CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

BY

LIOR ARUSSY

Neuromarketing Isnt Marketing

Focus on the customers heart, not his head

OR QUITE SOME TIME Ive been growing

increasingly uncomfortable about a particular trend in marketing. I am referring to the

science of neuromarketing. For those of you
who are not familiar with the practice, neuromarketing
entails the use of a functional magnetic resonance
imaging machine to scan
a consumers brain, recording responses to certain stimuli. Based on the
results, marketers then
draw conclusions about
how to sell to customers
more effectively.
The recent book Buyology: Truth and Lies About
Why We Buy by Martin
Lindstrom serves as a harsh
reminder that this marketing trend is not only not
fading, its accumulating
momentum.
Id rather not spend any time here discussing the
scientific aspects of this practice, though there are
serious questions about its validity. What I would
like to focus on is its morality. What do these studies

NEUROMARKETING IS A NEW CHAPTER IN AN OLD PRACTICE OF

TRICKERY THAT TREATS THE CUSTOMER AS AN OBJECT.
say about the way we relate to customers? When we
reduce customers to nothing more than a series of
stimuli and responses, what does it say about the
nature of our relationships?
I find the whole practice of neuromarketing to be
offensiveand contrary to any principle of customer
experience. The approach treats the customer as an
emotional ATM: If you want to influence a customer
you just need to know which button to push. Show the
customer a picture of a lush, green field and she will buy
product X; expose her to images of nasty gang members
and she will buy product Y out of fear. All we need to do
12

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JANUARY 2009

is to decipher her emotional passcode and shes all ours.

What a disgrace.
We live in a world in which companies routinely
declare their commitment to customers. But we also
live in an era when merely meeting customer expectations is no longer sufficient to obtain customer
loyalty. So we commit to
greater levels of honesty,
authenticity, and engagement. And yet, in the same
breath, some marketers
think that knowing the
mechanics of the consumer
brain could enable them to
make that customer simply
do as shes told. Neuromarketing is a new chapter in
an old practice of trickery,
treating the customer as an
object to which marketers
believe they can do anything they want. And these
marketers still believe they can get away with it.
Its time to get back to honest, high-quality, highvalue experiences. Stop looking for shortcutsthere are
none. There is no substitute for the long road to great,
differentiated customer experience. If your product is
commoditized, dont simply rush to find another illusion such as brain manipulation.
Instead of messing with the customers brain, focus
on her heart: Develop an appealing and financially justifiable experience that shes willing to stand in line for.
Customers are smarter and more empowered than ever
before. Its time to stop insulting them. Treat them as
honest partners in a reciprocal relationship. Treat them
as individuals, not as machines, and appeal to their ability to make decisions.
If you want them to make the right decisions, give
them the right reasonsnot a brain scan.
Lior Arussy (lior@strativity.com), the founder and president of Strativity
Group, is the author of several books, including Excellence Every Day (Information Today, Inc., 2008), his most recent, an excerpt of which appeared in
CRMs May 2008 issue.

www.destinationCRM.com

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.