After losing access to the Singaporean and European markets in early 2022, Russian company Neurotrend shifted its focus to BRICS countries. In an interview with BRICS Business Magazine, Alesya Chichinkina, Director of Communications and International Development at Neurotrend, explains how personal contacts in the academic community are driving the company’s transatlantic expansion, explores the unique aspects of neuroscience in Iran and industrial design in Brazil, highlights the critical role of development institutions, and discusses why a solid grasp of cross-cultural communication is essential for exporters.
Last year, you won the international tech competition BRICS Solutions Award, beating nearly 1,500 competitors and presenting the best solution according to the jury in the category “Cognitive Technologies and Creative Economy.” Could you tell us how your journey to BRICS markets started?
As the saying goes, there would be no happiness were it not for misfortune. Our collaboration with colleagues in Brazil and Iran is a direct result of events that took place several years ago. Neurotrend started its activities back in 2013. Steady growth began in 2015–2016, and eventually we expanded our solutions globally. We had offices and three neurolabs in Singapore, research contracts in Europe, and a project with US aerospace giant Boeing. But in 2022, for obvious reasons, these activities came to a halt almost overnight. This left us facing the challenge of developing new export destinations in friendly nations. I cannot stress enough the role played here by development agencies to promote Russian tech entrepreneurs’ products abroad: the Moscow Innovation Agency, Moscow Export Center, and Russian Export Center. Neurotrend owes much of its success in BRICS markets to support from these organizations. Their formats, be it meetings with trade representatives or business missions, have proven effective.
It all began in 2022 when Neurotrend became a finalist in the Open BRICS contest organized by the Moscow Innovation Agency. This opened the doors to the Brazilian market for us.
Neuromarketing is a branch of marketing research that incorporates neurophysiological and behavioural consumer responses. Neuromarketing employs advanced interdisciplinary solutions combining neurophysiology, sociology, behavioural economics, psychology, mathematics, and programming. Emphasizing measurable, objective data, such as brain activity, eye movements, facial muscle contractions, heart rate, and skin electrical resistance, it helps overcome drawbacks inherent in traditional marketing methods, where survey participants or focus groups may deliberately give socially acceptable answers or be influenced by cognitive biases. Although neuromarketing studies can’t read people’s thoughts when shown brand logos, they can measure levels of interest, attention, memorability, and the nature and intensity of emotional responses elicited by visual stimuli.
Why Brazil? Considering the rules of the competition allowed finalists to rely on institutional support for entering different BRICS markets, wouldn’t it have made sense to choose China, the economic leader of the group? Geographically speaking, it’s a more logical choice.
We faced the same issue many tech companies consider when looking to enter the Chinese market: intellectual property protection. Moreover, Asia, surprisingly, isn’t the leader in terms of neurotechnology development. Latin America has seen the broader practical adoption of neurotechnologies than the Asia-Pacific region. Thus, our move toward Brazil as a gateway to the vast continent was largely predetermined.
One tangible outcome of this effort was a partnership agreement with Neurobranding Lab and its founder Regina Monge. The document essentially involves introducing innovative solutions in such areas as business, education, and transportation safety. It’s conceivable we’ll participate in equipping a pilot training centre in Brazil.
And what about Iran? How did Iran come into play? For outsiders, it sounds even more exotic than Brazil in discussions about neurophysiology and its practical applications in marketing.
Personal connections made it happen. Contacts between Neurotrend and Iranian partners began largely because of my ties to Brazil’s academic community. While testing ideas for more effectively introducing our products to the South American market, I met with various university representatives. Among them was Iman Ghodratitustani, head of São Paulo University’s neurolaboratory. He is not only a scientist, but also an entrepreneur who founded neurotech startups, including a firm that produces implants for hearing-impaired patients. Given his entrepreneurial background, he quickly recognized the potential of Neurotrend’s offerings, not just for Brazil.
“Would you like to explore working in Iran too?” Professor Ghodratitustani asked unexpectedly. It turned out he hails from Iran himself, having moved to Brazil while completing his doctoral dissertation. Since then, he’s built a scientific career there but retains strong academic links to his homeland.
Iran is geographically closer to Russia, has demand for neuromarketing solutions, and Iranians themselves excel in neurosciences, especially the medical aspects. I’d say they’re the second nation worldwide in mastering these fields after Russians. Historically aligned, Russian emigrants often led neurolabs at American universities, with their deputies coming from Iran. Remember, Iran is heir to Persia, whose contributions to science shaped history. Scientific knowledge accumulation and transmission date back centuries.
Our interactions with Iranian counterparts were solidified after participating in a business mission to Iran organized by the Moscow Export Center, establishing valuable contacts, and hosting an international conference on consumer behaviour neuroscience and neuromarketing at Tehran Medical University. Incidentally, this marked the first event of its kind in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region.
As part of the conference, we initiated a preliminary study of Iranian bank advertisements using our equipment. Local respondents watched adverts wearing biobracelets, neuroheadsets, and eye trackers. We collected data on their implicit reactions and analyzed how Iranians perceive advertising content, identifying which ads are more effective and what improvements might enhance their impact. This provided factual insights for further negotiations with our Iranian partners.
You anticipated my next question about your product portfolio. What exactly do you offer clients in Russia and BRICS countries?
Neurotrend exports several categories of products. First, there’s the neurolaboratory, a hardware-software complex for conducting neurophysiological studies. This ready-to-deploy comprehensive solution benefits anyone seeking objective information on consumer perception patterns and decision-making processes. The complex can determine a respondent’s reactions, unconscious and moment-by-moment, to stimuli perceived through sensory organs (sound, words, images, video sequences, texts, aromas, sensations during tasting, consumption, or performing certain actions), and improve its effectiveness accordingly. For instance, optimizing packaging so consumers find it appealing, enhancing website layout attractiveness, making educational materials accessible and engaging, or avoiding irritation factors during ad viewing, ensuring messages resonate clearly with target audiences.
SOME TECHNOLOGIES AND SOLUTIONS FOR MEASURING NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES
Eye tracking: tracks the direction of people’s gazes and eye movement changes, which is useful for assessing attention, interest, continuity of narrative comprehension, recognition, or stimulus identification.
Video surveillance: HD cameras capture facial expressions and nonverbal body movements, helping identify discrete emotions (surprise, fear, annoyance, joy, etc.).
Analysis of vegetative indicators: a biobracelet or polygraph synchronously records skin conductivity variations, vascular tone, heart rate, and breathing frequency, reflecting emotional engagement intensity and valence.
Electroencephalography: wireless EEG neuroheadset measures brain bioelectrical activity changes in different regions, evaluating memory retention potential, cognitive workload, and involvement in visual tasks.
Reaction Time: a prime-box registers the effect of priming, a phenomenon of implicit (non-conscious) memory where reaction to a presented stimulus influences the response to subsequent stimuli. In simpler terms, priming refers to the influence of hidden (subliminal) memories or associations on subsequent behaviour. This method is employed to assess the strength of associative bonds and the attractiveness of stimuli.
Neurolaboratories, equipment, and software enable us to conduct neuromarketing research for clients from various industries, this is the second group of services offered by our company. The third area involves complex products with elements of scientific research and development. For example, we have already mentioned a project on monitoring pilots’ stress levels that we implemented for Boeing. It is clear that such solutions are not off-the-shelf but are developed individually each time based on customer preferences and available scientific data.
This is a very interesting and science-intensive product that we offer, including to major transportation and manufacturing companies. I don’t think I would be exaggerating when I say that over the years of working with Boeing, we’ve accumulated unique expertise, and in this segment, we definitely have no competitors on the market. Who else in the world is concerned with solving similar issues? Typically, university laboratories focused on acquiring pure knowledge rather than offering marketable products. And that’s fine, everyone has their own specialization: some do science, others focus on business. At Neurotrend, these competencies are successfully combined.
We often repeat that our company is a science-based business. First, we turn scientific knowledge into a product, then sell it on the market. Almost a third of our team consists of graduates from Moscow State University.
The scientific director of Neurotrend is Alexander Kaplan, a leading Russian specialist in brain-computer interfaces. To a great extent, thanks to Professor Kaplan’s work, modern Russian neurotechnologies have gained recognition worldwide. Another outstanding scientist who collaborated with Neurotrend was Alexander Latanov, head of the department of higher nervous activity at the Faculty of Biology.
On the website of Neurotrend, dozens of clients are listed, ranging from KFC, PepsiCo, and Decathlon to X5, STS Media, and Yandex. In your opinion, which partnership best demonstrated the full potential of neuromarketing?
We conducted many interesting studies. Among those not covered by an NDA, perhaps I’ll mention Yandex, for whom we carried out the first neuromarketing study of advertising in the Yandex.Navigator navigation app, comparing it with outdoor advertising and determining what type of advertisement aimed at car drivers is most effective. Using an eye-tracker, we compared the main types of advertising media encountered by drivers: three types of ads within the application (pins, billboards, and banners), as well as street billboards and LED screens. It turned out that the visibility of advertisements in the navigator was five times higher compared to outdoor advertising, while the duration of viewing was twice as long as that of street billboards and LED screens.
Let’s talk more about your point about the individualization of solutions in the context of BRICS markets. Do you need to modify the same product for Iran and Brazil to meet the expectations of customers specifically in that country?
Of course, localization of a product is an important issue familiar to all marketers and exporters. A classic example is the failure of the Chevrolet model called Nova in Spanish-speaking countries. Consumers did not perceive the message about the novelty of the car, but took the name literally: “no va” means “doesn’t go” in Spanish.
However, product localization is a much broader task than just translating technical documentation. But luckily for Neurotrend, I would say that localization for us generally comes down to translation, and this partially compensates for the overall complexity of introducing a product to foreign markets.
In the case of Brazil, there is one particular feature to consider. It’s one of the world’s leading economies and is located close to high-tech production centres in the USA. Therefore, Brazilians value quality industrial design; they are accustomed to beautiful solutions. This aspect must be taken into account. As should the fact that, according to our Brazilian partners, technologies from Russia are not associated with high reliability and quality in the eyes of most residents. This perception pattern is a legacy of the early 1990s, when cars like the Zhiguli were briefly imported into the country.
Humanities departments at universities teach courses on intercultural communication. Broadly speaking, it’s about what features to take into account when interacting with representatives of other cultures and how to correctly interpret specific manifestations of foreign communicative behaviour. What would the key points of an express course on intercultural communication for a Russian exporter in Latin America look like if presented by Alesya Chichinkina?
Let me tell you instead about my Spanish language teacher’s impressions, an Ecuadorian who studied in Russia and lived here for several years. During that time, he became so Russified that even he found it difficult to reconcile the Russian and Latin American mentality. Like us, he is irritated by his compatriots’ lack of punctuality, their tendency to postpone tasks until later, and the infamous mañana (“tomorrow” in Spanish). He says, “Guys, let’s make up our minds whether we’re going to cooperate or not without going around in circles for months. If you’re interested, we’ll work together. If not, we’ll part ways and move forward separately.” We often discuss these characteristics of Latin Americans with him, and he understands the difficulties Russians face in communicating with them quite well.
A distinctive feature of Brazilians is that your business partner may not respond for weeks or even months, only to reappear casually afterward. For us, this is offensive or strange at the very least. For them, it’s normal. Just as common as being late for a business meeting, sometimes by 2–3 hours. We’re lucky: we communicate with people from academic circles who are relatively punctual individuals. However, the general rule when attending a business meeting with a Brazilian is: think about what you’ll do with your time for several hours if your counterpart arrives late, something that happens frequently.
There is also a flip side. Our directness, desire to be specific, and readiness to give a straightforward rather than veiled refusal is often perceived by Latin Americans as aggression. This is normal; cross-cultural differences exist. Over time, you learn to understand and accept them.
