It seems that we are moving, in stages, toward an understanding of what the mind is. Brain science has built on the insights provided by cognitive science and other disciplines) to deliver a theory of how the body and brain actually produce the mind.

Importantly, it has brought consciousness and emotion back into focus; and by reuniting philosophy with biology and psychology, provides an explanatory model of mind that is too powerful to ignore.

However, the theoretical basis of market research still seems to derive mainly from cognitive science.

We need to take it to the next level, by integrating the hypotheses of brain science into our thinking about marketing, advertising and research. If we do, I am convinced that we will emerge with a model that challenges our methods, whilst making retrospective sense of some old intuitive practices.

If we want to fully understand what goes on when people are watching TV, we have to do better than asking them about it afterwards, out of context, relying on conscious explicit memory and their ability to articulate what has gone on. This is a big issue for television, because TV has not been fully credited with what it really achieves already in people's lives, much less what it will be able to achieve in the future.

So what could research look at to further get under the skin of advertising effectiveness?

• Use inference to determine the effect of unconscious motivation, either through a matched control sample, or by looking at those exposed and unexposed to marketing 'stimuli' such as concepts or packaging.
• Use indirect questioning to move the focus away from the stimulus (which, after all is an intervening variable), and start concentrating on the object of stimulus an affective response to the brand - and look to overall measures of brand favourability to capture this.
• Accept that learning may be implicit as well as explicit, and stop relying on so heavily on conscious recall (particularly in advertising research). Use branded recognition, as well as recall, to understand the relationship between communication and affect.
• Treat verbal self-reporting with extreme caution as a means of explaining affect. Brands often evoke an affective response: people feel more or less positive, warmer or colder toward them. This is generally unconscious and non-rational and may not, therefore, be readily apparent in expressed reasons for liking a brand.
• Remember that preference (if it's made instantaneously and non-reflectively) is not the same as considered choice. Simple (heuristic) choices often tell us more about the operation of the unconscious than expressed reasons for choice. So, avoid asking people to explain or justify decisions, particularly those they have made automatically, through simple habit (cognitive unconscious).
• Observe as well as ask, because emotions are public, feelings are private. Yes, that is the right way round!) Ethnography has much to offer research, as has the integration of qualitative with behavioural and other quantitative data. Let's move away from the belief that the respondents can explain their behaviour and feelings, to a model where we, as researchers, use our experience and intuition (as well as our databases and inferential techniques) to interpret both what the consumer does and what they tell us. This is, after all, what we're paid to do.