06-27-2011 • Julie Beck via PopSci.com
It was only a matter of time before monkeys, like their hairlessprimate counterparts, became the target of advertising. Laurie Santos, a primatologist at Yale University who was included in PopSci’s Brilliant Ten in 2007, is partnering with advertising executives Keith Olwell and Elizabeth Kiehner to create an ad campaign aimed at brown capuchin monkeys. The team hopes to determine if thepresence of advertising will change a monkey’s preference between twosimilar foods.
Santos’ monkeys have already demonstrated that they understand theconcept of money, and behave similarly to humans when making economicdecisions. The monkeys will have a choice between two brands of thesame food (perhaps two different colors of Jell-o), one of which will be advertised by a billboard outside their enclosure.
But there will be no fancy slogans or slick pop culture referenceshere, which would be lost on the monkeys anyway. This experiment getsdown to what advertising is really all about: sex and power. Oneversion of the billboard shows a female monkey’s exposed genitals nextto the brand logo, and the other shows the alpha male capuchin next tothe logo.
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Santos’ monkeys have already demonstrated that they understand theconcept of money, and behave similarly to humans when making economicdecisions. The monkeys will have a choice between two brands of thesame food (perhaps two different colors of Jell-o), one of which will be advertised by a billboard outside their enclosure.
But there will be no fancy slogans or slick pop culture referenceshere, which would be lost on the monkeys anyway. This experiment getsdown to what advertising is really all about: sex and power. Oneversion of the billboard shows a female monkey’s exposed genitals nextto the brand logo, and the other shows the alpha male capuchin next tothe logo.
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