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Blindsight

Blindsight:
The (Mostly) Hidden Ways
Marketing Reshapes Our Brains

Neuroscientist Matt Johnson and marketer Prince Ghuman found themselves driven towards the same fundamental goal: to understand and predict human behavior. In under to fulfill it, they teach undergraduate and postgraduate courses in neuromarketing and they conduct primary research into consumer behavior. But one of their most important work efforts is their new book: Blindsight, as it combines their experience and expertise.

Starting with the title of the book, the authors leave the reader intrigued. As humans, we never experience the world directly - all we ever experience is our brain’s model of it. As they state, blindsight is more than a fascinating window into how the brain processes visual information, it is also a window into our relationship with the consumer world. Their aim is to empower us, the readers, with a different kind of blindsight: the ability to see the unseeable in our consumer world, allowing us to see behind the "what?" and to understand the "how?" and the "why?".

Blindsight not only shares mind-boggling neuroscience and psychology research, it is also written in an engaging style. If you would like to find out how brands have converged over the years with clever ways of inserting themselves into the gap between external, objective reality and internal, subjective perception and how our brain copes with this, reading this book is the right path. For brands, the transformation of experiences into memories, and the effective retrieval of those memories, is crucial. The authors state that memory isn’t simply the brain’s attempt at connecting to the past, it’s the brain’s attempt at connecting to the past to optimize the future. The book presents case studies and research conducted for top companies like Facebook, Burger King, Amazon, Google, Kit Kat, Corona, Nissan, Maybelline, ING, Apple, Airbnb, Spotify, Coca-Cola, the movie and music industry and much more.

Matt Johnson and Prince Ghuman confront us with major paradoxes of human psychology: pain and pleasure, logic and emotion, perception and reality, and attraction to both danger and safety. Also, they explore the neuroscience of memory, decision-making, empathy, connection, storytelling, free will, subliminal messaging, attention, and experience, all in the context of consumerism, empowering us with knowledge in this consumer world.

How does changing the color of food in the virtual world shift our perception of food in real-world mental models? What are the shortcuts our brains use in this world like a complex stream of never-ending data? How in control of our decision-making are we actually? How does memory drive behavior? Which are the blind spots in human psychology? Are you curious to find out the answers to questions like these? Are you ready, like Neo in The Matrix, to see how deep the rabbit hole goes? Read Blindsight. This is one of the best and most challenging reads for 2020

We are always amazed about how much we know and how much more we don't know. This is one of the best reads for marketing professionals who want to understand the psychological consequences of their campaigns, but also to anyone interested in gaining the ability to see the unseen- or to gain blindsight, as it will enable you to be aware of the invisible quirks of psychology and know what to expect when your brain meets brand.

Reviewer: Monica Diana Olteanu
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