Neuromarketing - Brand Influence on Brain

Brand Image - How important is it for any company? In a study presented at the Radiological Society of North America, it was shown that when people were presented with known brand images they processed those images with the part of brain associated with positive thinking. Whereas, unfamiliar brands were processed by the negative thinking brain.
According to Dr. Christine Born, M.D., radiologist at University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, this is the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study to analyze how a brain responds to branding. In the study, twenty male and female subjects were shown images of familiar and unfamiliar brands while brain activity was monitored by fMRI scanning. The findings of the study were as below:
The results showed that strong brands activated a network of cortical areas and areas involved in positive emotional processing and associated with self-identification and rewards. The activation pattern was independent of the category of the product or the service being offered. Furthermore, strong brands were processed with less effort on the part of the brain. Weak brands showed higher levels of activation in areas of working memory and negative emotional response.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/rson-msb112106.php
This clearly shows that how important branding is for people and as further advancements are made in branding studies in Neuromarketing, we will be able to make more effective branding strategies.
by Ashish Kanungo

Don't Waste Money On "Idea" Cellular Connection

Idea Cellular services in India are useless and end up wasting a lot of your time. I'm an idea user and am not at all satisfied with their services. Recently they disconnected my outgoing calls without even telling me. After I paid the bill they only activated my local calls. I had to face a lot of troubles due to their intolerable act. Now they have barred my STD facility. I tried calling customer service, which is very difficult to get connected to. So, now I'm talking to them and asking for a reason for this act and they just disconnected phone on my phase. I would recommend never to opt for this waste of money service and go to some better service provider....

Share your comments here if you have faced similar problems. This is no to "idea" movement. Surely, an idea changes your time and makes your phone useless.....

Top 5 elements that have the most significant impact on SEO

1. Crawler Accessibility: Search engines must be able to visit the web page. If the site returns an error code when the search engine crawler comes to visit then the search engine won't be able to index the site.
2. Quality content: There is nothing more valuable that proper, well written, relevant and unique content for getting ranking on search engine.
3. Title and Meta data: Though recently search engines have started giving less importance to meta tags (Due to black hat SEO), they still carry a lot of weight. The title of a page is the heading of what the content on the page is and should be relevant and concise.
4. Effective keyword research: Keyword should be selected based on the business. It is very necessary to understand the competition and do effective keyword research that describes your selling points.
After identification of keywords they should be spread throughout the page for e.g. Meta tags, Headers, Content, Alt Tags, Anchor links, etc.
5. Link Popularity: Inbound links should be from quality and reputed sites. It is more valuable when you business specific links. An oil and gas company would benefit more to get a link from Oil and Gas directory than some travel directory. Don't link just the home page, rather links should be deep within site too.
6. Clean HTML and use of semantic markup: Semantic markup is used to understand the document structure. It includes using headings, paragraphs, etc.

Google and Youtube face $1.18 billion lawsuit

Viacom in February publicly accused Google of copyright infringement. With more and more web 2.0 and free content publishing increasing on web, I believe we will see more such lawsuits in future.

Google going for buyouts

Recently Google bought youtube for $1.65 billion. But it didnt stop it from going ahead and buying JotSpot, the technology behind wikipedia.

According to times online:
"JotSpot's products, which include an online spreedsheet system, could further bulk up Google's portfolio as it seeks to ramp up pressure on Google. In return, JotSpot, which already has several business customers, will gain access to Google's massive data centres, or "server farms".


Joe Kraus, JotSpot co-founder and chief executive officer, said in his blog today: "We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online."

Google going for archives

Google announced today that it is offering a new service to allow people to search the archives of newspapers, magazines, and other materials dating back more than 200 years.

Though Google claims that this move is not meant to make money but I guess it's one more attempt to reach the archives of the popular magazines and newspapers including New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc.

It is good move for Google because this way they will be able to increase their visitors database more. The more the information Google has much better it will be for google.

Google Toolbar: What Lays Next

Wondering whats latest with Google. Google has decided to bundle Google Toolbar with downloads of Adobe's Shockwave. Google's deal with Adobe will help Google to compete with its prime competitor Microsoft which is currently in the process of launching its new Vista operating system next year.

Google Spreadsheet:

Google launches a test version of a Web-based spreadsheet program that is intended to make it simple to edit and share lists and numeric information online.


Google is on its hype and far ahead in the race of launching new products. Lets just wait and watch whats in the Google bag next.