IT MIGHT SOON BE time to redefine MRI machines as “market research imaging” devices. At Harvard’s McLean Hospital not long ago, six male whiskey drinkers, ages 25 to 34, lined up to have their brains scanned for Arnold Worldwide. The Boston-based ad shop was using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
to gauge the emotional power of various images, including college kids drinking cocktails on spring break, twentysomethings with flasks around a campfire, and older guys at a swanky bar. The scans “help give us empirical evidence of the emotion of decision making,”
says Baysie Wightman, head of Arnold’s new, sciencefocused Human Nature Dept. The results will help shape the 2007 ad campaign for client Brown-Forman, which owns Jack Daniels.
The idea of peeking into the brain for consumer insights isn’t new. More than a dozen universities have been using fMRI to study how people respond to products (prompting Ralph Nader’s Commercial Alert group to assert that “it’s wrong to use a medical technology for marketing, not healing”). But now a few agencies like Arnold—whose clients also include McDonald’s and Fidelity—and Digitas, another Boston-based shop, are offering fMRI research. “Neuromarketing” consultants, like Los Angeles-based FKF Applied Research, are springing up, too, to link companies with hospitals seeking to lease time on their pricey MRI machines.

1. Absolutely not! Ralph Nader is right; it’s wrong to use medical equipment for marketing.
2. Why not? People participate voluntarily in these studies and they get paid for the experience.
3. Ad campaigns are expensive, and it is good business sense to test their effectiveness with brain scans.
4. Using medical equipment in this way is a good way to share the costs of an expensive MRI. In the end, reducing the costs of medical equipment is good for society at large.
5. Invent other options.