I am sure it is known by most that Robert Heath disagree with me on a lot of stuff. This despite the fact that we both work from the same basic neurological facts.

Recently I received the mail below from  Steve Genco of Lucid Systems, and below I post my reply to him.

As a background: Several years ago I was at conference with Robert Heath where we disagreed. I tols him a story I heard:

'If there is one attorney in town he is the poorest person, if there are two they are the richest."

My point was: lets disagree, then we will evoke a debate about this lesser known thing called neuro-marketing. This has happened, and we still disagree.

I answered with a 'tongue in cheek' : What if Freud was Right?
Largely implying that many people change the word Sub-conscious to Pre-conscious or Non-conscious without changing the 'implied'  Freudian concepts of Sub-consciousness.

 

The way you phrased this statement I have to tell you that I totally agree with it, and that, as far as I know, Millward Brown will agree with it.

In other words: we all agree that (with the current state of knowledge) neuro-measures might sometimes add something to what conscious responses tell us.

This is why we are all very interested in what we can learn about bio-measures and how they might help in conjunction with conscious responses.

Ofcourse, the statement, as you phrased it, is a far cry from the next step that many authors take of saying that conscious responses are misleading and that conscious processes are bad. I inlude Heath in people that take this step.

A story:

A wise Dean of the Psychology Department engaged me in an argument about the sub-conscious. Just as soon as he has convinced me of its existence he turned around and convinced me it did not exist. Ofcourse his job was to know all the arguments for and against.

He then explained to me: the subconscious is a belief system like religion: If you are  Christian you see the hand of God in Everything, if not, you see the hand of God in Nothing.

The same is true for the sub-consciousness. You either believe or you don't.

Interestingly if you read about this in wikkipedia then you will see that the consensus by psychologists is that Freud was wrong. Yet, I see many things in neurology as we read it that explains why Freud might have been right - at least as far as phobias and sub-conscious is concerned. (I am overstating.)

Even Chris Frith, Professor in Neuropsychology in Lodon, in his book Making up the Mind knocks Freud.

The danger is that Robert has had a career of arguing against the Millward Brown measures and is now looking at the neuro-results from that perspective.

I have seen the evidence of the MB measures relating to sales results and even effectiveness awards, and admittedly this infuences my perspective.

I think we are all trying to unscramble what there is to be learned (and trying to keep up with all the new knowledge as it is reported) and at the same time popularising this and trying to find ways to use it. I think that jumping to conclusions that 'everything we allways knew is wrong' is simply not waranted, and even irresponsible.

I favour a position where we review what we knew against the new paradigm and with the new technologies (although mostly they are not that new) and work toward better explanations and better use of both old and new technologies.

Regards,

Erik.