The Ethical Optimist

There was a very interesting article in the January 22 edition of Business Week titled “If I Only Had a Brain Scan,” that really caught my eye.

Here’s the gist, Harvard’s McLean Hospital gave brain scans to six male whiskey drinkers (ages 25-34) to gauge the emotional power of various images…including “college kids drinking cocktails on spring break, twentysomethings with flasks around a campfire, and older guys at a swanky bar.”

Was this done in the interests of medical science? Noooooo….it was done for Arnold Worldwide’s new Human Nature Department.

The reason? To shape an ad campaign for client Brown-Forman, owners of the Jack Daniels brand.

Having worked for the liquor industry for over 20 years, this disturbed me greatly.  I have no problem with marketing alcohol, if (and that’s a big if) it is done responsibly.  However, many alcohol companies and their agencies have been known to cross the ethical line.

In fact, as Americans continue to drink less due to a variety of public information campaigns related to healthier lifestyles, alcohol marketers continue to seek ways to either (a) steal marketshare from their competitors or (b) seek out new category entrants…that’s a nice way of saying target the younger folks while they’re still figuring out their preferences.

This new movement has been dubbed “neuromarketing,” and isn’t all that new.  A number of companies have jumped into the fray to capitalize on the movement.  One mentioned in the article, FKF Applied Research, “Arranges fMRI time shares (functional magnetic resonance imaging), allowing clients to show 10 subjects a 30-second ad for $3,000.”

I cannot help but question the ethics of Harvard’s McLean Hospital to use their medical technology to support marketing alcoholic beverages to young people.  If time is available on these machines, it could certainly be put to better use.

As to Arnold Worldwide, I checked their website and didn’t see a code of ethics, small wonder.

Moreover, the jury is still out on whether or not this research is even viable.  According to an article in the January 15 issue of the Financial Times, “Debate rages even as to the meaning of experimental results. Is a scan of a brain lighting up when presented with an image of a brand proof of successful marketing or simply confirmation that brains recognize what is familiar? Not to mention technicalities such as the fact that the brain-scanning equipment works 200 times slower than real brains…”

Turns out, the spring-break images sparked the most brain activity.  I wonder, what would the brain scan of a mother whose child died as a result of driving while intoxicated during spring break look like?