:: adgruntie :: Global branding and Why of the Buy

+ Biggest brands reintroducting themselves, being lead by McD's "I'm lovin' it" global campaign. Ugh.

Many experts say it's often the American lineage that provides the allure.

"They're exporting moments of happiness wrapped around the American dream," Tavassoli said of McDonald's. "That has global appeal, but it's because it's American."

American dream and McDonalds? Huh? Sorry, I'm not sure that I get the connection to that there, especially with the obesity issues in the US these days.

+ LATimes reports on "Searching for the Why of the Buy" (reg.req.). More attempts to scientifically figure out what makes us attracted to brands and all that.

Children are exposed to 40,000 commercials every year. By the age of 18 months, they can recognize logos. By 10, they have memorized 300 to 400 brands, according to Boston College sociologist Juliet B. Schor. The average adult can recognize thousands.

"We are embedded in an enormous sea of cultural messages, the neural influences of which we poorly understand," said neuroscientist Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "We don't understand the way in which messages can gain control over our behavior."

That is starting to change. By monitoring brain activity directly, researchers are discovering the unexpected ways in which the brain makes up its mind.

Many seemingly rational decisions are reflexive snap judgments, shaped by networks of neurons acting in concert. These orchestras of cells are surprisingly malleable, readily responding to the influence of experience.

Moreover, researchers suspect that the inescapable influence of marketing does more than change minds. It may alter the brain.

Just as practicing the piano or learning to read can physically alter areas of the cerebral cortex, the intense, repetitive stimulation of marketing might shape susceptible brain circuits involved in decision-making.

These inquiries into consumer behavior harness techniques pioneered for medical diagnosis: positron emission tomography, which measures the brain's chemical activity; magneto-encephalography, which measures the brain's magnetic fields; and functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures blood flow around working neurons.