Here's why you should zig when everyone else zags: 6 things I learned reading Blindsight.

I just finished reading a marvellous book called "Blindsight: The (Mostly) Hidden Ways Marketing Reshapes Our Brains" written by Matt Johnson & Prince Ghuman.

In this book (published on 18th August 2020), the authors showcase how marketing can be found around every aspect of our lives, uncovering various aspects of our emotions, like pain and pleasure, emotion and logic, fear and safety, attention and addiction.

1) "We like to think of ourselves as independent actors in control of our decisions, but the truth is far more complicated."

Indeed. Let's make a step back and make an example that clarifies this statement. Take a bunch of participants and make them see a bottle of wine through AR lenses. What do you think they will say when they taste the red wine they are seeing? You'll probably guess that red wine "tasted" like red things, for example, berries. And you got it right. So said the participants. Now think about white wine. You are probably guessing that they will say that white wine tastes like white wine. Again, you're right. What if they wore AR lenses and "tasted" a red wine, that in fact was white wine? Let's say that they will see the colour of the wine change from white to red (remember, they did actually see it in red). Here's the amazing thing: research shows that respondents will say it tastes like actual red wine, like dark spices, berries. Unbelievable, isn't it?

It’s like being into some episode of Black Mirror. And in fact, changing the colour of food in the virtual world appears to shift our perception of food in the real world.

2) The Pepsi Challenge

First of all: if you don't know what the Pepsi Challenge is, watch this TEDx video.

The Pepsi Challenge was a long-running marketing campaign that Pepsi launched in 1975.

The idea that led to the formulation of this challenge came from Pepsi marketing team’s observation that showcased some participants taking a sip of Pepsi or Coke. Eventually, when the participant knew what he was drinking, Coke was preferred over Pepsi (80% of the cases, the other 20% still preferred Pepsi). On the other hand, when the participant did not know what he was drinking, Pepsi was preferred! (53 participants preferred Pepsi, 47 Coke).

3) "Branding is much more than just getting your name out there; it’s about becoming engrained with exactly the right attributes and associations in the customer’s brain."

In an experiment conducted in 2017, 20.154 men from Paris were randomly put into three different groups. Each man received the same cocktail made either with vodka, fruit juice, or with Red Bull. Each participant was told he was drinking something different. Almost all the men the first group said it was a “vodka cocktail,” for the second group it was a “fruit juice cocktail,” and for the third group, participants stated they seemed to drink “vodka Red Bull”. Compared to the first two groups, men who knew they were drinking Red Bull told the researchers that they felt more intoxicated, they in fact showed riskier behaviour and felt more confident when it came to approaching women.

"It’s your associations with the brand, and not the drink itself, that really “give you wings.”

4) The placebo effect is really a thing.

For many years, many of us thought (and still think) that the placebo effect is the work of imagination. Well, Kathryn Hall, a molecular biologist studying the biology of placebo effects, told the New York Times in 2018 that “now through imaging, you can literally see the brain lighting up when you give someone a sugar pill.” Wouldn't you see your brain fire when you take a candy instead of paracetamol? This is pretty unbelievable to think of. Our brain is really amazing indeed.

5) EEG machine and N400.

This was, in fact, my favourite topic to study during the "neuropsychology" course I took in my Bachelor Degree, so I really appreciated read it once again.

By adopting techniques like EEG machine (electroencephalogram), neuroscientists can measure the fluctuation of brain activity linked to surprise. This event is actually called N400, named in this way because it appears around 400 milliseconds after hearing a surprising verbal phrase. The N400 response is primarily associated with linguistic surprise. For example, reading the phrase "I took off my shoe elephant." will probably have generated in your brain an N400, and if you hypothetically were attached to an EEG, it would have shown it after 400 milliseconds.

In general, every word can create an N400 response, but the more uncommon a word is, the greater the amplitude of the N400 response will be. As written in the book, "the greater the mismatch between the word and the contextual anchor, the greater the amplitude of the N400 response—the greater the surprise."

6) Learnn and P600

Another ERP (i.e. Event-related potential. The N400 is an ERP) worth quoting is the so-called P600. (I loved studying ERPs if you didn't notice). As you might guess, P600 appears 600 milliseconds after a person hears or reads a grammatical error. As a "grammar nazi" that I am, I think my brain keeps eliciting P600s when I read grammatical errors (attention bias, here you are!! But that's another story). An interesting example of a P600 that I encountered recently is Learnn, a platform created by Luca Mastella at the beginning of 2020 aiming at increasing the digitalization levels in Italy. I don't have to tell you that the normal word is "learn", but, in my opinion, Learnn is an example of P600, and it would be amazing to see if it really elicits P600 ERP in the brain of an English speaker (maybe also the brain of an Italian speaker (if s/he knows a bit of English, of course! or...even if s/he doesn't know what the word "learnn" means and that it should be written "learn", would the P600 be elicited?)

On Learnn, you can find interesting courses about digital marketing, funnel marketing, UX and UI, google analytics and google ads and much more (don't wanna spoiler it ;)) If you want to know more about the project, here is the link, unfortunately, it is available only in Italian.

I recommend you to read this book if you want to know more about marketing, neuroscience and how these two can shape our behaviour and actions in our daily lives. You will be surprised by how many things we are controlled, and how little power we have on controlling our emotions.

Feel free to leave a comment, I am open to discussions!