Public health social media communications and consumer neuroscience

Abstract

Consumer neuroscience is an emerging discipline. Potential exists for neurological quantitative research techniques to be used for the development and analysis of public health messages due to limited numbers of successful campaigns. In some instances, highly successful public health marketing campaigns have been designed to address something greater than financial gain and have achieved exceptional reach. This results in increased public awareness using social amplification platforms. Examples of these include action-oriented social media campaigns that ask individuals to “act”, “share”, “pledge” or “challenge” on behalf of a health or social cause. Neurological and physiological techniques include functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography, eye tracking, galvanic skin response, heart rate, facial recognition and implicit association testing. Due to nonconscious decision-making processes these techniques have the potential to identify driving forces behind individuals’ decision to become involved in health and social cause marketing campaigns that are unable to be identified with qualitative research methods. In 2014/2015 the Australian Government spent $23.3 million Australian dollars (AUD) on health and social service marketing campaigns, with $19.4 million AUD on health communications, and $3.9 million AUD on social services. These figures are considered conservative as expenditure on marketing campaigns below $250 thousand AUD is excluded. Thus, using consumer neuroscience to inform the design of future public health and social cause communications, which may help to save a life, while reducing expenditure on unsuccessful campaigns, requires greater understanding of the effectiveness of a positive action orientation vs. a fear and shock approach.

Keywords:

• consumer neuroscience
• public health communications
• social media platforms

Public Interest Statement

In 2014/2015 the Australian Government spent $23.3 million Australian dollars on health and social service marketing campaigns, of which $19.4 million was spent on health communications, and $3.9 million on social services. This paper provides a review of current neuroscience studies that aim to identify the potential use of neuroscience tools to analyse public health and social cause marketing campaigns. Consumer neuroscience is an emerging field and research in this area is limited. Consequently, greater understanding of the effectiveness of the use of positive action orientations vs. fear and shock approaches to health communications is required. As a result, this research aims to inform the design of future health communications, which may help to save a life, while reducing expenditure on unsuccessful campaigns.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interest.

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to Dr Nives Zubcevic-Basic for suggestions and insight. Dr Nives Zubcevic-Basic, Senior Lecturer, Marketing; Director, Master of Marketing, Swinburne Business School, Faculty of Business and Law, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanne M. Harris

Joanne M. Harris is the first PhD candidate in consumer neuroscience at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, researching the use of consumer neuroscience for analysis of public health and social cause marketing communications under the supervision of A Prof Joseph Ciorciari, the former Australasian Chair of the international Neuromaketing Science and Business Association (NMSBA) and A Prof John Gountas, a leading marketing researcher in consumer thinking styles and personality from Murdoch University.