Who Really Won the Super Bowl?

BartlebyScrivener writes "In the latest development of the new field known as 'neuro marketing,' Marco Iacoboni and his group of researchers at the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain responses in a group of subjects while they were watching this year's Super Bowl ads. The findings are reported at Edge: The Third Culture."

Who Really Won the SuperBowl...

[Chris Bradshaw]

Who Really Won The SuperBowl?

Why Rupert Murdoch of course...

how about

[dotpavan]

.. I would like to see the neural response of slashdotters while reading this article, and see if the UCLA team really got their message through :)

Why not both?

[fuchsiawonder]

There is a big jump in amygdala activity when the dinosaur crushes the caveman, as shown below. The scene looks funny and has been described as funny by lots of people, but your amygdala still perceives it as threatening, another example of disconnect between verbal reports on ads and brain activity while viewing the ads.

See, I don't see how there's necessarily a disconnect. So what if there's a threatening image that resonates with a part of the brain? That doesn't mean it can't be funny. Part of being human is having multiple reactions to the same stimulus. Ever ridden a roller coaster? Thrilling and scary at the same time, at least to me. I don't see this as being a disconnect; it's different portions of my self reacting in different ways.

That being said, the Burger King ad was awful.

Re:Who Really Won The SuperBowl?

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For me, ALL the advertisers have lost.
In the two weeks since the SuperBowl, I have not purchased a Hummer, a Cadillac, a web doman from GoDaddy, ate at the Outback Steakhouse or flown on United Airlines.

Re:Who Really Won the SuperBowl...

[Trigun]

I thought that it was the referee's family from the vegas payoffs.

Re:Why not both?

[kfg]

See, I don't see how there's necessarily a disconnect. So what if there's a threatening image that resonates with a part of the brain? That doesn't mean it can't be funny.

In fact, they are intimately connected. Remember Mel Brooks' famous explanation of the difference between tragedy and comedy:

If I stub my toe; that's tragedy.

If you fall down a manhole and die; that's comedy.

Perhaps the best joke expression of this the one that ends with the punchline:

I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.

Comedy is a threatening situation that gets the other guy, not you, because he's a putz, and you're not, so you experience the vicarious superiority of having survived the threat. No threat, no sense of superiority, no comedy.

KFG

Re:Who Really Won The SuperBowl?

[StikyPad]

As long as you didn't purchase a Land Rover, a Mercedes, a web domain from RegistryFly, eaten at Applebee's, or flown on American Airlines, then they haven't lost; they just didn't win. Yet.

Re:Who Really Won The SuperBowl?

[j3one]

"For me, ALL the advertisers have lost. In the two weeks since the SuperBowl, I have not purchased a Hummer, a Cadillac, a web doman from GoDaddy, ate at the Outback Steakhouse or flown on United Airlines."

Nope, they won.... You remember them. Case and point.
Infact, you probably still remember the budwiser commercial from 3 or even 5 years ago.

ok...

[dR.fuZZo]

This experiment measured reactions in people's brains as they viewed Super Bowl ads. What it didn't measure, however, was to what extent, if any, the ads changed people's recognition or feeling about the brands they were supposed to be selling.

An ad could have left a big impact on a person, but done a very poor job of establishing/reinforcing its brand. It would have been more interesting to see an experiment trying to measure if the ads actually did what they were supposed to do.

Re:Who Really Won The SuperBowl?

[dpreston]

The fact that you just named all those BRAND names off the top of your head just told me they did a great job. They're not trying to sell their product to you, they're trying to brand their name/product/etc.