Neuromarketing and Gangnam Style
The whole world witnessed the crazy global success of PSY’s music video Gangnam Style. The song was released in July 2012 and on December 21, 2012 “Gangnam Style” became the first online video to record a billion hits on the Internet. Now, on February 7th, the music video of the South Korean musician has been viewed over 1.27 billion times on YouTube, and it is still the site’s most watched video.Marcelo Peruzzo (Chief Brain Officer of ipdois neurobusiness) decided to conduct a neuromarketing research and measure the viewers’ reactions while watching this video, in order to gain more insights on what exactly triggered this phenomenon. His aim is to disseminate neuromarketing tools, and the research presented below is only for academic use.
So he asked 20 women and 20 men to watch Gangnam Style while researchers from ipdois neurobusiness measured their reactions. They used eye tracking for monitoring viewers’ eye movements, galvanic skin response to measure the muscular excitement level and facial coding to understand the emotions of those seeing the video.
Watch below this fun study presented by a talking monkey (just in case you wonder what are the red, yellow and green spots are, those are the areas where the viewers pointed their eye gaze – so the areas of greatest interest for a viewer):
Using eye tracking technology, the video simulated approximately 683 billion eye fixations. Below are the top 3 moments that engaged attention.
Moment ranked as #1 in attention
Moment ranked as #2 in attention
Moment ranked as #3 in attention
Using facial recognition software, it was proven that most viewers experienced happiness, sadness and surprise while watching the video, while disgust, anger and fear were insignificant – proving the power of attraction of the video. Prof. Peruzzo reports that many of the scenes stimulate the limbic system (see a few scenes below):
ipdois neurobusiness is an innovative independent neuromarketing company based in Curitiba (Brazil). They use eletroencephalography, eye tracking and facial reading. Professor Marcelo Peruzzo (CBO of ipdois neurobusiness) is the only Brazilian that was named best Professor of FGV Management (ranked among the 100 best worldwide MBA schools) for 7 consecutive times!
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Finding #1 is that our brain hyper focus on faces – usually eyes. Notice how even the horses faces are focused on. Second, mating signals with hips/groin and butts is a priority. It is interesting that in the map of the womans butt it is where the vagina is, reproduction, that gets the visual “heat” as are the groins of the men.
Likely most of pop culture has to do with mating fitness signaling. Interesting the consumer goods in the vid, eg car, got zero heat.