Public Policy, Sociology and Neuromarketing: From Addressing the Consumer Behaviour to Addressing the Social Behaviour

Aim of this paper is to investigate to what extent social sciences can be a useful science for the public policy in developing effective Public Service Announcements (PSAs) against smoking, drinking etc.. In particular, hereby a specific discipline will be taken in consideration: the one that merges marketing with neuroscience, that is the so-called ‗neuromarketing‘, which - in order to assess the advertising efficacy - adopts biometric and neurometric indexes. The objective of this work is to gain insights into the above-mentioned fields (social sciences, neuromarketing and public policy) by: - reviewing previous studies, as well as topical literature; - exploring the latest case studies and best practices; - examining the traditional methods‘ results for the assessment of the PSAs (i.e. polls, surveys, focus groups) in their evolutionary path (till arriving to birth of the neuro-metric methods). Such kind of research has the purpose to identify the factors that are considered relevant to answer the ultimate research question: is it possible today, by using state-of-the-art biometric indexes and techniques, to provide policymakers with precise guidelines for developing effective PSAs, so that neuromarketing will be able to address no more just the consumer behavior, but also the social behavior? In fact, the goal of any advertising campaign is to convey a specific message and reach a specific audience: the consumers. But, when talking about PSAs, many things changes: the KPIs for the assessment of their efficacy are no longer the commercial ones (GRP, reach etc.), but rather the gain obtained in public health after the airing of the campaign. Consequently, the specific message will be a different ‗call-to-action‘: no more an invite to purchase, but rather to change a (wrong) social behavior or adopt a (right) civil conscience. Given these premises, it is possible that social sciences could be invested with a precise responsibility in terms of lives saved and public health. The practical and managerial implications of the research are the following: EU policymakers and local governments will have the opportunity to dispose of scientific data and information about the society that might be transformed in guidelines for producing effective PSAs based on the inner audience‘s insights. The originality of this research resides in having framed the new neuromarketing protocols in the traditional theory of sociology, combining thus future and past of the research.