FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#224 How the Brain Works: Storytelling Secrets for Impactful Branding
In this 3rd episode with Philippe Assouline, we explore how the human brain works, how emotions drive our feelings and behaviour, and how logic merely serves to justify our emotional decisions.
We dive deep into the world of unconscious emotions, habits, and heuristics that have been guiding us since the dawn of time. Philippe takes us on a journey through the brain's fascinating mechanisms, revealing how our primal instincts are far more influential than we might think, especially in today's fast-paced information overload. In fact, according to Philippe, in a world defined by social media, humans are more emotionally driven than ever before.
We also take a look at the art of emotional marketing by unravelling the strategies that powerfully connect brands with consumers. Consumers do not simply buy a product; they need to feel something real and authentic.
Philippe sheds light on how emotions drive marketing and storytelling, sharing techniques like priming, framing, and using simple language to create stories that resonate. We also dive into the transformation of marketing landscapes, exploring how empowering consumers has shifted the dynamics of storytelling and selling like never before.
In this episode’s engaging finale, we explore the transformative power of storytelling in both sales and branding. Hear captivating anecdotes from Philippe's experiences, such as a public health campaign that harnessed the power of personal connections to build trust and communicate value. Plus, we analyze the impact of branding strategies with a look at Jaguar's recent campaign missteps and the authentic resurgence of iconic brands like Harley Davidson. Philippe's insights offer a compelling case for the enduring power of emotional storytelling to foster meaningful connections and unforgettable experiences.
Contact Philippe
Philippe Assouline: info@propelloriq.com
Website: propelloriq.com
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the Future Print Podcast, celebrating print technology and the people behind it.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Future Print Podcast. I'm really happy to have back with me Philippe Asselin, who will give us a really interesting third episode based around consumer behavior, behavioral marketing and storytelling. This one's going to focus a bit more on that, but before we get on to storytelling, philippe, welcome back, by the way thank you.
Speaker 3:I enjoy your chats a lot. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's cool I do as well. Before we get on to, though, we're going to start with how the human brain works, because actually, if we start there, then storytelling will take on a different meaning, I think. So kick off, then, really, let's start with the human brain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great, so it's a narrow topic. I'll be able to knock it out in two minutes. No, so there is what I know and there's a lot that I don't know. We're learning things all the time. I uh met an entrepreneur yesterday who's working on technology to create clones of your brain. Wow, so they map your brain using mris and then they create a clone of it. So it's fascinating what's happening in the world of brain science. But we know a lot more than we did. So a few key concepts I will discuss, I think, for the conversation also, that I feel confident.
Speaker 3:Talking about Number one, most of what we do feel, think, decide is unbeknownst to us. It's very important to understand this. I think 95% I mean it's hard to put a percentage on, but 95% of what we do we don't think of, we don't realize it happens automatically. It happens as a result of emotions. It happens and emotions are tied into culture. Culture is actually tied into our DNA. Culture comes from the environment we evolved in and then it taps into habit, things we're used to doing that feel natural, and then there's all kinds of shortcuts our brain takes to protect us, so it's called heuristics, things like being more averse to loss than being attracted to gain. So it starts with emotion. There's a series of emotions. Some are more primitive, others are more developed, and then you have all kinds of quick habits that happen, what's familiar, what's not, and the whole goal of it really is to push you towards what's predictable and safe and away from what's not predictable, unpredictable Now, an important part of emotion. And all this happens super fast under the surface. If you smack the table now, there's a noise, we'll all jolt and it has a series of consequences on our bodies. Our brains are part of the body.
Speaker 3:So what's super interesting to me is that there's really no such thing as what's rational. There's no such thing as rationality and logic. Rationality is basically what we've seen a million times, but what seems rational changes based on what you're feeling. So the first thing that is guiding us towards A or B or making choices, or whatever it may be, is emotion, and when you're in a state of a specific emotion, what seems rational is different. So if I hit the table now and you're in a state of alert and I make you look at stocks, you're going to be favoring stocks in a different way and looking at them in a different way than if you were angry. Right, fear and anger have kind of opposite effects. When you're afraid, you don't think anything is predictable, you don't think there's any control you have over the situation and your tendency is going to be to sit back, analyze and not move and see risk everywhere. Anger does the opposite.
Speaker 3:Mood matters, and I'm just going to end this part by saying the brain also doesn't work as a series of analyses like if this, then this, then that, the way computers, programs used to it, works, much more like AI works, which is quick associations. So there's studies that show that if you're holding a warm cup, you're going to have a different perspective on what the person in front of you is trying to tell you or sell you or anything like that. Warm signals to the body I'm safe, I'm comfortable, I don't have to be in danger. It relaxes you and that has a consequence directly on how you think. So we're kind of this ridiculous, super complex but really simple robots and you have to kind of know how these things work, because it's first of all, it's fascinating and it explains a lot, but that's the 95%, and then the 5% is what you think about and analyze.
Speaker 3:That too is heavily influenced by emotion, but it's mostly an error correction mechanism. So your brain sees something super quickly. You're not aware of it. You make a decision based on how it feels, based on are you connecting to a group? Does it feel familiar? What does it associate with? Extremely fast. And then you come up with a desire and then your brain will justify it and then you think the justification is the reason for the decision. All this is rooted in evolution. All these are things that made a lot of sense 200 000 years ago, 150 000 years ago and we haven't really changed then on that basis.
Speaker 2:So it's that the landscape's changed the way we absorb information. Actually the huge amount of information has changed.
Speaker 3:The culture's changed to some extent, but actually our biology has not really it has not, and I would argue even that, because of the way we're consuming information now and the way we're exposed to a million different world views which we weren't in the past, our brains are relying more on biology and and innate evolutionary traits. We're acting more like we did a hundred thousand years ago than we did 10 years ago, 15 or 20 years ago. There's less thinking, there's more, there's more reliance on emotional and evolutionary triggers, and it makes sense, because I don't want to divert us too much. But values worldview is not something trivial. It's how humans survive. Right? We are different from other animals because we have to work together to survive. We can't, we don't have the physical equipment to survive in nature unless we work together. That's what set us apart from other groups. I gave the example last time of baby turtles. I've seen, you know, you see baby turtles being born and they know how to do all this stuff climb, fight, wrestle, run, swim. Human babies only know how to communicate. There's a reason for that they only know how to scream and cry because we have evolved. Our strategy for evolution has been to work together. So the way we do that is values Now, when you're confronted with all kinds of different values online, so there's disagreement.
Speaker 3:All of a sudden, you're talking to people in Pakistan and Africa and Asia and South America, people who you know when we were growing up we didn't have as much exposure to unless we traveled On a certain level. Your brain is telling you what's going on. Isn't the map I have in my head of how the world works right? Why is there disagreement? And that actually triggers fears of death. On some level.
Speaker 3:The survival mechanism kicks in when people disagree with you, especially when you get into politics, religion, anything of that kind, and I think that's why you see polarization online. People are confronted with so much contradicting worldviews, uncertainty, that we retrench into tribal kind of systems. We judge things very quickly based on emotion. Again, all these things made a ton of sense when we were bands of 150 people in the savannah, in the forest, and so today, when you have all of this chaos going on also, our brains don't want to spend all this time looking at information. It's exhausting. All these things together mean we're a little bit more close to our ancestors than we were, I think, 15, 20, 30 years ago in terms of evolution.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I guess we'll assume we're more sophisticated and more intelligent and more able to make clever decisions now, but what you're saying is the amplification of information and access and interaction and connectivity is making us more emotional yes, it's.
Speaker 3:I think we're much more easy to manipulate. We are much less thought out in our decisions, at least the routine ones on the day-to-day, when we're looking at information online and things like that. Whereas you know you'd read a paper, you'd listen to the news, now it's just flipping through a million different signals. That said, we're much better at filtering out noise, because there's a lot more of it, and there's a super interesting phenomenon of crowdsourcing If you interview enough people, you get to the right answer. It's seemingly about anything on the average. So we may be less good at making informed or intelligent decisions, but we have access to what everybody else is thinking and our brains are really good at using that social proof, relying on reviews, knowing how quickly to digest what everybody's saying and using it as a metric. That's why you have FOMO being so big now. That's why trends come and go really fast.
Speaker 2:You know there's really herd behavior yeah, it's fascinating and, um, and, like you said, it's purely amplified by the sheer amount of information and so on, and there are some helpful sources for that. But there's equally some, some perhaps unhelpful ones, that are pervasive and perhaps grab the headlines and maybe aren't quite as horrific as as as they are when you, when you contextualize them in the you know the grand scheme of things, but nonetheless it seemed to seem to exist. So, bringing it back into the world of, I guess, marketing and business I mean, ultimately we're in the business of trying to persuade people to buy something from us that has value for them but also has value for us. With all of that knowledge in mind in terms of how the brain works and the fact that, like you've just said, we're perhaps more emotional now due to all the factors you've mentioned, how's that play out, really? When it comes to, perhaps, storytelling?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, I mean okay in terms of selling fantastic question.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna try to go back far enough and if at any point you find this too long or tedious, just you know, smack me over the head digitally. Um, there's a great quote from the french I think it was pascal, 360 years old or so people arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof, but on the basis of what they find attractive. Okay, so that's rule number one people will buy your product, and that's true of b2b as well. That's why so much branding money is branding dollars are put into b2b. People will buy your product if it's attractive to them, and then they'll try to justify it, they'll try to make sense of it and tell, no, no, it's the right product. So what does attractive mean? That's what I've been spending my career and my academic work also trying to define. You want somebody to believe in your product. You have to make them feel something first.
Speaker 3:Attractive has a number of components. Number one it's got to feel right. It's got to give you some kind of emotional balance, okay, so if, if the client is feeling stressed, can you make them feel relief? If the client is feeling indecision, can you make them feel clarity. Whatever feeling rooted in nature makes them feel they're more capable of dealing with their day-to-day, and that's a feeling, not a thought. That means it's just going to feel better. And I'll tell you how to do this in a story, super, super important. Okay, that's probably the most important, and there's a number of ways to do this. One is triggering emotions with specific words, with specific imagery, with specific stories. Uh, the other part is also make people feel belonging. So there's two essential ingredients in storytelling and I'll tell you in a minute how you put them together. But then there's all the let's say that's the strategy. There's all these tactical things you need to use. If I say the word banana, most people will think of yellow, they're going to think of food, they might get hungry. Hungry, they might get disgusted, right? So there's an emotion that comes up. You say banana in different places. It might be the name of a beach, it might make you think of curious george, and that makes you feel nostalgic or safe or like you're at home.
Speaker 3:You need to know your audience, because that, what I just described, is called priming. When you are communicating with somebody, you're not actually putting information in their head. You're pushing buttons they already have in their head. You're triggering memories, our brains, sorry, our eyes, our ears. They're less like mics and cameras and more like projectors and loudspeakers. Right, it's a question like we're actually projecting onto the world things we already know.
Speaker 3:So when you get to the tactics, after you've dealt with the emotion and the belonging, when you start to get to the tactics, it's important that you use words and you try to anticipate how people are going to respond to them. Saying murder versus homicide has a different flavor, and I'm using an extreme emotional case here Saying gourmet versus delicious yummy. In every context, you choose your words. You're going to create a response in somebody and these things happen automatically. Apart from priming, there's things like framing okay, can you make something? If you want somebody to buy something, you're better off making them feel they're avoiding a loss than getting a windfall. So these are just two of the tactics and I think fundamentally, if you have to bring it all together, the most important rule after it's about how they feel is keep it simple.
Speaker 3:Our brains seek simplicity. It was a lot more efficient in evolutionary times to jump to a conclusion than to do the work and come to the right answer. So if you're walking in a field and there's something red on the side. It's much better to quickly say that could be a snake and jump back and get the fear and whatever, then investigate whether it's a flower and you risk getting bitten. Whatever is easiest for the brain to understand is going to be what the brain prefers. It's going to make it feel true, simplicity is king. So number one how it feels is going to dictate how people think. Number two giving them balance, giving them calm, giving them relief.
Speaker 3:Empowerment can be done in a number of ways, but one of the really good ways is connection, making them feel they're part of a group, and we're always looking for groups. Our brains are always looking for different groups they belong to and then tactically use the words that people will understand in the most easy way that they can relate to, that they can visualize, it'll trigger emotion. So you got to be careful what you're doing and which words you're using and then keep it simple, and one key way to do that is analogies. And I'll end by saying and I'm covering a ton of ground here and I hope I'm being clear, but the best analogy is a personal story and I can tell you why. Um, for I'll stop there, see what you you think, and then we can keep going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, makes a lot of sense. With that, though, has, in your view, the way we must perhaps market, storytell or sell in essence fundamentally changed? Because, you know, I cut my teeth selling advertising and it was very much a sales-led thing where you had a product and you kind of you didn't get every deal, but you you had a high probability you would get somewhere and you'd have the opportunity to get somewhere. But that wasn't really storytelling. That was like a process where you ask people, question they, they give you the information, then you match the information to your product that that may then unearth a need they have, and then you move towards closing the deal, and it was very much a proactive, assertive approach. Is what you're saying there? In summary, much more of a, it seems, much more of a um, giving the power to the person that's listening or being buying, as opposed to the other way around. Is that? Is that true?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think it's. I think it's true in the culture in general, not just in sales. If you look at how fashion is being driven now, when I was younger, fashion was aspirational. They were setting the tone and you had to hope you could be involved in whatever image of a group or identity they were selling that you want to be a part of. Now it's trends where people online are just moving in a direction and brands seem to adapt. I think it's true also of cars and all kinds of other fields.
Speaker 3:Definitely, I think in B2B, the way to sell is to make the person in front of you feel understood. Things are changing fast. When things change fast, it's a safe bet that the person in front of you is going to be in a more heightened alert state, more careful, more analytical, more resistant, and therefore you have to take that into consideration and push the buttons that will calm them down, make them feel safe. They want to feel trust, they want to feel you're dedicated, and I think the best way to do that is actually to let other people talk and listen to them. I did a campaign for a very controversial case regarding public health and this was a government client, and they're like what do we say so that we get people to trust what we're saying about this health issue? If people believe this information, I do a lot of counter this information and the solution I proposed was just let them talk. The very fact that you're listening to them and they get to speak will, in their mind, create trust for you. You probably had this experience where some of the best job interviews I ever did in my life I barely spoke and then the person interviewing me was speaking the whole time, and then you finish the interview and they tell you that was a great conversation. I really enjoyed getting to know you. You didn't say anything, but they're getting to know themselves through you, so I think that's always a good rule of thumb.
Speaker 3:Now, in terms of storytelling, this is how you frame your product. Obviously, the messenger is very important, right, talking about sales. If there's a phone call, there's a meeting, face-to-face, zoom. The personal connection is super important because it conveys tons of information. It conveys okay, this guy's got the same references, the same values. We're kind of from the same group. He's got the same priorities. Therefore, I can trust him. Therefore, I'm going to evaluate what this person tells me more favorably, if you're talking to somebody in a sales meeting and you can connect on the topic of guitars or anything else, and they can reflect automatically without realizing it and feel like you guys are coming from the same place. They're going to judge what you're selling after more favorably.
Speaker 3:Small talk is super important and that's part of storytelling. It's conveying that the character they're looking at is the same as them. But really I think fundamentally what you want to do is embed the values of your product, the value it brings, into a story of a person that reflects the audience you have. So you can introduce the benefits of your product by telling a story about how it's used and also how it benefited other people who bought it. And this has all kinds of benefits. And what you want to do is give little details here and there that make the person listening feel that the character in the story is the same as them.
Speaker 3:So this person was working in this industry, was struggling to give a name, was struggling with X Y Z. If you can make the audience visualize the story you're telling, their brain thinks it's true. Right, can't believe your eyes, right, they read away of these sayings like I believe my own eyes. Like, if you can visualize something, the brain is tricked into thinking it's true or much more likely to happen. So if you can tell a story to convey, you know a lot of people are experts at this. Instead of saying this machine does xyz, you say I was just talking to uh tom. I work with him, he's in country x and he was telling me about the problem he's facing at work. You populate that with blah, blah, blah. They're having trouble with budget and they're not able to produce or meet orders. And we were joking about.
Speaker 3:And this is when you tell a little anecdote that the person can relate to. And the whole time what you're doing is dropping information about your product. But you're building a connection with the person in front of you where they feel we're the same. That means suddenly they start judging you and whatever you're selling like a friend. You're making it safe to listen to.
Speaker 3:Stories are very calming because it's about one person. You're not making these big claims about the world like on social media. You're not fighting. It's kind of predictable. It changes the chemistry in the body. You make it simple for them to understand. You make it fit in the boxes they know and by the time you've gotten there to the end and this could be a quick anecdote they have all the information they need and then you listen. Then you just listen to what they have to say. You've triggered a few things and you listen to what they have to say. Listen to what they have to say also important in that context. This is more about sales and storytelling, but, to repeat the words that the person in front of you is saying right, and that's affirmation, isn't it?
Speaker 3:that's like I've listened to you and we're on the same page it also triggers the same networks in the brain, and that means you, you yeah you're aligning, you're on the same page, you feel like you're, you're in the same place, um, yeah, so anyway, there's a lot to talk about, but hopefully that was. That was clear. No, no exactly.
Speaker 2:I know, because some of the stuff I've done on storytelling in terms of um, you know the brain, how the brain works. Obviously, I think it's the old part of the brain, the amygdala right, that we're talking about um, which is a powerful thing, particularly at the moment because, as you've said, for all the reasons that you've mentioned that we're at, we're perhaps more emotional now than we were in more predictable times. Um, and a couple, a couple of things fire off when, when you're listening to a good, a decent narrative or or an anecdote or whatever. One of them is cortisol, which is obviously sometimes linked with stress, too much stress, but cortisol, it's quite useful because it enables us to pay attention. We want to pay attention, we're just paying attention. Really difficult to do now because of the distraction levels we have.
Speaker 3:Cortisol is supposed to be in short bursts, yeah.
Speaker 2:And now it's constant to actually have somebody's attention. That's quite helpful, and the other one was oxytocin and that's that sense of empathy and it also.
Speaker 3:It has a dark side, uh, but all you're right, all of these things get activated. So the amygdala, one of the major functions, is to record new information associated with emotion. In particular, cortisol lets you respond to things and makes you perceive things in a certain way. It's supposed to be in short bursts. Problem today is a lot of people just marinating in it all the time. Oxytocin has the side of connecting with people who feel like they're in your in-group. That's why it's so important to create an in-group, but it also can create hostility to people who are perceived as the in, the out, the little dark sides of our evolution where the us and them is a huge part of, uh of of you know, of how we think and how we evaluate it's a's a difficult one, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Because I guess any business you're kind of, unless you're, well, frankly, even Apple, you know you don't get the entire market. You know you're very much a tribe. You're an Apple person, right? Yeah, well, I haven't. If someone's got a MacBook and you're sitting around a meeting which I was in in December, um, in december it's an interesting one because we all had apples and we talked and everybody had a enthusiastic expression about that, um, but not everybody's got an apple, right, so you can't dominate an entire market. It's almost about finding your tribe, isn't it?
Speaker 3:it is absolutely about that. I believe in this very, very strongly. I think apple is a perfect example. Do you remember their ads in the 90s? They think different one before that. I am a mac, I am a pc. They didn't talk about the product. They had a guy looking like a cool guy and a guy looking like bill gates. I'm a mac, mpc. It was entirely tribal.
Speaker 3:This is what I want to say about myself and that goes to the nature of storytelling. Right, if you can create a story where the the person listening to you feels that they're the character in your story, then whatever the character is going through, they're going through. Right, that's natural empathy. There's all kinds of of mechanisms the brain has for understanding stories which make you live a bit of the story. Then, fundamentally, if you've connected with the person through the character, you've made the story about them.
Speaker 3:You think about the beginning of a movie. What makes a good movie? In my opinion, what makes a good movie is if you have enough time at the beginning to connect to the character. If they start right away with the blowing up things and the aliens or the war or whatever it is, then you don't really care. But if they give you like of Braveheart. You have an hour of you just really connecting to this guy, his love story, his parents and what he lost and where he lives, and then whatever happens to this person is super relevant to you Because in a way, your body's feeling like it's happening to you.
Speaker 3:And that's number one and number two if you've created this connection, they're going to judge whatever you're selling more favorably. If I am trying to sell you a car and I spend three, four, five, ten minutes maybe, but five minutes, two minutes at least, connecting with you on something we both like, we're both fathers, we both like I don't know, surfing, whatever it may be, then you're going to judge my car much more favorably. The brakes are not going to work. It's not going to bug you as much. Right, there's going to be a lot of mileage. Oh, that proves it runs well. If I don't do that, you're going to be much more critical. That's us then. That's how important that is.
Speaker 2:And we talked a bit about the amygdala there, I think what and in the last episode we talked a lot and the previous one to that about logic and the kind of focus so much on that being the part because of our academic kind of uh culture and that, you know, logic is is rewarded, isn't it? Um, to some extent I still see a lot in the print industry, very much logical selling, logical marketing weight, where you're kind of listing the benefits, the cleverness, the excellence, the fact it, the fact it does, what it says on the tin and so on. That's still relevant, is it? Or I mean, that was so interesting, is the emotion a bit, doesn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 3:yeah, to a certain extent it's never been too relevant. It's relevant. It's error correction. Look, there's a great quote. I think it's jonathan height if it isn't, forgive me said people think the brain is the oval office.
Speaker 3:Right, it's the president making the decision. It's like it's not. The heart is the oval office. The brain is the press office. The brain is is the. Now it's obviously the heart is in the brain, the emotions.
Speaker 3:But you know, for simple imagery, the brain does the propaganda. For the heart, it justifies it to yourself. It comes up with all kinds of reasons, but actually we're all kind of driven by something we're not aware of, and so if you just list the logical reasons, you're skipping all of that and then you're taking people in a mood. You don't know what mood they're in, you don't know what they're feeling, if they're in a careful mood, if they're in an adventurous emotion, and you're just losing all of them. That's where most decisions happen.
Speaker 3:What you want to do is, if you're going to list benefits, list benefits that are personal, first, people who do this do well in their career. People who do this end up being rewarded, something that is personally immediately relevant, that will trigger some emotions. Use words that trigger emotions. You want to talk only about benefits. Use warm words. Can you use warm words and talk just about benefits? So, instead of saying a five-year guarantee, say a thousand users satisfied, excited to use this machine, new innovations, warmly greeted. Now, every one of those words I listed has a big impact on the brain. I can go through them. So 10,000 people, that's social proof. Already you're like okay, they didn't die. This is what happens subconsciously these 10,000 people didn't die, so I'm going to do it.
Speaker 3:Greeted excitedly. People start to feel a bit excited. That's how the brain understands the word excited. It makes you feel a bit excited. That sound connects to that feeling Warmly received, your body's warm. That creates literal receptivity. Warmth was good in the past, so people are in a different disposition about what you're saying. So, even if you're going to just be selling back of the tin, like you said, cold facts, which I don't advise do it with the tactics that at least move your audience in the way, in the direction you want. And there's nothing dishonest about it, because it's happening anyway. If you use a cold word, you're pushing them the other direction. It's also, uh, triggering some responses, and people are just happier when you give them a bit of a more uh, memorable, compelling, and that means emotional experience yeah, and it's experience and I know, like, do you know the book the Storyteller's Secret?
Speaker 2:I think so. I'm not sure. Anyway, he studied, you know, some of the great orators, steve Jobs being one, martin Luther King a wide range, and he found that 65, 65 of their content was emotional. The rest was a bit about credibility and then a small amount about facts. Actually, the facts was the smallest bit, um, and I think some of the businesses I've seen and people that I've seen that are quite um, clearly very clever and so on and so forth, and science-based or engineering-based, they almost miss out the emotion entirely and it's all head and not heart. And, like you say, it isn't about being cynical, it's about being more effective, isn't it?
Speaker 3:I think it's about being more empathetic, and that makes you more effective. You have to actually know what you're making the other person feel. So number one about those speakers. I analyzed a lot of public speakers as well. Not just do they use emotion, obviously, and we'll talk about in a minute, but they use analogies.
Speaker 3:They make it easy, visualizable, entertaining yeah, I understand when they're conveying the emotion, from jesus to martin luther king to bill clinton, every great communicator. Um, but think about in your own life. What are the things that matter most? What are the things that that you're gonna are gonna flash through your eyes when, when you die at a very, very old age, in your bed, surrounded by people who love you? What are going to flash? It's emotional moments. How do you like what punctuates our lives? It's memories of falling in love, memories of succeeding at something that make you feel excited, challenges you went through that you overcame. People who care about you. This is what makes us human. It doesn't stop because we're suddenly buying an expensive machine or subscribing to some expensive sass program. It doesn't stop. Evolution didn't anticipate sass.
Speaker 3:The facts are there at the end to signal that there's no risk. You tell a great story. People are emotionally into it. You. You put the facts in just to signal to them you've covered your bases and there's low risk. Because that's when the brain said say okay, but what if? Don't? Just to signal to them you've covered your bases and there's low risk. Because that's when the brain starts to say OK, but what if? Don't worry, I got the what if covered.
Speaker 3:That's the, in my opinion, that's the real purpose of facts. If you do the storytelling well enough, they'll go look for the facts themselves. Now they're into it. You know, you have something you see on TV and all of a sudden you feel an emotion. Could Could be curiosity, could be passion, could be some kind of excitement you can't understand. You go on Google and you start looking it up. You start looking it up because then you want to populate it with facts. You want to feel that emotion more and you want to populate it with knowledge. People will do it alone if you give them the right story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, it's. Listening to what you're saying now I'm thinking of films, and you know the Joseph Campbell thing, the hero's journey, and you know the Joseph Campbell thing, the hero's journey, and, and we relate to that because life's a journey fundamentally, isn't it?
Speaker 3:It's telling you you can do it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So we root for underdogs. It's not because of something weird we've been taught. It's just if they can do it when they're in a bad place. It tells my brain adapt your map. When you're in trouble. You don't need to be paralyzed with fear. You might be able to overcome it. That's my reading of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like an obstacle that can be overcome. And that's classic hero's journey, where I love the Jerry Maguire film. It's one of my favorites, but that kind of you know, he has a manifesto and he has an epiphany and then he comes into. Yeah, classic goes through that whole thing. Obviously Star Wars does, and, um, the wizard of Oz are virtually the same films. I mean, they've even got the man and see free PO anyway.
Speaker 3:So I'm going into um talking about it Like it's kind of the same story as the Bible, yeah, and the Christian Bible. You know, he's got a new message that he wants to change how people think or feel or how the world works. He faces incredible odds, is willing to put himself out there.
Speaker 2:in that case, you know, to the extreme and overcomes yeah, yeah, exactly, and storytelling, of course, is fantastic, but sometimes it can just don't be negative. We touched on it a little in the last one, but we were just talking about it earlier in um, before we hit record, where the um, the jaguar, rebrand. Yeah, that's storytelling, isn't it? But it might not have gone quite as well as they might have hoped.
Speaker 3:So exactly, sometimes go a little wonky I want to start by saying I think they may be able in the long run to rehabilitate, because there's power to just persistence and confidence. If they just stick to it at one point somebody's going to be like, and if they can get a few influencers to buy in, then it's going to look safe and they might be able to change their audience that way and get a new bunch of customers. I don't know why they did what they did. They must have had data.
Speaker 3:It just proves the danger of bad data, or or performing you can always say in data yeah, you can see what you want. So one it's outdated, right? If this had happened five, six years ago, you would have said, okay, they're pandering, like everybody else, to more woke or social justice values, which is really what the visuals are. But the best way for me to describe it is it feels like they didn't listen to their audience at all and it's just a rant. Right, it's about what they believe as opposed to what they've actually been giving their audience. If you do insights research properly, I don't tell my audiences what they need to be. I tell them what they already are in the eyes of the people who are excited about their brand. It seems like they skipped this step.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I'm old, but the Jaguar for me suggests forest greens, tan, leather, nice suits, the E-type, maybe London in the 60s, something masculine but elegant, powerful but a bit understated, very British. And they went the extreme opposite. They have all-electric cars that have the color scheme now is pink and orange and warm, that have the color scheme now is pink and orange and warm. They had a bunch of young people mostly female, if I recall, or the gender wasn't very clear and they're pushing this line of do things differently, don't listen to rules while they're following a trend and it's outdated. So to me it seemed like I'm going out on a limb here and forgive me, and I hope I'm not wrong, but my instinct is that this was a CMO who wanted to make branding of himself to his community or her community I think it was a he and bypassed entirely the customer base.
Speaker 3:The customers were buying a feeling. I buy a jaguar, I'm a cool guy that reminds me maybe of my dad, maybe of these cool actors uh, james bond, steve mcqueen kind of flavor and I want to be part of this and I'm signaling to women. And if it's a guy and or, you know, if it's a woman, I'm signaling to to this and I'm signaling to women and if it's a guy or if it's a woman, I'm signaling to potential mates and I'm signaling to potential employers what values I have and what I'm a part of. And they just steamrolled over all of that. I find it mind-blowing, because they probably paid a ton of money for advice and analytics and data to do this. You want to do the exact opposite. You want to take whatever branding exists in people's minds about you and amplify the good parts yeah, because they're valuable anyway, because they're you know clearly, storytelling is so important authenticity yeah honesty is critical.
Speaker 3:We're very good at detecting lack of authenticity when we're being communicated to. But if you have some brand elements that are working the examples I gave in Jaguar I'm pretty confident they were real. Let's assume they were real the color scheme, the identity, the feeling associated with it, which taps the self-esteem that means evolutionarily. There's an entanglement You've created an entanglement between your brand and that's what you want. That's the gold, that's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for any brand. The iconic brands know how to do that. You're not going to lose that. That will carry you through hard times.
Speaker 3:You think of like Harley Davidson in the 80s and then again, I think, recently, was having a really hard time because their bikes quality was going down, they were leaking, they were breaking, but the brand was able to survive until they they revamped and they didn't hurt the brand because it had an identity to it. Jack daniels, you know a lot of these brands that I'm saying are masculine because I've been looking at trends now online that are pushing uh, more masculine energy. You know to speak in stereotypical terms.
Speaker 2:Talk a bit about that. Masculine brands. What's happening there? Because obviously the jaguar what you know, we'll just say it. I mean so it looked like a big feminization of uh, yes, yeah, I think that's a fair assessment.
Speaker 3:We're allowed to say that that's fact, right um I'm not sure we're allowed to say we'll find out, but I think I said it anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, but I think it's very fair if you're talking in in a categorical terms that people generally understand by feminine, masculine, yes, um. So what I've been noticing online? This is more qualitative, but I think actually the elections in the states prove it. There was a push of uh, anti-masculine in some circles that were, you know, much more prominent on social media than perhaps on the street, to the extreme, calling masculinity toxic. It's had a lot of effects on young men. A lot of people talk about this Jonathan Heights, scott Galloway.
Speaker 3:A lot of people talking about how men are not doing well. A lot of suicide men, disaffected, enrolling in universities, less in high performing jobs, less mocked in the culture, at least in the U S for many, many decades. You think of Homer Simpson as the typical character, peter Griffin, right in cartoons, and I feel the pendulum is swinging and companies need to be on top of this if they want to brand and if they want to hire. The pendulum is swinging where there's a bit of a return of masculine value. You see a lot of young people. There's a culture of life hacks and choosing strength, overcoming being hard on yourself. There's a culture of life hacks and choosing strength, overcoming being hard on yourself Things we know stereotypically associated with masculinity. But even women do this, stereotypically associated with masculine traits coming back, being very popular, a return to traditional values in terms of couples and what they look for. There's a movement called Tradwife where women, to be completely honest, in some cases look quite capable and attractive, choosing a life of traditional gender roles Staying at home, making food and having a lot of babies, to put it bluntly. And I think it's expressed also in politics, politics. You see, donald Trump faced off a campaign that was supported by all the celebrities, all the singers, hollywood, beyonce, you know, george Clooney, et cetera, countless, and he went with a lot less money to people like Joe Rogan talking about the UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Joe Rogan is kind of a symbol of the new masculinity. He's bulk, he's bald, he talks about things that dudes like, like a bro kind of a symbol of the new masculinity. He's bulk, he's bald, he talks about things that dudes like, like a bro kind of thing. Elon Musk also the kind of symbol Of the disaffected males. If he can become the most powerful guy In history or one of, maybe, the guy in the basement Playing video games can too. So there's a return of masculinity and if your audience is largely Made up of males.
Speaker 3:You don't. It doesn't have to be your only message. Plus, I want to be clear. A lot of women gravitate to messaging like this a lot. It's just, you know, describing things in categories and putting the label masculine on it. If you want to appeal to that audience, especially younger men there's a very big divide between younger, gen Z and high school versus the older ones you have to push these values. They want to be part of that. They want to say if I buy your product and I'm talking more B2C here but if I buy your product, this is what I'm saying about myself it makes me feel, first of all, stronger, and this is what I'm saying about myself, and you cannot ignore that by skipping right to the qualities of the product, think in b2c. It's more clear. I think these things apply to you, have to be much more nuanced, but they apply in b2b context as well. B2b brands also convey a set of values. They also say something about you to your boss.
Speaker 2:They also say something about you to your colleagues and to yourself, and I don't think anybody should skip over that and, like you say, it's, it's hardwired into an individual and it's it's just how they're expressing their identity, right, and they're probably ego. I mean, yes, okay, absolutely right, isn't it? Um, particularly with a high, high quality purchase or a high, a high monetary purchase, it is, and it's often, an ego purchase, because you're talking about luxury.
Speaker 3:They're all aspirational. It's all about broadcasting, um, what you want to broadcast about yourself and also to yourself. Why does it feel good to buy, I imagine, to buy very expensive boots? It's a whole philosophy you're applying to yourself that lets you indulge and treat yourself well, which has all kinds of evolutionary connotations. It's also telling other people. I'm part of this exclusive group which ties into certain influencers, which ties into certain values that you're projecting, which is super important. Again, if people feel they have the same values as you, you're in and they'll treat you differently, um, I don't see why that would be different in b2b context.
Speaker 2:I think it's exactly the same similar, similar and they're called social signals. Yes, yeah, expressions of um identity in some way, or extensions, yeah, values identity.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know, to be completely frank, desirability. A lot of this has to do with our desire to reproduce. I've always wanted to buy and I hope I will one day a 1967 mustang shelby gt500 film. If I'm not getting into the details now, I can tell myself all kinds of stories. It's a cool car. It reminds. It reminds me of my youth and shows I used to watch blah, blah, blah, but it blah. But it also makes me look cool, right? Or it makes me think I look cool. I might look like a loser because I'm getting up there in years, but it makes me think I look cool, which actually means attractive to women. And it's the same on the other side.
Speaker 2:Interesting, and some of this can be applied in B2B as well, of course, regardless of what the product may be and so on and so forth, but it's grounded in it needing to be authentic, and when it isn't, we, we you know. Like you say very quickly, people can spot fake yeah so.
Speaker 3:So reading people's intentions is a key survival adaptation. So we see faces everywhere. We're trained to look at faces and then read faces right. You look at an airplane and the kids see a face and and and in the front and it might have an expression or a car. Authenticity is something we can read very well Little twitches of the eyes or the way that the eyes are looking, the facial muscles, the voice, the tone, the movements, the body language. We're very, very good at reading something that's not authentic and it has a big consequence, because lying a long time ago was a danger. Somebody's lying to you. You might very well be in danger, you can't trust them, and all kinds of consequences on life and death. So we still have that and we apply it to things that have nothing to do with life and death absolutely brilliant, really interesting stuff.
Speaker 2:Any sort of final thoughts you might want to leave people with?
Speaker 3:um starting with the brain, storytelling, yeah yeah, look, I think I think it's really important for for big companies to realize that this is not just a, it's not just a nice to have it. First of all, it I think it should inform strategy and even product development, but this is what people are fundamentally buying from you. I disagree with simon sinek. You know simon sinek had a talk on TEDx a few years ago. It made him huge and kudos to him for trying to dig deeper and he said people don't buy what you're selling. They're buying why you sell it. That's not true. In my opinion. It's getting close to true, but it's not. People don't buy what you're selling. They buy what they need to feel, and that's true B2B, b2c.
Speaker 3:If you invest in understanding your audience, first of all, it makes your work fascinating. It gives you all kinds of strategic ideas and you're going to sell a lot more because you're connecting to what actually makes people make decisions. Your clients will be happier because they feel understood and they're having an experience they want. They feel like they're going to do better in their own life thanks to your product. In their career. If they're buying your machines, you're doing better. It's interesting and you can do it for not a lot of money like it's not like you have to turn everybody in the company into psychologists.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, it's very accessible yeah, fascinating as well and relatable and everything else, and I guess ultimately it makes people feel good at the purchase and safe and so on and and um done with authenticity and so on.
Speaker 3:It's um and then the result is loyalty.
Speaker 2:They become your ambassadors yeah, yeah, and and that's great as well, isn't it? I mean like, let's be honest, it's, it's in business. It's far harder to get new customers.
Speaker 3:It's far more, makes far more sense to continue to have a lifelong partnership with a customer, absolutely yeah, just I mean, I mean, depending on the industry could be critical, and there's there's also ways to ensure they stay happy. But if you really keep people comfortable and happy and and feel cared for and obviously getting the quality product or seeing it as a quality product, they're going to tell other people. They will bring you other clients. You may not know it, but they will bring you other clients or make other clients stay with you as well yeah, brilliant listen.
Speaker 2:so thanks so much for joining us. Super interesting stuff, really useful and looking forward to the next installment in due course. So thanks for joining us, philippe.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much, and next time, if I'm lucky enough to be on your podcast again, we can talk about the actual architecture of a good story, if you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds like a good evolution into the next chapter.
Speaker 3:Literally all right thank you so much for having me thank you for listening.
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