In Tomsk, at the height of the admissions campaign, the first neuromarketing project in Russia is launched, the idea was conceived and implemented by Tomsk State University together with the Neurotrend company with the support of the University Consortium of Big Data Researchers.

We talked to the creators of the project about the idea, technology and expected results.

Natalya Galkina, General Director of Neurotrend JSC:

“We have repeatedly heard from colleagues from TSU that attracting and retaining a future student is one of the most important factors determining the success of a university. And we, as an innovative company that regularly conducts research on all possible types of communications and promotional materials, thought about how our knowledge and experience in the field of consumer behavior analysis and decision making using neuromarketing technologies can be useful. We looked at the websites of different Universities and the first thing that caught our eye was that almost all of them had complex branched interfaces and intuitively incomprehensible promotional materials. It was then that the idea of the Neuroapplicant project began to crystallize, which could help participating universities make their admission campaigns more attractive in terms of basic promotional materials. After all, we can test and evaluate the effectiveness of site navigation, the perception of promotional videos, identify sections of texts that cause difficulties in reading, and evaluate the path of applicants when searching for information about admission.

We will record the unconscious neurophysiological reactions of potential students directly during contact with all these materials. And by combining our data with data from the analysis of the digital footprint of the study participants, which will be collected by the University Big Data Consortium, and further facts about the choice of the university, which will be received from participating universities, we will give not only specific recommendations for optimizing user experience and improving promotional materials, including creative solutions, but we will also be able to evaluate their effectiveness, knowing where this or that applicant actually entered.

At the moment, Neuroapplicant is the first project to use neuromarketing in admissions campaigns. Now, thanks to the development of our network of neurolaboratories, which also includes major universities of the country, such as Moscow State University, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Tomsk State University, Kazan Federal University, etc., such projects have become possible. In an ideal picture of the world, such a study would like to start at the beginning of the academic year with 11th grade applicants and finish in August, fixing the fact of their admission. At the same time, I want to emphasize that this will be a unique experiment that will combine experience and absolutely innovative technologies in the analysis of real perception neural data and big data of the digital footprint in social networks.”

Vyacheslav Goiko, General Director of the Association "University Consortium of Big Data Researchers":

“Since 2016, the TSU team has been using social media data to find and attract talented applicants. This technology has shown its effectiveness, we can determine educational interests, as well as subscriptions to certain publics through the analysis of information in the profile of schoolchildren from all over the country. In partnership with Neurotrend, we are planning to combine social media big data with neuroscience data. The goal of the project is to increase the effectiveness of university marketing materials for different target groups, including foreign applicants. Several universities of the Consortium have already expressed interest in participating in the pilot.”

Maria Tolstova, Director of the Center for Cognitive Research and Neuroscience "NeuroTomsk" TSU:

“The advantage of our methodology is that the neural equipment has perceptual data detailing down to the second, and the basic automatic processing of the results reduces the percentage of errors associated with the human factor. The combination of neurotechnologies and big data is significantly superior to traditional methods for analyzing the effectiveness of university positioning. As a result, universities will get a real picture of the interests of applicants and methodological recommendations that they can apply in their strategic activities.”