Marketing to your inner reptile

Christophe Morin, a Frenchman who holds the arresting title of chief pain officer at San Francisco-based marketing firm SalesBrain -- he teaches clients how to overcome "business pain" -- captivated an audience of about 200 on Long Island earlier this week with a talk about "neuromarketing." No idea what that means? Join us.

The neuromarketing concept has been around for a little more than two decades, conjured up by Harvard psychologists. The concept holds that when it comes to making purchases, consumers react at a very gut level. It's the "I want that," or "What's in it for me," syndrome.

Morin, who co-wrote the best-seller "Neuromarketing" with Patrick Renvoisé, on Wednesday morning told a meeting of The Alternative Board, a Long Island organization that provides coaching services to business owners, that marketers must appeal to what he called the "reptilian" part of the brain. As the word indicates, this is the portion of the mind that grabs at things and looks for what appeals, not so much for what is needed.

"This can be done legally and ethically," Morin said.

Appealing to a consumer's selfishness is one way to pique the interest of the reptilian part of the brain, he said. " 'You' is the most influential word in the English language."

Morin kept the crowd at the Melville Marriott amused by showing TV ads and analyzing them. He used slides that contained numbers, but also included pictures, which he said are more important than the numbers.

He was a hit, but why? After all, some in the crowd mused, he seemed to have merely come up with an unusual way of saying "Go for the gut!" Yet Kerry Young, the creative director at Plainview-based Crown Advertising, said she was rushing back to the office to write a blog post about Morin's talk. Steve Davies, The Alternative Board's chief executive, said the concept works. "We all tend to waste the prime time in a conversation talking about ourselves," he said.

But Morin took more than an hour to tell his tale -- too long, in the view of some, given his stress on the direct hit. There was no Q-and-A. "He didn't leave enough time," said Arthur Germain, principal at East Northport-based Communication Strategy Group.