A Call to Expand the use of Neuromarketing so Advertisers Can Target our Brain

We have called on Congress, the FTC and the European Commission to regulate the use of neuromarketing--techniques embraced increasingly by the largest digital marketing and media companies and global brands.  No one should be permited to unleash messages designed to deliberately bypass a citizen/consumer conscious mind.  Now, one Microsoft consultant is calling for marketers to expand their use of such practices.  In a Q and A on a digital marketing site, Jason Lanier answered the question: "So where should advertisers and marketers be looking next?"

Lanier: Advertisers and marketers should be looking to bring new experiences to different parts of the brain. It's a more profound idea than just dropping a billboard into a video game. Advertisers are not thinking radically enough – they look for technology to lead instead of trying the neuroscience approach and thinking about what parts of the brain haven't been activated before. These new experiences bring new capabilities to the brain. I hate to mention Kinect again, but I think of it as a pristine example of the opportunities for the future of advertising – letting people use their cognitive faculties in new ways, the body connected to the mind in a new way. There are a whole series of technologies like this coming that will bring new kinds of experiences and new kinds of communication to which advertising should look to for the future.