Many large companies prefer to test ads before launching it in order to verify the effectiveness of advertising and, if necessary, make adjustments to the final version. The current advertising materials are also analyzed to understand why the advertising did not work or, conversely, which techniques proved to be the most effective. So "Neurotrend" is engaged in neuromarketing research in the study of consumer behavior. Natalia Galkina, founder and CEO of the company, told Hi—Tech about a new direction in marketing research — neuromarketing - and why it is more effective than traditional questionnaires. She also explained how the neuromarketing research is going and why she is not afraid of competition.

 

Natalia Galkina is the founder and CEO of the company "Neurotrend". She became interested in the work of the brain at school, so she graduated from the biological faculty of Moscow State University with a degree in Neurophysiology. But realizing that this profession does not bring money, she went to study economics. She received her second higher education in absentia and worked in parallel in the Department of Public Relations of the Central Bank. In 2004, she became the CEO of the company "Univers-Consulting". Despite her successful career, Natalia's desire to study the brain remained. Therefore, she decided to realize herself in neuromarketing. In 2014, she founded the company "Neurotrend", engaged in neuromarketing research for business. Galkina is also the initiator of the emergence of neuromarketing and neuroeconomics programs at Moscow State University, MGIMO University and the Moscow Film School.

 

A person enters the laboratory and sits in a chair in front of a computer screen. They put on a special cap with EEG sensors, a polygraph, turn on an eye tracker and start showing a commercial. While the respondent is watching the story, the equipment reads and records the impulses that his brain sends.

 

This is what a typical neuromarketing study looks like. Experts study the neurophysiological reactions of a person watching a video. Moreover, it is possible to determine even what a person himself would not have noticed. For example, that in the middle of the video, his attention weakened a little or his pulse increased slightly. Then, based on these data, the researchers will compile a general picture of the impression made by advertising, and conclude whether it will be effective at all and for which group of people. When impressions take your breath away

 

Natalia learned about neuromarketing in 2011. The new discipline immediately caught her attention. "It was interesting to see what happens to a person when he interacts with some content: he heard a video on the radio, saw an advertisement on TV or a billboard on the street, and so on," she explains.

 

For example, Google big data researcher Seth Stevens-Davidovich notes that if an opinion or behavior pattern (racism, xenophobia, thoughts of murder or suicide) is considered unacceptable, a person hides them, sometimes even from himself. But based on the queries he makes in search engines; we can assume his true attitude. The man claims that he has no prejudice against African Americans, but at the same time Googles jokes about them. Hi-Tech wrote more about this in a big interview with Stevens-Davidovich.

Neuromarketing is a set of methods that allow you to study the behavior of the buyer and the impact on him of audiovisual content (audio and video ads, product packaging, etc.). The term was coined in 2002 by Professor of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam Eil Smidts.

 

Unlike classical marketing, where the emphasis is on the sphere of consciousness, neuromarketing studies the neurophysiological reactions of a person. On their basis, advertising content is formed — advertising can be more memorable, more liked, cause positive emotions.

 

Neuromarketing allows you to get away from subjective evaluation — sensory-motor, cognitive and emotional reactions become the main criteria in it. At the same time, a person may not even realize his true impressions himself.

 

Explaining the essence of the technique, Natalia cites as an example the familiar phrases: "the heart stopped", "I watched without taking my eyes off", "holding my breath". According to her, this is exactly what happens to a person who sees something interesting. The task of specialists is to record these reactions and translate them into quantitative criteria.

 

When Natalia found out that a large research company Nielsen had bought the first commercial neuromarketing company NeuroFocus, it became clear to her that the market has an interest in this direction. This means that such projects have commercial potential. "We realized that such a company should be made locally, in Russia," Natalia recalls. For her, the new science became an opportunity to return to what she had always been interested in, the study of the brain, and combine it with the skills of an economist.

 

Assemble a team and find funds

 

In search of scientists who would take part in the work on the project, Galkina turned to the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University. It took about two years to select a team, purchase equipment and conduct pilot studies. It was not easy to find funds. In the first half of the 2010s, accelerators did not yet exist, and startup financing programs were insufficiently developed and run-in. There was not enough money from business angels to launch the project, and venture funds were not interested in a small project that had no real results yet. As a result, the devices necessary for research were purchased from those that were already in use earlier, former classmates analyzed scientific articles on the topic. And when the direction and scope of work became approximately clear, a serious issue of attracting investment arose.

Before the advent of neuromarketing, a survey was conducted to find out users' impressions of advertising. This method is quite simple technically, but it may not display the real picture. Even if a person is not going to lie, subconsciously he may distort his impressions or try to present his own image in a favorable light for him. For example, he liked the interviewer, and he wants to look more attractive in his eyes. This encourages giving answers that will be socially acceptable.

 

Natalia invested her own funds in the creation of the laboratory, and also used the help of private investors — mostly friends and acquaintances. Galkina also had to lay a country house. As a result, it was managed to raise the necessary amount to launch the project — about $ 1 million. In total, over two years, about 100 million rubles were spent on the project ($ 1.6 million — "High-tech").

 

The Neurotrend laboratory was opened in 2014 in Moscow. "From the very beginning, we set a goal: to make it so that it does not become obsolete for at least five years," says Natalia. — Now exactly five years have passed, and we can say that this task has been completed."

 

Shortly after the opening of the laboratory, the "National Technological Initiative" movement unfolded. The developments of the "Neurotrend" fit into its concept, and the laboratory became one of the first projects included in it. In 2014, in his address to the Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin named the National Technological Initiative among the priorities of state policy. Its goal is to promote the development of technologies that could ensure the security of the country, improve the standard of living of citizens and make Russia competitive in the global technology market.

 

To compartmentalize

 

The essence of the methodology is that respondents are offered to familiarize themselves with any content (from product packaging to an advertising video) and measure the emerging psychophysiological reactions. This is done with the help of an EEG (they record the bioelectric activity of the brain), an eye tracker (a device for tracking eye movement) and a polygraph (they track breathing, cardiovascular activity and electrical resistance of the skin).

 

Before starting the procedure, sensors are fixed on a person. If we are talking about visual content, then first with the help of eye tracker, the researchers make sure that the person really looked at the advertising product. Then the bioelectric activity of the brain is measured to make sure that the person's attention was focused on the image. And in order to understand whether what they saw caused any emotions in a person, the data is taken from a polygraph - pulse, respiratory rate and galvanic skin reaction.

 

However, the devices only record physiological changes. But it is impossible to determine what kind of emotional reaction the advertisement caused with their help. So, the pulse can become faster and from fear, and from joy, and from anger. Therefore, the study is recorded on a high-resolution camera. With automatic synchronization of the image with the indicators of the devices, it is possible to more accurately determine a person's feelings by facial expressions. For example, whether he was really amused by a funny video or caused only a skeptical grin instead of laughter. Neurophysiologists also talk to the volunteers after the end of the study so that the participants can express their feelings.

 

The data obtained are translated into criteria that allow evaluating the effectiveness of the impact: attention, interest, emotional involvement and memorability. Each of the indicators is evaluated on a one-hundred-point scale, after which the average score is displayed. Based on a large array of neuromarketing testing data, the average values for each of the four neuropredictors were identified: attention, interest, engagement and memorability. Each indicator can vary from 0 to 100%, for ease of perception, the values are conditionally divided into five color groups from the smaller to the larger value of the indicator.

 

"This allows you to compare your product with competitors' videos by specific indicators and with the general level of indicators for the advertising market," says the PR director of Neurotrend Alesya Chichinkina. — On average, the level of emotional involvement caused by commercials is 68 points, for example, my video has this indicator equal to 66. What does this mean? It seems to be lower than the average for the entire market, but not much. But if the videos of my competitors are in the 50-60 fork, it means that, fighting for the emotions of the buyers of my product, I win over the competitors, but there are videos of other non-competing products that can cause a stronger emotional involvement."

 

"A concrete example of chocolate advertising," Chichinkina continues. — For example, I am a Raffaello marketer, and I see from the link that the level of emotional involvement of my advertising is lower than the average for the market (just 66 vs. 68), but out of ten chocolate commercials, only I am in the green zone and only two points behind the average, and the nearest competitor is already the yellow zone and 63 points. Fighting with my advertising mainly with the advertising of chocolate, not cars, this indicator suits me quite well, and I can concentrate more on improving the "Memorability" indicator, which I generally have in the orange zone."

 

 

 

At the same time, developers do not just analyze the perception of the content as a whole, but also record how the indicators change during the viewing process. For example, at what points during the demonstration of the video, the viewer's attention reaches its maximum, and at what points it decreases. This helps to understand what "catches" potential consumers more strongly, and thereby strengthen the impact of advertising or use the data obtained when creating other commercials.

 

Over the five years of Neurotrend existence, it has conducted more than 1,000 studies, in which more than 20,000 respondents participated. Customers are large manufacturers of goods and services in the mass market sector: Cherkizovo, KFC, Makfa, TEVA, Borjomi, MegaFon, MTS, Beeline. The average cost of the study is from 300 thousand to 700 thousand rubles. An example of neuromarketing analysis for specific customer requests is a study that was conducted for Yandex. The customers wanted to check the effectiveness of advertising in Yandex.Navigator", in order to subsequently sell this platform to advertisers. Since 2016, the company "Neurotrend" has been a partner of the Industry Union "Neuronet".

  

Mental dialogue

 

In 2017, another product appeared — "NeuroChat". This is an interface that helps people interact with the computer directly. From the outside, it looks like a program reading the patient's thoughts, but this is a very rough description of the process. "We analyze the bioelectric activity of the brain and look for a specific reaction to the illumination of symbols. The symbol can be a letter, a number, a sign, a picture, a phrase, anything," explains Alesya Chichinkina. Based on this data, the program, after several repetitions, can identify which letter the patient is thinking about and display it on the screen. Thus, communication, in fact, is a letter-by-letter dictation of the text. At the same time, learning a new technique takes only about a quarter of an hour. It is based on the analysis of the evoked potentials of P300.

 

Evoked potential (EP) is an electrical reaction of the brain in response to some stimulus. EP P300 occur in the brain in response to atypical stimuli of various origins: visual, sound or tactile.

 

When working with the "NeuroChat" within the P300 module, the user is asked to focus on the target symbol indicated on the monitor screen and react internally to it. At the same time, a specific electrical activity occurs in the brain — EP P300. Moreover, the more attentively and with greater concentration the user will work on the "NeuroChat", the higher the performance, for example, faster typing of words and fewer typing errors.

 

Now several application options are offered. For example, for people with serious speech and movement disorders, "NeuroChat" is used as a neurocommunicator, thanks to it people can communicate with the power of thought. This possibility is extremely important for people with such diagnoses as cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, stroke, ALS or with various injuries.

 

"For people who do not have such disorders, we offer "NeuroChat" as a tool for "pumping the brain": improving concentration, memory, in general, expanding the capabilities of the brain," adds Alesya Chichinkina. A similar technique has already been used before: in 1967, Edmond Divan trained patients to control the alpha rhythms of the brain and thus transmit signals using Morse code. The text was transmitted to a teletype. But the method was not widely used — not everyone managed to master it. In addition, it was additionally required to learn Morse code.

 

In 2017, Rospatent included "NeuroChat" in the hundred of the best inventions of the country. In 2018, a successful presentation of the program's capabilities took place. At the same time, the task was maximally complicated. Not just two paralyzed people communicated with each other, but the dialogue also took place in different languages: a Russian who became disabled after a severe traumatic brain injury "talked" with an American with cerebral palsy. "NeuroChat" transformed brain signals into text, and the resulting phrases were translated by a computer.

 

Now more than 200 people use NeuroChat in rehabilitation centers and at home, and more than 25 million potential customers worldwide. These are people with severe motor and speech disorders. The cost for the patient is 10 thousand rubles for renting the device or 120 thousand rubles if it is purchased. Over 180 million rubles have been invested in Neurochat for three years.

 

It's boring without competitors

 

Speaking about competitors, Natalia notes that the global and Russian market in this industry is still actively being formed. Among the projects similar to "NeuroChat", she calls "Altragit". "But we have different users," Galkina notes. — Our technologies remove information from the brain. A person should see the content, but he does not have to strain his eyes." Competitors' technologies require a clear focus on the image, which is often quite difficult for people with disabilities.

 

At the same time, Natalia notes that their company has become a pioneer not only of the Russian, but also of the world market, and has managed to influence the development of the industry. "To some extent, with our performances and participation in exhibitions, we have spurred this wave of interest in research and the creation of brain-computer interface technologies," she says.

 

In Russia, in addition to the "Neurotrend", the companies GfK, the "Brain Laboratory", the Center for Applied Neuroeconomics and Behavioral Research CNBR, Agny and others are engaged in neuromarketing research for business. In "Neurotrend" they are not afraid to take young guys for an internship. Natalia is not confused by the idea that they can later use their knowledge to create their own startup in the same field. "If I am alone, there will be no market. The market is possible only where there is competition," explains Natalia.

 

Now the team of "Neurotrend" includes about 80 people. These are mathematicians, programmers, neurophysiologists and psychologists. At the same time, since the company's research is at the intersection of several sciences, many employees have dual specialization, for example, psychology and marketing. Natalia says that in part such requirements for versatile competence are forced: there is no neuromarketologist specialty in Russia yet. Therefore, their companies also help shape this industry.

 

"Universities have courses on neuromarketing, but they are closer to neurophysiology,— Galkina notes. — They give mainly theory, and we need practice first of all. Neuromarketing cannot be learned by listening to a course of lectures and completing game tasks." And he gives an example: young people who are fascinated by a new idea come to their company for work or an internship. And when it turns out that the research involves a large amount of rough work, including cleaning helmets and electrodes, many are disappointed. Everyone wants a quick result, but they are not ready for painstaking and monotonous research work on data collection and processing.

 

Original article: https://hightech.fm/2019/12/27/neurotrend