Neuromarketing Beyond the Posttest fMRI Can Predict the Commercial Effectiveness of Storyboards Before the TV Commercial Is Shot

The costs of TV commercial (TVC) campaigns are exponentially increasing from concepting, to storyboard design, to producing the commercial and broadcasting it in the media. It is therefore paramount to determine the future effectiveness of the commercial as soon as is possible during this process. Unfortunately, the reliability of the tools typically used for storyboard and TVC testing is of limited predictive value. In this paper, we present a novel method of tackling these problems. First we show that it is possible to predict the effectiveness of a commercial using neuroimaging (BOLD-MRI). Next, we show that it is also possible to make these predictions on the basis of storyboards. When properly used, this tool can change the decision-making of TV commercial production, placing key decisions early in the process when few costs have been incurred. Since the costs of commercial MR brain scanning have sharply reduced in the last decade, commercial and storyboard pretesting is not only theoretically possible but also commercially attractive.