WTF, Google?

FastCompany has a great post, with the same title as this post, on some of Google’s glitches. Of course, as they point out, when you’re processing the volume of stuff they are, they’re bound to make a few glitches. They mostly relate to attempts to return searches and ads that are in line with what the user has requested, and then royally messed up. And a couple of them are royal.

My fave of the bunch they showcase is this one. It’s a Google Ad within an article someone’s written. Certainly not the kind of ad you want period, and definitely not at the beginning of an article like this:

I’m sure there are some that love that Google doesn’t get it right every time (Microsoft and Yahoo!! come to mind) but I like that technology isn’t perfect and that it creates some humour for us every now and then : )

The emergence of Neuromarketing

Traditional market research has it’s limitations when one considers the influence of the ‘observer’ on the ‘observed’ when attempting to understand people’s true thoughts and feelings on the product/brand/service being researched. If we could just get into their heads to withdraw a pure brain impulse without the constraints traditional market research introduces in the mechanisms it uses. Enter Neuromarketing…

Neuromarketing is the practice of using technology to measure brain activity in consumer subjects in order to inform the development of products and communications–really to inform the brand’s 4Ps. The premise is that consumer buying decisions are made in split seconds in the subconscious, emotional part of the brain and that by understanding what we like, don’t like, want, fear, are bored by, etc. as indicated by our brain’s reactions to brand stimuli, marketers can design products and communications to better meet “unmet” market needs, connect and drive “the buy”.

FastCompany posted an article recently that explores the issue and the companies that are using this new ’science’. It also suggests a few shortcomings and some interesting ethical concerns.

Neuromarketing is only poised to grow in use and influence. But as the practice makes its way out of the lab and into the real world, at the grocery aisle, onto your computer perhaps…a debate, well beyond marketing, will rage.