http://www.houseind.com/showandtell/2011/09/15/HouseIndustriesforHermanMillerAsiaPacific

(download)

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type_in_search_of_a_good_home.zip (115 KB)

Not sure if this is an SF-only campaign or running elsewhere as well. I've seen it on bus sides, bus shelters and some billboards around town. Any guesses as to who it's for? My initial thought was Kaiser Permanente or maybe a health insurance brand like Blue Cross...

http://adage.com/article/digital/irene-agency/229516/ cc Dan Korn

Apparently our brains are made up of three parts: the new brain, the middle brain and the old brain. 

So what does the old brain want?

The 'Old Brain’ is self-centered

The 'Old Brain' is a very self-centered entity and general considerations about others do not reach it. Think of the 'Old Brain' as the center of ME. Do not assume that it has any patience or empathy for anything that does not immediately concern its survival and well-being.

The 'Old Brain’ seeks contrast

Before/after, with/without, slow/fast all allow the Old Brain to decide. Contrast is a safe decision engine. It allows the 'Old Brain' to make quick and safe decisions. Without contrast, the 'Old Brain' enters a state of confusion, which ultimately results in delaying decision.

The 'Old Brain’ is tangible

Numbers work for the New Brain, but the 'Old Brain' won't decide based on numbers alone! The 'Old Brain' is constantly scanning for what is familiar and friendly, what can be recognized quickly, what is tangible and immutable. The 'Old Brain' cannot process concepts like "flexible solution", "integrated approach", or "scalable architecture" without efforts and doubts.

The 'Old Brain’ remembers beginning and end

The 'Old Brain' forgets most everything in the middle. This short attention span has huge implications on how to construct and deliver powerful messages. Placing the most important content at the beginning is a must, and repeating it at the end an imperative. Keep in mind that anything you say in the middle of your delivery will be mostly overlooked.

The 'Old Brain’ is visual

The 'Old Brain' is visual. Neuroscience demonstrates that when you see something that looks like a snake, your 'Old Brain' warns you instantly of danger so that you react even before the New Brain physically recognizes it's a snake. This implies that visual processing enters the 'Old Brain' first which can lead to very fast and effective connection to the true decision-maker.

The 'Old Brain’ responds to emotion

The 'Old Brain' is strongly triggered by emotions. Neuroscience has clearly demonstrated that appealing to emotions create chemical reactions that directly impact the way we memorize and act.

Source: http://www.salesbrain.net/users/folder.asp?FolderID=6310

"Sweatshop is a new browser game, developed by Littleloud for Channel 4 Education, in which players fill the role of a factory floor manager in a developing nation. Taking design cues from the tower defense genre, the game tasks you with placing skilled workers and child laborers along a conveyor belt."

I'm a big fan of games that teach, not by lecturing or quizzing, but by letting you take on the role of a newsmaker. You're in a much better position to understand the decision space of the person once you've worked through their decision tree a couple of times. In any case, I'm following the recent wave of newsgames with a fair bit of interest. Their ability to model complex, inhuman systems lets us get past our usual bias towards narratives and personalites, at least that's what we hope for.

Which is how we come to a tower defense game in a sweatshop. Initially, you can make all the jeans or other clothes with fine and safe labor practices, but as the game increases in complexity you're forced to choose which goals you're really working for. Very clever example of procedural rhetoric, and a good use of existing gaming conventions.

The frightening, real-world power of Channel 4's "Sweatshop."

So you know Dwarf Fortress, that crazy game I may have told you about over the past six months? The sim game where you basically build the Mines of Moria? Where dwarves go crazy and build a fractal statue with 73 images of itself?

It's been written up at length in the New York Times Magazine.

The article does a good job of describing what makes the game so bizarre and so brilliant. Greg Costikyan described it as the product of an alternate universe where the graphics revolution never happened, but computing power increased according to Moore's Law as in our universe. The result is a game where all the complexity goes to the actual guts and mechanics, rather than pretty graphics:

“The processing power that Dwarf Fortress uses is on the same scale as modern engineering software for designing aerospace hardware,” says Ames, the engineer. “You have more complicated simulations in Dwarf Fortress than when you model the aerodynamics of a wing.”

As the article correctly observes, this represents a radically different approach to game design, and perhaps one that could only be brought to us by an eccentric pair of brothers with advanced degrees in mathematics and ancient history:

At bottom, Dwarf Fortress mounts an argument about play. Many video games mimic the look and structure of films: there’s a story line, more or less fixed, that progresses­ only when you complete required tasks. This can make for gripping fun, but also the constrictive sense that you are a mouse in a tricked-out maze, chasing chunks of cheese. Tarn envisions Dwarf Fortress, by contrast, as an open-ended “story generator.” He and Zach grew up playing computer games with notebooks in hand, drawing their own renditions of the randomly generated creatures they encountered and logging their journeys in detail. Dwarf Fortress, which never unfolds the same way twice, takes that spirit of supple, fully engaged play to the extreme.

Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, “abusive” — a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer, ostensibly charged with doing the hooking. “Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding,” he said, “the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing? You can call that kind of game fun, but only if you call compulsive gambling fun.” He added: “I used to value the ability to turn the user into your slave. I don’t anymore.”

Dwarf Fortress is a path not normally taken, which as a thoughtful gamer I regret.

I can’t imagine you’d be getting any truly earth shattering knowledge from this book even if you’re only fairly confident in the field of neuroscience, but if you’re a beginner, like me, or need a refresher, the book is a terrific resource for the basics on Neuroscience, the internal workings of the subconscious mind and some general, sort of common sense insights on how to successfully advertise to modern people with subconsciously primitive brains.

Here are a few things the book has to offer:

1.     A pretty extensive overview of neuromarketing technology. The book provides the differences between EEG, fMRI , and biometric technology. This section is well written and clear enough to get a good understanding of what neuroscience is, does, what the industry has accomplished and the direction it’s headed.

2.     A good take on how the human brain might function –especially on a subconscious level. Not uncommonly, Pradeep insists that our desires, pleasures and fears all stem from what we’ve learned and developed in our caveman days. For example, in a section titled, “Cavewoman in a Carpool”, Pradeep links a women’s need to make and maintain connections with her partner and children on a daily basis, to her need to seek community 100,000 years ago. The marketing solution: “Provide your female customers with Twitter or Facebook updates and links, in-store cooking lessons, chat rooms, and other resources to help her feel more connected in her world –and your brand or product.”(24)

3.      Answers to some pretty basic questions. Pradeep portrays the brain a bit like it’s a three year old child that advertisers/marketers must cater to by having answers to the following questions:

a. What engages the brain?

b. What pleasures the brain?

c. What bores/disengages the brain?

d. What frustrates the brain?

e. What does the brain love?

Answers: b. rewarding images c. clutter e. puzzles and humor

If you don’t know the answers to a and d,  read “The Buying Brain”. It might have something for you. If you already do, there probably isn’t a need to. Onward to brainier things, my friends.

Humor is built into the brain's natural problem-solving faculties, and shares a lot with the emotions of discovery and sense-making: "Aha!" and "Ha-ha!" sound similar for a reason.

Of course, not all humor is useful for that nowadays, but we still crave it in the same way that we crave sweet foods; because at a certain time in our evolution, it was really useful to want high-energy foods containing fructose.  

In "The Buying Brain," Dr. A.K. Pradeep (founder of Neurofocus) suggests incorporating visuals that create immediate, striking disconnects in the viewer's mental models.  By putting these in, you generate stopping power and increased attention by taking advantage of the brain's native error-checking function:

Of course, it is important that the attention-getting points have strong brand linkage, but that's another discussion...

This is pretty awesome. It's like a bookmobile, but for badass music. I'm curious how they handle shelf space, though...