Bud 'Secret Fridge' Ad A Flop According to Brain Scan Study
Forget pontifications from ad pundits and polls from USA Today, the real winner of the Super Bowl most-liked crown is Disney's "I'm Going to Disney" and Budweiser's "Office" ad. This, according to a functional magnetic resonance imaging study sent to us by Adrants reader John Brock and conducted at the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center by Marco Iacoboni which measured brain response while the subjects watched the Super Bowl. Even more telling were the losers. The study found the much loved Budweiser "Secret Fridge" ad to be one of the least liked. You can read all the gritty scientific details here.
Comments
As a confirmed media nerd, this is a really interesting study. However, I wonder how useful it is.
If people act on the ads they SAY they liked instead the ads their brains responded to -- that is, if they buy Whoppers instead of going to Disney World -- it doesn't matter what their brains think.
Also, the study isn't useful to creatives unless researchers can identify what specifically in ads people's brains are responding to.
There's going to be a new wave of academic research on media very soon (the research is happening now, and will start being published in the next year or two) that involves not only brain mapping, but other physiological traits, such as heart rate, blood pressure and eye-blink rate.
In those studies, we'll be able to tell specifically what's being responded to, because the second the hot model walks onto the screen, the heart rate will increase.
Blah blah blah, you still can't tell what moved someone to a buying decision.
Blah blah blah, you still can't tell what moved someone to a buying decision.
Interesting study - but how conclusive is it? They only measured 5 people! That is hardly a representative sample for the amount of people that watch the superbowl ads.
Steve, you have done it again. Giving this goose a biggie smile. Almost everything in this study is arse backwards. The five person sample gives this viral/spooge/hack-job away. Sample of less than 30 is invalid by all industry standards. But, heh you know that! This is one of the funniest put-ons since Like Crispin. You Rock Steve! You are industrial strength yummy brain candy for the ad world's weary and bleary-eyed peeps. btw- I dowmloaded the pheretones stuff and remixed for a brighter sound and have heard sighes from my air-travel-mates and more...quivering and foot-tapping abound when my cell rings now...shivering can be seen accompaning the moans. another chuckle inducer: Researchers found that cells in the human anterior cingulate, which normally fire when you poke the patient with a needle ("pain neurons"), will also fire when the patient watches another patient being poked. found at same site that did the stupid brain "test"..kind of like a science fair project for droolers. not since paranoia.com have I snickerd so openly...