Key elements: 3 1/2 year research funding + company-tailored data sets

We’re particularly excited by this project, as it’s the first opportunity to use the Data Observatory as a research environment for marketing. The field of marketing is an exciting departure from our typical applications and early indications show the research has huge future potential."

Professor Yike Guo

Founding Director, Data Science Institute

The data-driven marketing agency Jaywing have partnered with Imperial’s Data Science Institute (DSI), Dyson School of Design Engineering and Division of Brain Sciences to gain greater insights into what consumers actually think of adverts.

In a 3 ½ year project utilising the DSI’s Data Observatory (DO), the team are using advanced neuroscience techniques including Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Electroencephalography (EEG) and Steady State Topography (SST), to measure brain wave activity in participants and thus track emotional responses to a range of marketing stimuli.  Through this pioneering approach the team are painting a more accurate picture of which advertising techniques engage consumers the most.  The research has already been able to confirm and quantify differences in engagement dependent on gender.

Jaywing will use the results to help brands construct more intimate and personalised profiles of their customers.  This, in turn, will allow them to produce braver creative marketing that uses cognitive insights to drive stronger commercial results.

You can read Jaywing's press release on the partnership here.

DSI

Above, researchers use the full-height Data Science Observatory to view raw data sets