BCW Introduces BCW NeuroLab™ Powered by Lab of Misfits

Exclusive Partnership Will Use Perceptual Neuroscience to Pinpoint the Motivators for Human Behavior

NEW YORK, August 25, 2020 – BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe), a leading global communications agency, today announced the introduction of the BCW NeuroLab™ Powered by Lab of Misfits, a new offering that will help the agency understand the conscious and unconscious mechanisms that shape audience perception and spark behavior. Led by world-renowned neuroscientist R. Beau Lotto, Ph.D., the Lab of Misfits is a leading perceptual neuroscience lab composed of scientists, artists, designers and technologists. BCW NeuroLab will use perceptual neuroscience to gain a deeper understanding of why audiences think, feel and behave the way they do to help clients drive greater relevance and build genuine and long-lasting connections with their key audiences.

“It’s no secret that what people think or feel can be at odds with what they will voice publicly,” said Chad Latz, Chief Innovation Officer, BCW. “The experiments we perform through our BCW NeuroLab will enable us to study how people experience a variety of stimuli – from language to ideas to images to emotions to events – to help find the values shared between an organization and its stakeholders. Understanding these common frameworks is the basis for truly moving people.”

BCW NeuroLab offers four solutions for clients:

• Neuroscience for Brand Communications Strategy – Using neuroscience to define and refine brand purpose, marketplace strategy, positioning and activations.
  
• Experiential Experiments – Strategy, design and creation of immersive neuroscience experiments to better understand the perceptions and needs of stakeholders and ownable territories for a client.
  
• Behavioral Neuroscience for Organizational Engagement and Business Transformation – Studying the obstacles and opportunities associated with organizational change to drive better engagement and transformation.
  
• Marketing Neuroscience and Immersive Experiential Design – Applying principles of perception to create meaningful, effective and quantifiable marketing and communications experiences for brands and their audience.

“Without our conscious awareness, our subconscious mind is rapidly interpreting vast amounts of data to form perceptions and opinions that are influenced by our human needs and emotions as well as our historic biases and base assumptions,” said Lotto. “These subconscious perceptions shape our thinking many times faster than our conscious reasoning. Therefore, the value of perceptual neuroscience to communications and marketing is immeasurable as it allows us to pinpoint with absolute precision which actions, experiences, language and other stimuli create interest. I am delighted that Lab of Misfits is BCW’s exclusive partner and am excited to see the impact this work will make for clients.”

Added Latz, “What is so exciting about BCW NeuroLab is that we are creating experiments to test and assess reactions across neural networks to things as straightforward as marketing language or as complex as a perceived universal human truth. When we better understand what genuinely engages an audience – and why – we can create more powerful and authentic connections. In these times of transformational global events, having an understanding of the true perceptions and motivators of audiences is more essential than ever.”