Electroencephalography (EEG) in Marketing

How Brands Like Frito-Lay, Google and Hyundai Use Brainwaves to Decode Consumer Behaviour

Electroencephalography, or EEG, if you don’t fancy chewing your tongue every time you pronounce it… has quietly become one of the most influential tools in neuromarketing. While it still sounds like something you might find in a 1970s BBC Horizon documentary, EEG now sits at the crossroads of neuroscience, advertising effectiveness, UX optimisation and behavioural economics.

For marketers, it offers something both thrilling and mildly unsettling: the ability to measure emotional and cognitive responses without asking consumers a single question. In a world where people can’t always (or don’t always want to) articulate why they prefer one advert, product or design over another, EEG offers a neural shortcut.

This article explores what EEG actually is, how it works, what it can legitimately reveal, what it absolutely cannot, and the brands that have already used it to sharpen their marketing – sometimes dramatically.

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Case Study: How Frito-Lay Used EEG to Redesign Packaging and Increase Sales

Frito-Lay partnered with a neuromarketing research team to understand why women were subconsciously avoiding certain crisp packaging. Traditional surveys suggested that women simply “felt the snacks were unhealthy”, but the brand wanted deeper insight.

EEG testing revealed:

Finding 1: glossy bags triggered heightened negative emotional response, especially in regions linked to guilt

Finding 2: matte bags triggered lower emotional resistance and a sense of permissibility

Armed with this, Frito-Lay redesigned its packaging, shifting towards matte finishes and simpler imagery. The result was a measurable improvement in purchase behaviour – not because consumers consciously preferred the packaging, but because their implicit emotional friction had decreased.

This remains one of neuromarketing’s most widely cited success stories.

Google’s Neuromarketing Experiments: Using EEG to Decode Effective Advertising

Google has long been interested in understanding what makes advertising stick. In one study evaluating YouTube adverts, the company used EEG to track emotional peaks and troughs in relation to narrative structure.

Key findings included:

• early narrative tension increased attention (beta wave increases)
• scenes involving human faces produced stronger emotional engagement
• humour produced brief but intense spikes in neural activity
• adverts with consistent emotional “beats” were better remembered than those with a single large climax

Google used these insights to refine YouTube Ads Leaderboard criteria and to advise advertisers on effective creative structures.

While this didn’t lead to a revolution in advertising overnight, it quietly influenced creative approaches across multiple agencies.

Hyundai and EEG: Testing Emotional Response to Car Design

Hyundai used EEG to compare consumer emotional responses to various design elements of their vehicles. Participants viewed different car interiors and exteriors while connected to EEG headsets, and researchers analysed emotional engagement across specific moments.

Findings included:

• curves in the dashboard design triggered higher emotional engagement
• strong symmetry produced a sense of safety and comfort
• minimalist displays increased decision-making clarity

Hyundai used the data to refine design elements for future models. Crucially, the research helped them understand not only which designs people consciously liked, but which ones evoked positive pre-conscious reactions.

Coca-Cola, PayPal, Campbell’s and More: Additional Brand Uses of EEG

A number of brands have embraced EEG as part of wider neuromarketing toolkits:

• Campbell’s redesigned soup labels after EEG showed emotional disconnection with older designs.
• Coca-Cola used EEG to assess music choice in adverts, optimising emotion and recall.
• PayPal found that adverts highlighting speed triggered stronger neural engagement than those highlighting security – leading to messaging changes.
• Telecom Italia used EEG to measure live emotional responses to long-form content.

These don’t always result in radical creative overhauls, but they consistently uncover subconscious responses that traditional focus groups tend to miss.

The Neuroscience Behind the Insights: Signal Processing and Interpretation

EEG data isn’t directly useful without complex processing. To get meaningful marketing insights, researchers typically apply:

• Filtering to remove noise (eye blinks, muscle movements)
• Fourier transforms to break signals into frequency components
• Independent component analysis (ICA) to isolate neural sources
• Event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure responses to specific moments
• Connectivity analysis to see how different regions synchronise

For example, P300 waveforms (a type of ERP) are often associated with attention and novelty – useful when evaluating new product packaging or surprising narrative beats in adverts.

For marketers, the benefit is the ability to:

• map emotional journeys
• identify “drop-off” moments
• isolate attention hotspots
• compare alternative creatives with empirical data

This turns EEG from a curiosity into a strategic tool.

What EEG Cannot Do (Despite What Some Overexcited Consultants Claim)

EEG cannot:

• read thoughts
• predict long-term behaviour with high accuracy
• tell you why someone prefers one ad over another
• access deep brain structures involved in fear, desire or memory consolidation
• replace qualitative research

EEG should therefore be treated as one tool – powerful, yes, but not magical.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that EEG can decode brand preference. In truth, it reveals momentary changes in cognitive and emotional states, which helps evaluate creative assets but doesn’t determine lifetime value or brand loyalty.

The Ethics of EEG in Marketing: A Necessary Conversation

Neuromarketing raises legitimate ethical questions. Using neural data in the service of persuasion can feel dystopian if handled irresponsibly. Key concerns include:

• informed consent – participants must fully understand what is being measured
• data privacy – neural data is extremely sensitive
• manipulation risk – adverts shouldn’t exploit vulnerabilities
• neurodiversity – EEG responses vary widely between individuals

The industry is moving towards clearer ethical frameworks, and reputable neuromarketing firms already adhere to strict guidelines. Still, ethical transparency will become increasingly important as the technology evolves.

So Should Marketers Use EEG?

EEG is not for everyday A/B testing, nor is it something every brand needs.

But when used properly, it shines in:

• testing TV/online adverts
• narrative and creative optimisation
• packaging redesigns
• UX evaluation (particularly for high-stakes digital journeys)
• brand perception studies
• innovation and concept development

When combined with eye-tracking, facial coding and traditional qualitative research, EEG becomes part of a triangulated insight approach – providing the missing link between emotion, attention and decision-making.

For brands with significant creative investment – FMCG, automotive, tech, financial services – EEG can offer a competitive advantage.

Conclusion

Electroencephalography gives marketers something they’ve wanted for decades: the ability to measure subconscious reactions in real time. When applied responsibly, EEG becomes a powerful complement to traditional research, revealing the emotional patterns that drive attention, approach behaviour and memory encoding.

Brands like Frito-Lay, Google, Hyundai, Coca-Cola and Campbell’s have already shown that EEG can lead to meaningful commercial outcomes – from packaging redesigns to more emotionally resonant advertising.

But the tool is only as good as the expertise behind it. EEG won’t turn a weak idea into a strong one, nor will it replace the fundamental truths of good storytelling, creativity and audience understanding. As with all marketing tools, the value lies not in the technology itself, but in how thoughtfully it is used.

TL;DR (Summary)

EEG measures electrical activity in the brain via scalp electrodes, giving real-time insight into attention, emotion and cognitive engagement. It’s used in marketing to optimise adverts, packaging, UX and product design. Brands including Frito-Lay, Google, Hyundai and Campbell’s have used EEG to uncover subconscious responses that traditional research misses. Although powerful, EEG has limitations: poor spatial resolution, susceptibility to noise, and inability to “read thoughts”. When combined with qualitative methods, it becomes a valuable tool for marketers seeking deeper behavioural insight.