Marketing has come a long way in the last 100 years. Catalogs and traveling salesmen reached broad swaths of the public for much for the 20th century. In the “Mad Men” era, marketing became increasingly image-based and relied heavily on emotional appeals, while spokespersons became directly associated with brands. Then came the Cambrian explosion of digital marketing. The average American consumer is now exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 brand messages a day.

Enter neuromarketing. The term was first coined by Ale Smidts in his paper “Looking into Neuromarketing: About the Possibilities of Neuromarketing” in 2002. When researchers began using fMR (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to track changes in blood flow across the brain and the EEG (electroencephalogram) to record the brain's electrical activity in response to products and marketing techniques, a new field was born. But how can event and exhibit marketers use it?

Janet Sperstad, CMP-Fellow, can help. Ranked as one of the top 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings and Events Industry by Successful Meetings, her academic background in neuroscience and business leadership has made her an advocate and explainer of this new frontier in marketing. Here she explains how marketers can use neuromarketing to end up with more brainstorms than brain freezes.

EXHIBITOR Magazine: How would you describe neuromarketing to those who are not familiar with the term?
Janet Sperstad: I do believe it's the kind of buzzword that we all think we understand. “Neuro” would refer to the cognitive part of our brain, and then “marketing” is promoting and selling products and services. And so when we're combining those two into neuromarketing, it's the marriage of consumer preferences and behavioral response in the brain to various cognitive and sensory stimuli.

But it is not psychology. It is really centered around what's happening in the brain. Does something make our eyes dilate? Does it make us take a quick breath? It's not about studying behavior. It's examining the cognitive reaction inside the brain to outside stimuli — in this case, marketing stimuli.

EM: We've come a long way since the days of “Mad Men.” What can neuromarketing accomplish that other forms of marketing cannot?
JS: Great question. You know, 95 percent of our thoughts and emotions occur before we're even aware of them. Yet most marketing efforts focus on the other five percent, which is the rational thinking, the prioritizing of our conscious thoughts. But the reality is most of what we're thinking and feeling is not known to us. It's the 95 percent of the iceberg that's below the water.

That's where neuromarketing comes in. Understanding how customers' brains work can help somebody really look at how to appeal to their subconscious and influence them in a new, different, and remarkably effective way.

EM: Can you give me a real-world example of a company or a brand that's used it?
JS: Go back to Super Bowl ads this year. One in particular that I think really knocked it out of the park was Rocket Mortgage. Rocket took John Denver's iconic tune, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” and used it in the TV ad, then it segues right into a live singalong in the stadium. It was a wonderfully sentimental, heart-tugging piece of music, but by morphing it into a singalong, it played on the fact that we are all social animals and enjoy experiencing things as a group.

So they really extended their brand into the social aspect of us as humans, because we are social animals. We had a whole impromptu community of people singing it together, and we felt so joyous being like, oh my gosh, look what they're doing. The experience raised everyone's oxytocin, the hormone that plays a key role in human bonding. I think it was just a great example of how neuroscience and neuromarketing can really extend a brand and truly connect people in subconscious ways.

Part of its success was also based on how we mimic each other. We have neurons in the brain called mirror neurons. When we do something — pick up an object for example — and when we see someone else do the exact same thing, mirror neurons fire in our brains with both our own action and observing someone else's similar action, often creating comparable feelings in us.

Here's this ad, then, that millions are watching around the nation and in the stadium, and they start singing a song. Rocket and “Country Roads” are now so connected in the consumer's brain, because when they hear it again on TV or on the radio or on a podcast, they're going think, “Oh yeah, that was great,” and re-live the exuberant feeling.
EM: If our brains are wired to socially connect, that would seem to bode well for face-to-face events, especially trade shows and corporate events. But are those venues and the people involved in them missing out on what neuromarketing offers?
JS: Here's the bad part about expos. They have to work within a sterile infrastructure that is built around efficiency and safety. They have fire codes, laws, and regulations that give you a beautiful and calm exhibit floor with your utilities every 30 feet, right? So it's multi-functional, but sterile, and it takes a lot of money to start to add in elements that make it a more human, livable space. It's a hard nut to crack, right?

Here's the good part about exhibitions. Many exhibit halls in the United States are beautiful buildings. The architects that design many of them know the power of nature, and they build them to bring in as much daylight as possible. They can make it a green building, where it's not just sustainable but where they use low VOCs, which then change the neurochemicals, because you're having better air and improved air exchange. Even taking these sterile, industrial buildings, bringing in the local culture, and creating a sense of place is pleasing to the brain.

EM: What are some ways that exhibit and event marketers can leverage what we know about neuromarketing?
JS: Think about what the show you're exhibiting in feels like, because generally it's a complex ecosystem with a lot of competing colors and sounds. Shows are exhausting.

But what if we added more white space into our exhibitions to create a resting point? Where could we add some down lighting, so we could add rest points visually? Where could we add some nuances of lighting that are dimmer? You could also reduce or dim down graphics and the amount of text you use, because to the brain, less is more. This is why you see more convention centers starting to offer “quiet rooms” to deal with sensory overload.

People also desire predictability. Do they know what to expect from your exhibit or show? Can they download your information? Can they create their own schedule? Things that drive certainty and predictability, people will use more.

EM: When you walk through a show floor, what do you see that turns you off?
JS: One of my professors said, “We run from threat and walk toward reward.” That moment really changed my thinking. The brain is really, really sensitive to threat.

For example, the brain doesn't like corners. To the brain, corners mean decisions — go right, go left, etc. This goes back to the need for predictability and safety. Corners might also hide something unpleasant out of sight and force you to abruptly change direction. But the brain will happily follow a curve — a curve feels soft, gradual, and you can often see far enough ahead on a curve to spot a threat. You could create curves in rectangular spaces by using stanchions or other objects that form arching paths that people naturally want to follow.

EM: How do you make common booth elements like staff appeal to the brain?
JS: The power of kindness can't be overstated. Getting off your handheld device or phone, looking at people, smiling, saying, “Hello, how are you?” activates the reward chemicals of endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and especially oxytocin. And if you increase oxytocin, it has been found to grow trust by 45 percent, which is what exhibitors want the most. You need to establish a relationship to sell, and to sell you need to start to build trust. To build trust you need to perform actions that increase oxytocin.

EM: Are there any rules of thumb you would advise for how you display your products in ways that are brain friendly?
JS: Use the power of odd numbers, especially if you have a suite of products. Group them together in odd numbers, three, five, or seven at a time, because the brain will notice that. Even numbers are boring to the brain, and it tends to ignore them. Odd numbers stand out.

Let's say you grouped your products in threes. If your displays all had even numbers and heights, they'd look homogeneous, and the brain ignores them. But if you have odd-numbered groupings with various sizes next to each other, and perhaps with different backgrounds, the brain will alert itself to them.

EM: If exhibitors try this, should they measure the effectiveness of neuromarketing in the old ways — that is, sales and ROI leads? Or is there something else you would suggest they add to their measurement arsenal to gauge its success?
JS: The traditional measures shouldn't be thrown out, of course, but you also want sentiment analysis that measures the emotional way people's brains might respond to your booth. Now there's technology that tracks eye movements, facial expressions, and such, but if your budget is tight, you could also just use survey questions such as: Was the exhibit fun? Did you feel more productive leaving? Were you more excited to go back to your work? These questions get to the heart of attendees' emotional response to your booth.

EM: If there's one lesson you hope readers take away from this interview, what would it be?
JS: You have to ask yourself what creates emotional and physical responses in attendees that makes them gravitate to your booth and your products. Because ultimately, you're dealing with their brains, and the brain hates boring. E