
Is Neuromarketing Ethical? - pmoriarty
https://neurofied.com/the-ethics-of-neuromarketing/
======
philipkglass
It's clever to put the leading question "is neuromarketing ethical?" up front.
It implies that the the technique definitely _works_ , and it works _so well_
that we need to have a long conversation about the ethical implications.

What does Neurofied do? "Grow your business with behavioural psychology and
neuroscience."

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Yeah, my first thought was "isn't it unethical to peddle pseudoscience?".

------
thundergolfer
> The main goal of marketing is to match a product with a person that shows
> interest in this product.

This is how they open their section on the ethics, so off to a really bad
start. That being the main goal of marketing is patently false. Coca-Cola
billions a year marketing a product that hasn’t changed and that everyone
already knows about.

The rest of the article is then just constantly making the same mistake of, I
think intentionally, mischaracterising what marketing actually is.

I mean, come on, they have a heading that it isn’t “necessarily wrong”. Wow!
Strong case you’re making here.

~~~
kazinator
Indeed. The main goal of marketing is to create interest out of thin air and
then maintain it. You don't find out what people want and try to give it to
them; you program people to want what you have.

------
Causality1
I would disagree there's anything special about neuromarketing. I think
there's an ethical question about the entire field of marketing itself, but
using models of human behavior derived from neurology is not different from
using models of human behavior derived from statistics or focus groups or any
other way people try to manipulate other people into buying things they don't
need.

~~~
mirimir
That's their basic message: It's no less ethical than regular marketing.

~~~
aalleavitch
The question we should be asking is if regular marketing is ethical.

~~~
mirimir
I'd say that it's unethical to the extent that it involves dishonesty.

------
sailfast
Fascinating about the memory areas activated when folks knew a soda brand,
while if they didn’t know the brand it was more the senses and taste, which
clearly determined the preferences.

Is it ethical? “For Charity” was basically their answer.

Will it be used for purely profit-driven adventures and end up marketing bad
things to people that do not need them? Absolutely.

Does it really work as effectively as they indicate? I dunno - they really
only had numbers from a really old subliminal priming study.

------
aaron695
This is written by a neural net and this is why it's trending?

Subliminal messages of coke in the cinema was faked, can't be bothered to see
if this blog spam Markov chain mentions this.

Check out Scent marketing if this sort of thing interests you.

------
evrydayhustling
Why is this ad on HN?

------
aalleavitch
All marketing is “neuromarketing”. It’s fundamentally a practice of exploiting
human psychology to drive their behavior.

Also yes, all marketing is fundamentally unethical if it is done by a profit-
driven company.

------
DoofusOfDeath
At the risk of sounding pedantic, is the term "ethical" sufficiently well-
defined in this context to have a fruitful discussion?

~~~
aidenn0
Ethical means one ought to do it, and unethical means one ought not do it.

