportunity, from my perspective, was to sum up what this means for marketers. My guess is that he left this section out because he wanted to appeal to a broader readership. However, it means that if you want to draw conclusions about how you will apply these learnings to your own business, you're left to your own devices. This is especially challenging since the research, as he mentions, is VERY expensive and time consuming and likely not in the budget for most brands and companies, especially in today's environment. There are some take aways that can be used regardless of whether you can afford to do this research, but these implications could have been drawn out more clearly. It's obvious he doesn't think traditional research techniques are effective, but he doesn't give marketers on a budget any perspective on how they might improve them.
The other aspect of this book that could have been improved is the amount of time spent covering the research itself and the pros and cons of the methodology, as opposed to the analysis and commentary. It's a bit of a challenge since the commentary that gets in the way of sharing more data also makes the book an enjoyable read. However, those who are true sticklers for methodology and details will find themselves either craving more details or poking holes in the methodology. It's written much more like a light read, so don't expect something dense with data.
Despite these flaws, this book was still a good, light read for me. Does it solve all of the problems I as a marketer face? Absolutely not. But is it interesting and worth the time? Yes.