Unlocking the Subconscious: A Conversation with Dr. A.K. Pradeep on Neuro AI and Marketing
Today’s MarTech Top Voice is Sensori.Ai CEO, Dr. A.K. Pradeep.
In a groundbreaking convergence of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, Dr. A.K. Pradeep, CEO of Sensori.Ai and author of “neuroAI-Winning the Minds of Consumers with Neuroscience Powered GenAi,” is redefining the landscape of brand marketing and consumer behavior analytics. As today’s MarTech Top Voice, Dr. Pradeep shares his pioneering approach to harnessing the power of cutting-edge sensory neuroscience AI algorithms to propel generative AI to unprecedented heights in marketing and sales.
In our exclusive interview, Dr. Pradeep delves into the transformative potential of Neuro AI, a technology that leverages the insights of neuroscience to understand and influence the subconscious mind, which drives a staggering 95% of consumer decisions. Through real-world case studies and use cases, Dr. Pradeep illustrates the profound impact of Neuro AI on marketing strategies, enabling brands to create deeply personalized and emotionally resonant connections with their target audience.
Key Takeaways:
- The Neuroscience of Decision-Making: Dr. Pradeep explains how Neuro AI algorithms mimic the human brain’s neural networks to analyze and interpret vast amounts of data related to consumer behavior, preferences, and emotional responses.
- Revolutionizing Marketing Strategies: By integrating Neuro AI into marketing campaigns, brands can develop targeted and emotionally resonant messages that speak directly to the subconscious mind, driving engagement, loyalty, and conversion.
- Real-World Applications: Dr. Pradeep shares case studies and use cases that demonstrate the tangible benefits of Neuro AI in marketing, including enhanced customer experiences, improved brand recognition, and increased sales.
- The Future of AI in Marketing: Dr. Pradeep offers insights into the evolving landscape of AI-powered marketing, highlighting the critical role of Neuro AI in staying ahead of consumer trends and preferences.
Join us as we explore the cutting-edge intersection of neuroscience and AI with Dr. A.K. Pradeep, and discover how Neuro AI is poised to revolutionize the marketing industry.
Marketing Technology Insights (MTI):
MIT: Hello Dr. A.K. Pradeep, welcome to the MarTech Top Voice Interview Series. You are a renowned name in the Neuroscience industry. What kindled your journey in this space?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
I founded Neurofocus (acquired by Nielsen in 2011) and worked with some of the top minds in the world of Neuroscience. The journey started with a conversation with a CMO who said he had no idea whether his messaging worked. On a plane ride from Atlanta, I bumped into (literally, spilling wine on him) a neuroscientist measuring Attention, Emotion, and Memory actions using EEG, and I wondered if I could apply this science to solve the CMO’s problem and the company Neurofocus was born from that plane ride.
It led to my writing a book – The Buying Brain – that was globally sold out and began the adventure of my life. Converging Neuroscience and AI is the natural evolution and the next chapter of that adventure that became the new company Sensori.Ai. GenAI becomes supercharged when a Neuroscience understanding of humanity powers it. Powering GenAI breakthroughs through the most profound understanding of humanity can only lead to better outputs, better use cases, and a superior human-machine collaborative experience.
MTI: Tell us more about NeuroAI and how your company Sensori.ai puts data in action with neuroscience and Gen AI.
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
NeuroAi embeds neuroscience learning and understanding in GenAI algorithms. What to embed and how best to embed these learnings is the secret sauce behind the company Sensori.Ai. There are two parts to the algorithmic breakthroughs of Sensori.Ai.
First and foremost is in embedding the Neuroscience formulas of perception that work across demographics into algorithms that create Product Innovations, Messaging Innovation, Packaging and Design Innovation, and Muti-sensorial products – Fragrance, Flavor, and Music.
Simply put, knowing how the brain receives and perceives products and their attributes allows us to create algorithms that innovate in a pleasing and joyful manner for the brain.
More profound knowledge of specific consumer brains will enable us to design products that speak deeply and personally to that consumer. The second secret of Sensori.Ai is the use of Nonconscious data. As 95% of human decision-making is nonconscious, using data that feeds the nonconscious mind of the consumer gives access to their latent desires, hopes, and anxieties. It enables the design of products and services that address them. Sensori.Ai is the ONLY company in the market today whose GenAi algorithms embody disruptive differentiators.
MTI: Your latest book “neuroAI: Winning the Minds of Consumers with Neuroscience- Powered GenAI” provides excellent examples related to the use of advanced GenAI applications in Marketing.
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
You are correct.
There is a bit of a “Black Box” mentality surrounding GenAi. We wanted to make it a lot more transparent. This transparency will lead to consumer confidence better adoption and will inspire innovation. We truly hope our book will be a complete guide for anyone wanting to apply neuroscience to their Product Innovation, Marketing, and messaging.
The book explores the four significant areas:
- Consumer understanding (including neurographic profiles, archetypes, price sensitivity, personality, and proclivities);
- Product and brand innovation (including product features, product patent and IP protection, product pricing, product promotion, and product volumetrics prediction
- Sensorial innovation (including fragrance design, flavor design, music design, and packaging visual design)
- Desire creation (including advertising, messaging, desire scoring, desire-based message redesign, and desire-based PDP redesign).
MTI: How would this book help Marketing leaders prepare for the upcoming neuroAI-led disruptions?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
In the Introduction chapter of the book, we specifically address what this revolution means for leaders and executives. Every board has asked the CEO what they are doing about GenAi. Every CEO has asked their executive team what they are doing about GenAi.
Every employee has asked themselves if their job might still exist or just be “outsourced” to GenAi. These are real fears, real concerns, and fundamental questions. Our book lays out the “Collaborative Path,” which empowers executives and employees to create shareholder value, breakthrough innovation, and develop desirable products and messaging that evoke desire in the minds of the consumer.
The book’s goal is how to make Neuroscience Powered GenAi an everyday tool, deeply embedded in the workflow that empowers people and allows them to reach for and build capabilities they never had. Creating economic gain, stability, security, and unparalleled productivity is the promise of NeuroAi. This book serves to illuminate the path to that lofty set of goals.
MTI: Do physical brick-and-mortar stores risk being outplayed by digital-only brands if they fail to embrace neuroAI? How can your company Sensori.Ai empower physical and digital retail brands?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
Digital marketplaces can change the visual imagery, messaging, pricing, and promotion at the flick of a button. Actual brick-and-mortar stores can speak directly to the multi-sensorial hedonist consumer through tactile, olfactory, and flavor eloquence.
Each marketplace has its strategic advantages to fully exploit to win the fickle, fast, and, at times, furious consumer.
NeuroAi takes a balanced approach in allowing each marketplace to exploit its strengths and minimize weaknesses fully. For instance, the algorithms of Sensori.Ai enable the rapid creation of Desire in the minds of the consumer through messaging that speaks directly to how the brain models and perceives desire. This capability is used extensively in digital and online marketplaces.
The Fragrance algorithms of Sensori are capable of designing and creating custom fragrances at the speed of thought and enable playful experiences and intense yet instant personalization for the consumer at the aisle.
As you can see, neuroAi can be unleashed for economic gain by both digital and brick-and-mortar companies. Indeed, as companies increasingly adopt direct-to-consumer models that blur the differences between online and physical, the techniques described in the book and embedded in the algorithms of Sensori.Ai deliver value on all fronts.
MTI: Other than retailers and marketers, which group of professionals should start experimenting with neuroAI. Any specific non-marketing related activity where neuroAI can emerge as a break-through innovation?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
At its core, neuroAi is the pragmatic scientific core of creation and persuasion. The applicability of the techniques and technology is across numerous domains.
Teachers can use these techniques to teach students any topic, be it science or literature, and captivate their minds. Politicians seeking to persuade the electorate to vote for them can gainfully use the techniques presented in the book. Lawyers can use the methods of neuroAi to create arguments that compel judges and juries. Scriptwriters and TV show producers constantly seek means and methods to entertain the overworked consumer and bring them a few hours of joy. They can use these techniques to create stories that entertain and mesmerize.
We all know how hard it is to begin with a blank paper and compose. It is infinitely easier and more joyful to start with a first-pass sketch, so artists and songwriters can use algorithms to put an idea or a melody on paper quickly. The applicability is only limited by our imagination.
Well, we could ask algorithms what the extent of applicability is 🙂
MTI: In the age of X-AI and Responsible AI, is NeuroAI a new friend or a foe? How do you ensure neuroscience and GenAI sync harmoniously within the ethical boundaries?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
At the end of any day, ethics is rarely about the tool and is mainly about the wielder of it.
A simple torch can weld and build but can also burn and destroy. It is always about what we use the tool for and how we will make it. We see neuroAi as a force for good – a tool that takes the most profound understanding of humanity and embeds it squarely at the center of the most breakthrough technologies in our lifetime.
Only good can come from this kind of thinking and this intention.
I started my career as a weapons designer, and at one point in my career, I swore that I would never build anything that could destroy or hurt humanity.
I have lived with that simple principle. I genuinely believe that neuroAi empowers people to create things that bring out their latent talent while at the same time assuring that the output will be pleasing to those for whom it has been made.
The only real ethical consideration is how neuroAi is put to use. In our book, we both present the case, plead for, and advocate for a supervisory role for humanity: guiding and developing neuroAi the way a parent passionately guides a talented child. There will be a few slip-ups, but with time and patience, we all will feel blessed and pleasantly surprised.
MTI: You have watched GenAI and LLMs take over the world very closely. What are the ethical challenges of working with neuroscience and machine learning?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
Ethics in this field can be understood from ethics in any other field of science, such as algorithmic transparency. Science declares its transparency and peer review as prime.
The glory is not in being right but in advancing a theory that holds and someday breaks down when new knowledge is brought to light. Science takes pride in proving geniuses wrong. It is okay to advance a hypothesis or a theory that is proven and plausible, yet at some later day, it is demolished by new data. That is the beautiful world of science.
The commercialization of GenAi prohibits this level of radical and brutal transparency science enjoys. Our book neuroAi is a humble attempt to restore the transparency to where it belongs.
While Sensori.Ai is indeed a commercial enterprise, and there is not much to gain for us by sharing the secrets our algorithms are built on, we believe that this is how we slowly and steadily restore ethics in the “dark web” of GenAi.
Embedding the known and proven neuroscience paradigms into GenAi requires us to answer the questions – What paradigms?
NeuroAi, our book, is our transparent response to the important question.
MTI: Would you like to share your insights on the recently passed EU AI Act?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
The technology is new and nascent. Everything we think it may do, it will do 1000 things more. So, our humble opinion is that it is a little too early for “regulation.” Some commonsense, general guidelines and social norms are enough at this point. Sometimes, laws and regulations are passed because they do nothing, but the public wants reassurance that someone is watching things as they occur.
We believe that regulations are mostly a reassurance at this game stage and lack substance, verifiability, and enforceability. It is more advantageous for the builders of systems to ask a simple question of themselves – “Will I want the system I build to deal with me or my loved ones the way I am building it?”.
If the answer is YES, go ahead and build it, and if the answer is NO, then walk away.
Not everything in life and love can be policed, and we think that GenAi and neuroAi are at the early stage of development.
The gentle balance is never to curtail or restrict progress but to incentive and reward positive progress that benefits humanity. Instead of spending millions of dollars or euros passing primarily vague and non-enforceable rules, the same funds can fund 1000 startups that build beautiful things that benefit society using neuroAi. We think this is the right approach: reward progress and restrain regulation.
MTI: Brands use AI for building personalized product experiences. How is consumer behavior evolving with this rampant use of AI?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
Consumers can finally get what they want rather than being part of a “one size fits all.”
“Know, understand, and build things for me” has been at the heart of the excellent consumer rebellion over time. It has never been easy or profitable to understand the individual consumer and build it JUST for them.
Without a brand having to guess second, the algorithms of neuroAi can, at varying levels of aggregation, build tailor-made products for the consumer.
Neuroscience understandings cut across culture and demography and can find the core human needs and desires in any category. Layering on top of that core human need, the nonconscious data describing the consumer’s cultural and demographic latent nonconscious desires, fears, and anxieties result in innovations and messaging that speak directly to the consumer. This intense level of personalization can be taken further by having the consumer create the product or service themselves through a transformation collaborative experience with neuroAi algorithms.
Our book describes what constitutes a Superlative Consumer experience, which is so personal and joyful that you want to return to it and do it repeatedly. Embedding such welcoming experiences creates a level of personalization at the Segment of One level – a product service, price, or message made just for me. That reality is available and possible in not some distant dystopian future but in the next 5 minutes at a digital or physical retail store near you.
MTI: Please tell us your Top-3 predictions for the neuroAI technology marketplace, and what plans you have in place for your company?
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
Prediction 1:
Personalization at the Individual level of all products and services—our company’s neuroAi platform will be an integral part of this space and integrated into the front and back end of every player.
Prediction 2:
Learning and Education will be profoundly altered. We learn in such an intensely personal manner, and indeed, the way we learn might even change daily. Our technology will be utilized to personalize educational content without losing its core and meaning, yet it will make sense to the participant.
Prediction 3:
Companionship, Therapy, and Counseling – we live increasingly lonely. Never has our world been more connected and yet more lonely. This paradox of digital connectivity and human loneliness is vexing. neuroAi will bridge this gap and provide algorithmic support for humans’ mental well-being.
The world will move away from “chatbots” to the perfect companion that provides support, counseling, and mental well-being personalized at an individual level, with the necessary confidentiality. Our company’s neuroAi platform will be at the core of this digital mental well-being revolution.
MTI: One AI leader or researcher you would like to recommend for the MarTech Top Voice Interview Series (please provide a small intro, and why you chose them)
Dr. A.K. Pradeep:
Professor Robert Knight of the Neuroscience department at the University of California at Berkeley.
Professor Knight is a shining light in the world of Neuromarketing and has pioneered the numerous technologies that shed light on executive function processes in the brain. His work on deep brain electrodes has captured reasoning and persuasion at neuronal levels, leading to breakthroughs in science and marketing.
Thank you so much, Dr. AK Pradeep for sharing your insights with our audience. We look forward to having you again with us.
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About Dr. A.K. Pradeep
Dr. A. K. Pradeep is the founder and CEO of Sensori.Ai and is one of the world’s leading experts on applied neuroscience and artificial intelligence. He is a highly successful serial entrepreneur, having founded NeuroFocus (acquired by Nielsen) and BoardVantage (acquired by Nasdaq). Dr. Pradeep has over 90 patents and has written four books: The Buying Brain, Ai for Marketing and Product Innovation, Governance: 6 Easy Pieces, and Neuro AI: How to Win the Minds of Consumers Using Neuroscience-Powered Gen AI.
About Sensori.Ai
Sensori.Ai is the ONLY company in the world blending Neuroscience and GenAi. The company is also the ONLY company that utilizes data that feeds the nonconscious mind of the consumer. As 95% of desires and decisions are in the nonconscious these cutting edge tools get at the unarticulated nonconscious desires and decisions of the consumer. Be it product innovation or consumer understanding, or sensorial breakthroughs the tools of Sensori are scientific and design breakthroughs. Founded in 2022 by serial entrepreneur Dr. A.K. Pradeep, the company works with some of the world’s largest brands to create the next generation of products and services.