Researchers Look Into Mind Over Matter

Over the last year, several high-tech firms, including EmSense, NeuroFocus, and OTX Research and Innerscope, have introduced portable, less intrusive and more affordable measurement devices to track and measure both brain waves and biologic data. Not surprisingly, a growing number of marketers and agencies are taking note, experimenting with the new devices in hopes that the resulting metrics will provide insights on ads appearing on any and all platforms.... EmSense, a privately held San Francisco company that recently hired ad industry veteran Tim Arnold as evp, business development, counts Yahoo co-founder Tim Koogle and Patrick Meyer, CEO of brand marketing consultancy Now Inc., among its board members and investors. "This is the kind of innovation we scout for," said Meyer, a former senior manager at Coca-Cola and Gillette, who helped bring Virgin Mobile USA, Nintendo, Coke and Miller Brewing on board as clients.The EmSense device reads brain waves and monitors the breathing, heart rate, blinking and skin temperatures of consumers who preview ads to measure their emotional and cognitive responses. According to Katie Bayne, CMO of Coca-Cola North America, the device not only helped whittle down the list of spots, but also aided in editing the two ads chosen to air -- "It's Mine," in which parade balloons vie for a bottle of Coke, and the "Jinx" ad with James Carville and former Senator Bill Frist. For example, she says, the music in "It's Mine" was adjusted in the days leading up to the game to build to more of a crescendo than in the original version of the spot. "It provides you with more natural and unedited responses than you get when you force people through the cognitive loop of having to annunciate how they feel," Bayne said. "It's a great new tool." According to Bayne and others, such techniques help marketers more accurately decipher consumers' feelings because they measure physical and emotional responses as they occur.