INSTINCT ADVANTAGE

This book offers a science-backed methodology to target the hidden brain where decisions are made, bypassing the conscious mind that is skeptical and resistant to change.

Leslie Zane is known in the marketing industry as the "Brain Behind Brands" and has turned the marketing industry on its heads for the past 30 years. A Yale University and Harvard Business School graduate, she began her career at top multinational companies including Bain, P&G, and Johnson & Johnson, where her unconventional ideas met with resistance. In 1995, she founded her own brand consultancy, Triggers, on the premise that instinct, rather than conscious thought, guides brand decisions. Since then, Triggers has accelerated growth for Fortune 100 companies like PepsiCo, Mars, Aetna, Kraft Foods, and McDonald's through its unique expertise in changing brand preference and behavior at the unconscious level.

Most of us try to persuade people to do what we want, a traditional approach built on outdated rules designed to influence the conscious mind. For years, we've been taught that the side that makes the most convincing case wins. Nowhere is this more entrenched than in the world of marketing and advertisingmarketing departments, ad agencies, consulting firms and constellation of firms have been built to sway audiences to one thing over others. There's only one problem: We cannot convince anyone of anything, no matter how much we tell ourselves otherwise.

This is because the conscious mind is skeptical, it's aware that it's being marketed to and is resistant to change. Moreover, it only accounts for five to ten percent of our decisions the vast majority of choices we make in our day-to-day lives are made by instinct, or without much conscious thought (for example, when we reach for our preferred brands at the grocery store). This means the old rules of influence aren't even aimed at the correct part of the brain. It's time to throw out the old persuasion model and embrace a new one, a model based on the way the brain actually works. Zane argues that, in recognition of our unthinking decisions, marketers should focus less on appealing to emotion, and instead tap into the associations that already exist in consumers' brains.

Leslie's book on persuasion will provide a science-backed, field-proven methodology for targeting the area of the mind that's responsible for decision-making, laying out the first and only systematic process for expanding a brand's physical presence in our minds. If you want to get someone to buy what you're pushing, you have to connect with them on an instinctive level in recognition of our unthinking decisions, marketers should focus less on appealing to emotion, and instead tap into the existing associations that already exist in consumers' brains. Drawing on neuroscientific research, Zane links the number of neural connections an idea takes up in the brain (for example, the association of farm imagery with healthy food) to a brand's financial strength and market power.

Zane is a powerhouse. Everyone on the call with her here was impressed by her dynamism, and she will be a terrific partner in promoting and marketing (it is her specialty after all!) this book to her wide network of readers. She has been a TEDx speaker and has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Knowledge@Wharton, MIT Sloan Review, Forbes, Ad Age, CMO.com, Barron's, Newsweek, Mediapost, Scientific American and more. She draws on her 30 years of experience in the industry to create more than just another book on marketing: its message marks a turning point in the evolution of the field, casting aside the emphasis on conscious persuasion and stepping into the next frontier, the age of instinct.