Why advertising can’t change consumer behavior (at least according to Dick Swaab).

I don’t usually hang out in casinos, let alone, on Thursday evenings but the twentieth of January I was invited to come listen to a talk about the brain by Dr. Dick Swaab, accordingly one of the most prominent neurobiologists in the world. The call was by the Esprix organization; the exemplary advertising prize in the Netherlands, presided by Peter Paul Blommers, Ogilvy Amsterdam’s vivid CEO. Professor Swaab wrote a cash hitting page-turner called ‘We are our brain, from womb to Alzheimer’. The chosen venue was, as I mentioned the Holland Casino near Leidseplein in Amsterdam. And what a venue it was. But before entering the catacombs of one of man’s most devastating addictions, let me write a bit on Professor Swaab’s explicit believe that advertising cannot change consumer behavior.

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