I recently watched a TEDx talk by Patrick Renvoise and thought that I would share some of the points he made on the subject of neuro-marketing.

In case you are not familiar with the term 'neuro-marketing', it is defined as the science of human decision using neurometrics, biometrics and psychometrics to understand our behaviour. These terms may seem daunting or complicated but I promise it's a lot simpler than you think. Neurologists use facial coding, eye tracking and voice analysis for physical signs of what one is more strongly attracted to. EEGs can also be used to measure brain activity and MRI scans can be analysed showing oxygen consumption in different regions of the brain. Renvoise focus on a specific branch of marketing called applied neuro-marketing that looks into how certain stimulus provide certain responses from the brain.

I am in no way an expert on neurology but to make the brain simpler it can be broken down into 3 'selves'. Firstly, the new brain (rational self) which is the outside part of the brain. Then the middle brain (emotional self). And finally the reptilian brain (instinctual self).
Our instinctual self has a much greater impact on our final decisions than the rational or emotional us. The famous neuroanthropologist C. Rapaille stated simply that "the reptilian always wins!". D. Kahneman winner of the 2002 Economy Nobel Prize added that "although System two (neocortex) believes it self to be where the action is, the automatic system one (reptilian brain) is the hero of the book... Most people choices correspond to the predilection of system one." It has been proved by many neuroscientists that the amygdala (reptilian) has a much greater influence on the cortex than the cortex has on the amygdala. However, this makes humans much more susceptible to marketing techniques. It is easy to fool the reptilian brain. Take this optical illusion for example:
In the first picture, blocks A and B appear to be different colours, when in actuality they are the same colour. This is just a simple example of how easily we can fool our reptilian brain. The reptilian has 6 stimuli: self-centered, contrast, tangible, beginning and end, visual and emotion. Marketers have become savvy and use these 6 stimuli to almost 'trick' our brains, like an optical illusion, to purchase their products or listen to what they say.

• Self-centred - use the word you in the campaign or advertisement 
• Contrast - contrast photos, e.g. before and after
• Tangible - makes value proposition tangible
• Beginning and End - middle doesn't matter put fruit and veg at end and bad in the middle
• Visual - optic nerves flood directly into reptilian brain, so photos used etc.
• Emotion - stopping smoking by saying smoking kills