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Book Review: Buy-ology

Written by: Jay Hamilton-Roth

Article Overview: Marketing is not yet a science, which means that there’s no guarantee that “if you take this action, you’ll get this result�. You may have a lot of anecdotal knowledge and strong hunches on what will get results. However, if you don’t understand how people react to your message, you are likely to be guessing.

Book Review: Buy-ology

Marketing is not yet a science, which means that there’s no guarantee that “if you take this action, you’ll get this result”. You may have a lot of anecdotal knowledge and strong hunches on what will get results. However, if you don’t understand how people react to your message, you are likely to be guessing.

The new field of neuromarketing is attempting to understand how people react to marketing messages. While you can segment your lists and split test, you are spending time (and money) trying to tease out what action produces what reaction.

Buy•ology is similar to Predictably Irrational, which attempts to unravel why people react the way they do to marketing message. However, Buy•ology’s premise is by studying the brain (fMRI and EEG) you can understand how a message gets processed (and by extrapolation, what reaction it’s likely to cause).

While the book doesn’t contain any keys for adjusting your own marketing, it does contain a number of fascinating stories about what works (and doesn’t):

• Graphic warnings about the dangers of smoking actually increases the desire to smoke.
• How product placements that are seamlessly integrated into a show work magnificently.
• How “mirror neurons” cause us to unconsciously want to mimic people around us
• How subliminal messaging can be used to shift our emotional state
• How somatic markers trigger our irrational choices for products
• Why sexual imagery doesn’t always sell
• What religion can teach us about improving branding (feelings of belonging, clear vision, an enemy, sensory appeal, storytelling, grandeur, symbolism, and mystery)

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Article Tags: anecdotal knowledge, clear vision, dangers of smoking, eeg, emotional state, extrapolation, fmri, grandeur, hunches, li li, neuromarketing, ology, own marketing, product placements, sensory appeal, sexual imagery, somatic markers, spending time, split test, storytelling



Related Forum Posts
Business plans are a waste of time - I really like what Shri said in a previous post about how the usefulness of a business plan depends on the individual. However, after reading some of Martin Lindstrom's "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy"... I'm beginning to think that all business plans and traditional market research (i.e. using focus groups, surveys, etc.) are a total waste of time. No joke, I'm serious. Lindstrom says "That's because, just like market research, economic modeling is based on the premise that people behave in a predictably rational way", but "Most of the brain is dominated by automatic processes, rather than deliberate thinking. A lot of what happens in the brain is emotional, not cognitive." ("Buyology" pg 28). Basically, consumers will tell you one thing, and do simply do another with their unconscious minds.
Re: Top 50 Lists - Hi Evan, How about "Top 50": -Inventor Blogs To Watch -Franchising Blogs To Watch -Business Book Review Blogs -Women Entrepreneur Blogs -Young Entrepreneur Blogs
My reading log - Hi OmnivoreInk, Before starting my business, I read the following books as research: -"The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki -"The AdSense Code" by Joel Comm -"Don't Think Pink" and "Mind Your X's and Y's" by Lisa Johnson And since then I've continued my "research" by reading (in this order): -"Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross -"For One More Day" by Mitch Albom -"The Twits" by Roald Dahl -"Little Black Book of Connections" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne -"The Profitable Retailer" by Doug Fleener -"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell -"Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis -"Little Green Book of Getting Your Way" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling And I'm currently reading and am in the process of finishing the following: -"There's No Such Thing as Public Speaking" by Jeanette and Roy Henderson -"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell -"The Book of Tells" by Peter Collett -"Little Red Book of Sales Answers" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience" by Jonathan M. Tisch -"The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron -"The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey
Re: Significance of Review Sites - Exactly! Review sites are very helpful for providing better understanding to a product or service.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.


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