SyncSense at CTAM Insights 2012
SyncSense is a proud sponsor of the 2012 CTAM Insights conference, an excerpt of which is in this article from Charlene Weisler's WeislerMedia blog.
Right and Left Side of the Boomer Brain
The article talks about the right and left sides of the brain and how each side processes information differently. This impacts how marketers should present their messages to consumers - in this articles, case, to Boomers.
What can understanding how the brain functions help online and traditional marketers? The answer is plenty. For example, since the left brain is resistant to new information regardless of how brilliantly it is presented, the left brain will generally not process new information coming into the brain unless it has first been processed by the right brain. The right brain pays attention to stories but not lectures. Stories should be word pictures because the right brain’s command of verbal language is somewhat primitive.
We at Syncsense realize that the way the brain receives and processes messages can impact how these messages are interpreted, accepted (or not) and acted upon (or not). Our patent pending guidelines can help media companies prepare their content in a way that can optimize its value to the viewer.
This is Your Brain on Jane Austen
In a recent study of readers of Austen, it appears as if Austen is making news in the field of neuroscience.
Here is an excerpt of a recent Greenfield blog post:
The Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging (CNi) has been tracking the blood flow patterns in the brains of Austen readers. How? By having literature graduate students read the second chapter of Mansfield Park while getting brain images using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). The subjects were asked to alternate styles, reading some passages for pleasure and others with the kind of close critical attention required in literature courses like my own. The preliminary results surprised the researchers. Not only does close reading create a distinctly different blood flow pattern in the brain, but it also activates diverse regions that stretch far beyond those associated with attention, in one example, even reaching into areas generally dedicated to physical activity. You may think you are sitting still with a book. Your brain does not.
As it happens, Austen has a particularly effective technique for representing a character's consciousness (or for creating the fiction that such a thing exists). Known as free indirect discourse, or FID, the technique allows the narrator to enter a character's mind and adopt the language of her thoughts while retaining the objectivity of a third-person point of view. It is like a special lens that can simultaneously zoom inside consciousness and zoom out and see it from a distance. An MRI machine records activation in parts of the brain the subject isn't even aware of. FID represents aspects of a character's thoughts that the character herself does not know.
Such immersion in a character is one version of what Natalie Phillips, Assistant Professor of English at Michigan State University, and a co-director of the neuroscience study, describes as reading for pleasure. When she and her colleagues were first designing their experiment, they ran a pilot that put literature professors in the MRI. As Natalie explained to Laura Miller from Salon, "One thing we realized immediately... is that professors are terrible subjects!" On the phone with me she added, "We don't know how to read for pleasure anymore."
"And we definitely do not know how to do it in an MRI scanner!"
Brain Habits Caused by e-books
The New York Times published an article on how our brains form habits and lead to out-of-context behaviors. As with synchronization, our brain responds viserally to behaviors and images. Here is an excerpt of the article:
Last week, my brain played a cruel trick on me. While waiting for my flight to take off, I was reading The New Yorker, the paper version, of course — I know the rules. I became engrossed in an article and swiped my finger down the glossy page to read more.To my surprise, nothing happened. I swiped it again. Nothing. My brain was trying to turn the page the same way I do on my iPad, with the swipe of a finger. (I quickly realized that I had to physically turn the page.)
A few days later, my brain played another technology-related trick. In New York City, I hopped in a cab and told the driver, “59th and 6th, please.” I didn’t think anything of it when we arrived at my destination and I said thanks and hopped out of the cab, without paying. The cabby yelled at me bluntly, clearly not very happy: “These taxis aren’t free. Are you gonna pay me?”
I quickly apologized and paid him — with a good tip — when I realized that my brain thought I was in an Uber car, not a taxi. In San Francisco, where I live, I often use a car service called Uber when I go out for the evening. You order a car from your smartphone, it arrives, you get in, tell your driver where to go, and then get out at your destination. There is no money exchanged; your credit card is automatically billed after the trip, and you are e-mailed a receipt.
But I did spend a few moments standing at the curb trying to figure out if I was suffering from some sort of mental fatigue. I called the closest thing to a technology doctor I know: Clifford Nass, a professor of cognitive science and communications at Stanford University, and the author of “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships.”
“Brains love habits; brains are built for efficiency,” Mr. Nass said, noting that I wasn’t sick, maybe just a little too technological for my own good. “Our brains are built to put two things together in space and time and then say, ‘Great, I can remember that these go together.’ Then we execute on that, like you trying to scroll down a piece of paper with your finger.”
Although videos have been floating around the Web showing 1- and 2-year-olds trying to use a magazine like an iPad, you would think a 36-year-old man would know the difference. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, has performed studies showing that the human brain adapts to technology in seven days, regardless of age.
All of these brain changes hasten the adoption rate for technologies, Mr. Nass said. It’s what happened with the telephone or the use of cruise control in cars. “You no longer drive a car,” he said. “You use a car.”
What is now happening with reading, we will soon experience with paying for things without cash, check or credit cards. And it will happen quickly.
Last week, my brain played a cruel trick on me. While waiting for my flight to take off, I was reading The New Yorker, the paper version, of course — I know the rules. I became engrossed in an article and swiped my finger down the glossy page to read more.To my surprise, nothing happened. I swiped it again. Nothing. My brain was trying to turn the page the same way I do on my iPad, with the swipe of a finger. (I quickly realized that I had to physically turn the page.)
A few days later, my brain played another technology-related trick. In New York City, I hopped in a cab and told the driver, “59th and 6th, please.” I didn’t think anything of it when we arrived at my destination and I said thanks and hopped out of the cab, without paying. The cabby yelled at me bluntly, clearly not very happy: “These taxis aren’t free. Are you gonna pay me?”
I quickly apologized and paid him — with a good tip — when I realized that my brain thought I was in an Uber car, not a taxi. In San Francisco, where I live, I often use a car service called Uber when I go out for the evening. You order a car from your smartphone, it arrives, you get in, tell your driver where to go, and then get out at your destination. There is no money exchanged; your credit card is automatically billed after the trip, and you are e-mailed a receipt.
But I did spend a few moments standing at the curb trying to figure out if I was suffering from some sort of mental fatigue. I called the closest thing to a technology doctor I know: Clifford Nass, a professor of cognitive science and communications at Stanford University, and the author of “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships.”
“Brains love habits; brains are built for efficiency,” Mr. Nass said, noting that I wasn’t sick, maybe just a little too technological for my own good. “Our brains are built to put two things together in space and time and then say, ‘Great, I can remember that these go together.’ Then we execute on that, like you trying to scroll down a piece of paper with your finger.”
Although videos have been floating around the Web showing 1- and 2-year-olds trying to use a magazine like an iPad, you would think a 36-year-old man would know the difference. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, has performed studies showing that the human brain adapts to technology in seven days, regardless of age.
All of these brain changes hasten the adoption rate for technologies, Mr. Nass said. It’s what happened with the telephone or the use of cruise control in cars. “You no longer drive a car,” he said. “You use a car.”
What is now happening with reading, we will soon experience with paying for things without cash, check or credit cards. And it will happen quickly.
CBS: TV Spots More Effective Using Neuroscience Techniques
Although this Mediapost.com article from June 27, 2012 is not the type pf neuroscience application that we do at Syncsense, we applaud any effort to bring neuroscience into the media discourse.In fact, we disagree with the "neuro-compression" application indicated here.
Syncsense methods work irrespective of length of the content. You do not need to reduce "filler" and make your content shorter for it to benefit and work with our neuroscience method.
But here is the full article for your interest:
CBS will use neuroscience to help create promotional campaigns for four TV shows this fall.
By Wayne Friedman
Neuroscience has been in vogue over the last few years, bringing attention to the effectiveness of specific TV content. Much of the focus has been on TV commercials. Working with CBS, Nielsen NeuroFocus founder and CEO Dr. A. K. Pradeep has found a way to conduct neurological analysis' of TV advertising audiences in order to gauge effectiveness.
The answer? Reduce the filler -- otherwise known as "neuro-compression." This technology enables the most effective scenes within a TV spot to be identified and edited into shorter and often more "neurologically" impactful marketing messages.
Basically, human brains can figure out messages/storylines from just a few content segments.
“Our brains are so smart, they retain the key pieces of logic, the key pieces of the flow,” said Dr. Pradeep, on NielsenWire.com. “If you threw out all the fillers … and got to the core, it’s a lot more effective. [Neuro-Compression] ends up producing a better product.”
CBS didn't disclose what the TV promos would be or for which shows. But David Poltrack, chief research officer of CBS Corp., called the effort a "very exciting project" on NielsenWire.com.
CBS said the technology could apply for all TV marketers, reducing media buying costs by coming up with a shorter TV commercial/message. Plus, TV marketers could repurpose the ad through cross-platform opportunities, such as online, mobile and in-store digital displays.
Said Poltrack: “We believe that in the case of online and mobile, we’re in a new frontier."
Syncsense methods work irrespective of length of the content. You do not need to reduce "filler" and make your content shorter for it to benefit and work with our neuroscience method.
But here is the full article for your interest:
CBS will use neuroscience to help create promotional campaigns for four TV shows this fall.
By Wayne Friedman
Neuroscience has been in vogue over the last few years, bringing attention to the effectiveness of specific TV content. Much of the focus has been on TV commercials. Working with CBS, Nielsen NeuroFocus founder and CEO Dr. A. K. Pradeep has found a way to conduct neurological analysis' of TV advertising audiences in order to gauge effectiveness.
The answer? Reduce the filler -- otherwise known as "neuro-compression." This technology enables the most effective scenes within a TV spot to be identified and edited into shorter and often more "neurologically" impactful marketing messages.
Basically, human brains can figure out messages/storylines from just a few content segments.
“Our brains are so smart, they retain the key pieces of logic, the key pieces of the flow,” said Dr. Pradeep, on NielsenWire.com. “If you threw out all the fillers … and got to the core, it’s a lot more effective. [Neuro-Compression] ends up producing a better product.”
CBS didn't disclose what the TV promos would be or for which shows. But David Poltrack, chief research officer of CBS Corp., called the effort a "very exciting project" on NielsenWire.com.
CBS said the technology could apply for all TV marketers, reducing media buying costs by coming up with a shorter TV commercial/message. Plus, TV marketers could repurpose the ad through cross-platform opportunities, such as online, mobile and in-store digital displays.
Said Poltrack: “We believe that in the case of online and mobile, we’re in a new frontier."
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