Thursday, September 11, 2025

Why Thought Leadership is the New PR

Why Thought Leadership is the New PR written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:
 

Overview

On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Amy Rosenberg—seasoned PR strategist, agency founder, and author of “A Practical Guide to Public Relations for Businesses, Nonprofits, and PR Leaders.” Amy demystifies today’s PR landscape, explains why digital PR is now vital for Google and AI visibility, and shares her practical approach to integrating thought leadership, content, and social media into campaigns that actually move the needle for brands of any size.

About the Guest

Amy Rosenberg is a veteran PR strategist and agency founder with decades of experience helping organizations of all sizes build visibility, credibility, and real-world results. She is the author of two books about PR, and a go-to resource for business owners and PR professionals seeking honest, actionable guidance in a rapidly changing media landscape.

Actionable Insights

  • You don’t always need PR—start by building a solid online presence and content base before layering in media outreach.
  • Modern PR is more than press releases; it’s about thought leadership, digital media coverage, and leveraging those wins for SEO and AI search visibility.
  • High domain authority media links are essential—these are trusted by both Google and AI and provide lasting credibility.
  • Thought leadership is not just for CEOs—start with strong blog content, pitch expert articles, and build step by step.
  • Podcasts are a powerful and efficient PR channel that drive backlinks, content, and allow leaders to practice their message.
  • Social media should be systematized—pick your platforms, create rules for content sharing, and always tag media and partners.
  • PR impact can be measured: use tools like Muckrack to connect coverage with Google Analytics and tie PR wins to business goals.
  • If you’re starting from zero, a monthly blogging program is the best place to begin—then layer in PR as your strategy and resources grow.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

  • 00:55 – Do You Really Need PR?
    Amy explains why sometimes it’s best to start with your online presence before pursuing PR.
  • 01:51 – PR and AI Search
    Why digital PR and authentic media coverage are now crucial for Google and AI visibility.
  • 03:40 – What is PR in 2025?
    Amy demystifies modern PR—from media relations to crisis comms and strategy.
  • 05:46 – PR and SEO
    How high authority media coverage drives both search and credibility.
  • 07:16 – Thought Leadership for All
    Practical steps for building authority, even if you’re not a well-known CEO.
  • 10:29 – The Power of Podcasts
    Why podcast guesting is a high-ROI PR move for content and reputation.
  • 12:49 – Social Media Systems
    How to systematize content, media tagging, and reputation management.
  • 14:29 – Measuring PR
    How to connect PR wins with analytics and business outcomes.
  • 17:39 – The Best First Step
    Amy’s advice: Start with monthly blogging, then layer in PR and keep your marketing calendar organized.

Insights

“You don’t always need PR—focus on building a solid online presence and content before going after media.”

“Authentic media coverage and thought leadership now drive both SEO and AI search visibility.”

“Podcasts are high-authority PR: great for backlinks, content, and practicing your message.”

“Systematizing your social media is key—pick platforms, create rules, and make your media wins visible.”

“You can measure PR’s impact: connect wins to real business results with analytics and clear goals.”

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John Jantsch (00:01.496)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Amy Rosenberg. She's a seasoned PR strategist, agency founder and author with deep expertise in building visibility and credibility for organizations of all sizes. We are going to talk about her latest book, A Practical Guide to Public Relations for Businesses, Nonprofits and PR Leaders. So Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (00:28.578)

Hi, thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:30.912)

So you cover a lot of ground on the book. mean, it's something that's called a practical guide is usually pretty broad. I mean, traditional media relations, obviously SEOs in there, AIs in there. What are the most common misconceptions basically when it comes to PR that you see businesses still having in 2025?

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (00:55.96)

Well, I'm gonna laugh. If people still think that we need to do press releases, that's like an old misconception that like people should actually be over that by now. But mainly, this is gonna be funny. You don't always need PR. That's kind of the thing. So here's the thing. And that's the whole book title, practical. We need to be practical about things. We don't need to do everything. And sometimes we can do PR. Sometimes we can do a press release, but.

We need to kind of like think about it first and get things organized first. And actually, we need to have ideally a nice online presence first. And then we can go and do some PR. And right now, PR is actually helping with AI search. So showing up in AI. So the old story used to be, PR helps with SEO, which is showing up in Google.

John Jantsch (01:43.47)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (01:51.544)

But now, well, we still want to show up high in Google. And we can do that through digital PR. And I can talk about how. But now, apparently, PR is very important for AI search. But of course, I'm going to have to dig into that because nobody is using that AI.

John Jantsch (02:08.066)

Well, I think there's no question that the AI crawlers, if we're going to call them that, are really looking at trusted media sources to get a lot of their information. there's no mystery, I think, in why that's become more important.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (02:26.284)

Yeah, and so it's always been a mystery to talk about PR because it, well, it's PR people actually like to make it very mysterious. So what I tried to do with my first book and then also now my second is to demystify it. So the first book is for PR people because I started to see a lot of them actually weren't trained and there's kind of a right way and a wrong way to do things. And oftentimes when we have rules,

that kind of helps us in a hard field and it kind of gives us some guidelines to stick by. But as I finished that book, I was thinking, well, this book is really possibly not helpful for business owners because, well, I'm giving a little bit too many examples that the PR people need. And so this book, like five years later, six years later, is much more streamlined, stripped down on the media relations tactics.

really actually leads with thought leadership and how thought leadership, it's always been a part of PR, but now thought leadership is really the key to getting up higher on Google and AI.

John Jantsch (03:40.366)

All right, I want to come back to that. But I think part of the confusion is, you know, in the old days, before we had all these digital platforms, it was really more of a, it was very much a relationship game. was, know, who you knew at the publications because they were very gated. You know, how you could spin a story in a way that was meaningful to a journalist. You those were the real skills. But then all of sudden, you know,

We've got Facebook, or we've got blogs, and we've got Reddit, and we've got all these other things that essentially can be lumped into PR. I mean, how do you help people kind of say what PR actually is?

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (04:19.138)

Well, good question. And I love that because it's I do. Honestly, I kind of do want a little bit of silo or separation. We can take a PR campaign and we can transform it into content to anything. Right. But PR typically is like you're saying the media relations aspect. But also there's a lot of more sometimes some strategy in there.

some crisis comms, some crisis prep. So sometimes we'll know we can pick out our negative aspects and get organized around those and then actually not necessarily spin it, but kind of look at the positive side of our negative aspects and put the stories around those.

John Jantsch (05:09.422)

So you already mentioned SEO and I'm seeing a lot of SEO folks, know, it used to just be, we could get keyword rankings by doing X, Y, and Z all day long. That's how it worked. And I've seen certainly a lot of them say that's not working so well anymore. And I see a lot of SEO people talking more about PR, not as a siloed practice, but as a part of SEO now. And then you make that case certainly in the book.

Do you have an example of where integrating SEO or really thinking like PR as a core component of SEO made a measurable difference?

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (05:46.788)

Well, I feel like right now I'm the worst salesperson ever and I'm the one that will never tout my profession too much because it's a little salesy. But a lot of SEO people have been saying that PR is the actual driver of authentic links. So here's the thing, Google knows when you're buying links, sometimes. So you can kind of like forget,

John Jantsch (06:06.222)

Yeah, totally.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (06:16.792)

sponsored articles sometimes, depending. And then we just need to get our clients, if we can, ourselves on high domain authority websites. And the media actually has a higher domain authority than other websites. So not only are they more credible, well, some media, more credible in the public's eye.

they're more credible in Google's eyes. So if you're showing up in Google, then ideally you would show up in an AI chat box as well. But I mean, that to me is a little nebulous. I feel like more research needs to be done on that. you don't get, anyway, you don't get all of those links that you don't get to review in AI. So it's just gonna get really much more strategic and thoughtful. And that is...

really what PR people are good at.

John Jantsch (07:16.28)

So talk a little bit more about the, the idea of thought leadership. put, know, certainly there's, there's certain types of businesses, certain types of industries. makes a ton of sense, know, nonprofits. certainly makes a ton of sense. Do you feel like that, that needs to be, a strategic component of just about every business? mean, not just that person that's like, I'm, know, I'm this well-known CEO with a book and blah, blah, but just like every business almost has to have like.

their version of an influencer that is, you know, that's seen in the media.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (07:51.788)

Yeah, it would be great if they could. let me just back up a little bit. So thought leadership, so B2B media or thought leadership type of media, that's an easier way to do PR. It's easier to get results for that. So often we are not looking at relationships. We are looking at streamlining. want, because we can't make relationships with everybody. So we need to have good ways to scale our PR campaigns.

John Jantsch (08:02.926)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (08:18.07)

And so when we're doing thought leadership, that's positioning a person, whether it's an article or on the stage, we are streamlining everything because you're getting a lot more value actually in Google's eyes because it all ties back to, I don't know if you know the acronym EAT, I'm gonna mess about, but that's what thought leadership is, is EAT, which is the

John Jantsch (08:41.08)

Sure, of course.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (08:47.46)

what Google looks for. have human reviewers and they're looking for anyone that's writing on a topic to have experience, authority, trust, and there was another one. don't remember. Two T's.

John Jantsch (09:00.406)

It's the other E, the other E they add is expertise. So it's experience, expertise, authority, and trust. And so that's where obviously the media plays a big role, but also being able to say, I did this thing rather than telling somebody how to do it. Case studies, things of that nature have become really.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (09:04.06)

thank you.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (09:20.374)

Yeah, and I just want to add that we don't, we need to kind of start somewhere, right? We don't need to start. A lot of people get really tripped up over thought leadership because first of all, I mentioned this stage. Well, a lot of my clients are shy and they are running companies, they're CEOs and they're busy. know, who really has time to go out and do a lot of speaking engagements, right? So sometimes we will do that, but often we start, you got to start somewhere again. So we start with

content and this is where we're doing great blogs from the CEO and then we're taking that and turning it into a press article and then the press Article can run ideally on a high domain authority website and then our CEO doesn't have to go anywhere like for us We're really all about efficiencies, too. So and I feel like my clients they don't Maybe they don't have time to to get on a stage or

or they don't want to. So that's where this kind of like practical approach to public relations comes in.

John Jantsch (10:29.518)

How do you, I'm going to go through a couple of categories or a couple of platforms, should say, or channels, maybe is a better word, and relate them to PR. You know, I, I, you know, we're on a podcast today, recording this. I happen to think podcasts is amazing channel for thought leadership, for exposure, for backlinks, for content creation that really is not a huge lift for a lot of people, you know, to come and do those. How do you work podcasts or being a guest?

more specifically on a podcast into your overall PR world.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (11:03.46)

Good question. So first of all, they are huge for building domain authority or for getting SEO because, know, so often what we will do is podcasts are part of the whole thing. So we really get detailed with our media lists and this is where we have all of our lists, but we do outline DA. So to tell you the truth, before I decided to do, well, thank you for having me on the podcast.

John Jantsch (11:30.294)

Yeah.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (11:31.34)

I looked and you have a good DA, you have a really good like 54, which for my agency, I'm at like 20 something and I'm a small agency. So you are great. And then the media, they're around 80 to 100. so we look at that and then for some clients, again, they don't wanna be too, they're busy, we don't wanna bug them. And so we will vet.

John Jantsch (11:45.582)

in 70s, 80s, yeah.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (12:00.258)

where we replace them, and then we will also think about it as a way to practice our talking points. So this is where, again, starting somewhere. So if we do wanna go and do a speaking engagement, we do need a little visibility first to get our client accepted. So we start with podcasts, actually. And then sometimes, again, podcasts are more efficient to just keep doing those.

John Jantsch (12:07.597)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:23.052)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (12:30.168)

Yeah. Yeah. So, so let's jump to another one. Social media. think for a lot of PR people, it's kind of a double-edged sword from a reputation standpoint. how do you view or how do you advise clients to, work social media into their overall marketing slash PR type of plans?

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (12:49.496)

Well, again, I don't want to say again because I've never said this before, but I noticed that you do a lot of systems work. so we can't busy people, especially myself. We can't do anything without systems. So and so it might not be quote unquote strategic, but we need to get things done. And we do need some visibility on some of the platforms, not all of them. So we'll look at a client will think, OK, on what platforms do you want to

should they be on and then we will create kind of rules around how often we will post about something and a rule would be for example three posts per blog post and then another rule in different writing right you have to write the post differently and then another rule would be at least one if not two posts per media hit and we have to do those because

we have to thank the media and tag them. So anyway, so we have those systems and oftentimes we were a PR firm. So a lot of PR people will say, well, you do social, that's your job. You shouldn't silo it. Well, okay, but here's the thing. Sometimes people just hire us for PR and then we notice they're not doing social and we might need them to because we're looking at a crisis down the road. So we need some positive social now.

John Jantsch (14:16.077)

Mm.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (14:18.252)

And so we will just kind of say, okay, here's our system. This is what we're doing around this social and kind of get it done.

John Jantsch (14:29.74)

So PR, I know you're going to have an answer for this, but I got to set it up this way. know, PR is often looked at as, you know, as a nice to have, you know, you can't measure it. doesn't, it doesn't drive sales necessarily. How do you get a client over that or how do you actually prove to them that the PR is valuable?

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (14:50.308)

Well, again, I just love your questions. Well, like I said, I'm the worst salesperson ever. So I don't. I don't fight people. don't have. Nobody has time for that also. And then also, in a way, they might be right. We have to look at the budget. It's all about your budget and your bandwidth. So some clients we can't we can't work with everybody. That's why we wrote. I wrote the book. But also we would like to work with.

And it doesn't matter what we want. It's who is ready for a PR and who's not. And it's gotta be somebody who you've gotta get your stuff together first, which is your base, which is content, I think, in this day and age. We've gotta have like a nice kind of streamlined thing going so that you're in the groove. We've gotta feed the beast. Then we can layer in some PR. And then we can put PR again on a program.

John Jantsch (15:31.821)

You

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (15:46.69)

where we can look at it like we have goals. They could be almost like sales quota goals, but for PR or content where we say, okay, we're gonna just, we're gonna do one campaign per quarter and that might just be enough. And we just have it all scheduled out so that we're not feeling like we're missing something. But we can't really, we're trying to measure our results, right?

So we do have a great database called Muckrack that is our software that connects with our clients' Google Analytics. And so we can track, like, hey, we have this online school. So we can track where our coverage landed in terms of the location. And we can track the enrollment for the school by location. So you can get really granular with that.

John Jantsch (16:19.681)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (16:45.326)

But at the end of the day, we're all working together as a marketing team in-house, you know, marketing team. And we're not going to say it was from the PR.

John Jantsch (16:54.958)

Yeah, right. So, all right. People listening today, we've been kind of all over the place talking about PR, SEO, a little bit about AI, content, social. If somebody's out there and they're thinking, you know, I need to do more in this, I mean, is there a single most important thing they can focus on, say, the next six months in your view? If somebody said, hey, I want to get the most out of it. And again, I'm not saying, I mean, maybe the best thing they can do is hire you.

But, you know, short of that, are there things that you're telling people that, you need to either stop doing this and start doing this, you know, over the next six months that you think would move the needle the most?

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (17:39.204)

So if you're really just not doing anything, I would just say try and get yourself on a monthly blogging program for SEO. So then you might not consider that PR. But once you kind of get that going, then you can look at like the marketing calendar and kind of think about how when you can do some PR, when you can do some proactive PR. And if you look, I have a...

calendar on my website that is free. need to make sure that you can access the link, but it has, you could fill out your marketing calendar and I call it marketing, but a lot of it is PR. But to be clear, PR looks a little different these days. It's not a press release per se. It's an article or this, that, and the other. So if you're interested in learning more, there's a lot of great resources.

John Jantsch (18:28.354)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:38.296)

Well, so where would you invite people to kind of find? I know we're going to have links. We have a link to your blog and PR resources. I see. So are there, is there anywhere you'd invite people to connect with you and find out more about the book itself?

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (18:52.196)

Well, I'd love if they would like to connect on LinkedIn. And I'm doing a lot of posts there about PR. And then, yeah, if they want to go to the resources section, and it might actually be under Marketplace on my website, you can buy books there. But also, we have other things there that are free, like a bunch of videos that can walk you through the process.

John Jantsch (19:21.196)

Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days soon out there on the road.

Amy Rosenberg (She/Her) (19:29.336)

Yay, thank you. Thanks for having me.

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Building Resilience at Any Age with Lynn Smith

Building Resilience at Any Age with Lynn Smith written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

 

Overview

On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Lynn Smith—nationally recognized TV news anchor, keynote speaker, media consultant, and founder of Rylan Media. Lynn shares the inspiration and story behind her new children’s book, “Just Keep Going,” a beautifully illustrated fable that offers a blueprint for building resilience and courage in both kids and adults. Drawing from her own career pivots, setbacks, and reinventions, Lynn discusses why perseverance, emotional honesty, and self-awareness are the real keys to success—on the page, in business, and in life.

About the Guest

Lynn Smith is a media consultant, renowned TV anchor, speaker, and founder of Rylan Media. She’s helped thousands of professionals find their voices on camera and in the boardroom. As the author of “Just Keep Going,” Lynn brings her expertise in communication and resilience to a new generation, offering practical lessons for overcoming fear and embracing growth.

Actionable Insights

  • The central message—“just keep going”—was inspired by three words that helped Lynn persevere through a dark period in her life; that same mantra now helps children and business leaders alike.
  • Choosing a mouse as the main character adds an underdog, relatable spirit—animal stories are less intimidating for kids and help lessons land.
  • The book’s lessons on resilience, reframing adversity, and emotional honesty are as relevant for adults and entrepreneurs as they are for children.
  • Illustration is a powerful storytelling partner; trusting expert collaborators (like illustrator Lauren Gallegos) can amplify your message.
  • Teaching kids practical techniques—deep breathing, asking for help, shaking off setbacks—makes emotional skills actionable and memorable.
  • Self-awareness is critical for resilience; most adult communication challenges are rooted in childhood fears or experiences.
  • Parents and teachers can model perseverance by sharing their own setbacks and how they move through them.
  • The book includes an educator and parent guide with prompts, definitions, and a “worry journal” to help kids—and families—process big feelings.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

  • 00:37 – Why a Mouse?
    Lynn shares why the main character’s journey needed the relatability of an underdog.
  • 02:40 – The Origin of “Just Keep Going”
    How a friend’s text became a life-changing mantra—and the heart of the book.
  • 03:41 – Is This Just for Kids?
    Why the book’s message is vital for entrepreneurs, parents, and anyone facing adversity.
  • 05:18 – On Writing Short and Deep
    The challenge of distilling big lessons into a few, powerful words and pages.
  • 06:42 – Illustration as Storytelling
    How trusting the right creative partner can turn words into emotional magic.
  • 08:23 – Making Complex Lessons Simple
    Turning resilience, courage, and reframing adversity into actions any child can take.
  • 10:37 – Autobiographical Lessons
    How Lynn’s own pivots and failures shaped the book’s core message.
  • 12:37 – Self-Awareness and Root Causes
    Why most adult fears and communication struggles trace back to formative childhood moments.
  • 13:43 – Modeling Perseverance as a Parent
    The importance of letting kids see you fail, try again, and share your process.
  • 16:20 – Tools and Guides for Families
    The book’s educator/parent guide and the power of a “worry journal.”
  • 19:07 – Lynn’s Own “Just Keep Going” Moment
    From live TV slip-ups to business setbacks, how perseverance drives every reinvention.

Insights

“Just keep going” isn’t about guaranteeing success—it’s about embracing the process, moving through fear, and seeing what’s possible on the other side.

“Children’s books distill complex lessons into simple actions—breathing, asking for help, shaking it off—so kids (and parents) can practice resilience together.”

“Self-awareness and emotional honesty are the roots of real, lasting growth at any age.”

“Modeling perseverance—letting kids see you face setbacks and keep trying—is one of the greatest gifts a parent or leader can give.”

“Every reinvention, every pivot, and every setback is a chance to just keep going—and to get stronger along the way.”

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John Jantsch (00:01.228)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Lynn Smith. She is a nationally recognized television news anchor, keynote speaker, media consultant and founder of Rylan Media. She's helped thousands of professionals find and use their voices on camera, in the boardroom and beyond. And we're going to talk about her new book, Just Keep Going, which draws on her own journey through career pivots, setbacks, reinventions.

to offer a blueprint for resilience, mindset, and forward momentum in working life. So welcome to the show.

Lynn Smith (00:36.092)

John, thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:37.966)

All right, so first I have to ask what inspired you to use a small mouse to tell the story of resilience?

Lynn Smith (00:46.12)

Originally, actually, it was a child. And this book went through so many different iterations and rejections. And it's actually perfectly named Just Keep Going because throughout the process of writing it, I could have just said, you know what? This is really hard. I think I'm just going to quit. And maybe this isn't for me. And I just kept going. And so instead of saying this stinks and everyone hates it, I made tweaks to it. And one of it was

John Jantsch (00:58.21)

Good.

Lynn Smith (01:15.72)

turning the character into a mouse and I chose a mouse because I feel that they have in story time this like underdog feel to it. It's like the little one that you just wanna kind of root for and then along the way mouse encounters friends from a deer to a bear to an owl and Lauren who did the illustrations just knocked it out of the park with beautiful ways of bringing this to a magical and whimsical life.

And so I wanted these characters to be the most relatable for children, right? They're the least intimidated by animals. And so messages tend to land easier when they come from animals. And so I think it was a great transformation for us to make with the manuscript.

John Jantsch (02:04.226)

I'm thinking mice in my youth, was you had Tom and Jerry and you had Mighty Mouse and you know, so they they they've got a long history of course Mickey Mouse, how can we forget? So a long history of being in children's or at least in in cartoons. So you you mentioned of course the book struggle that you had just keep going. But how'd you land on that as really the central message for I'm sure that became as

Lynn Smith (02:09.48)

Sure. Exactly. All the Disney characters.

Of course.

Lynn Smith (02:23.176)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:34.09)

an afterthought in the struggle you had with the book, but you went into it with that central message. How and why did you land on that?

Lynn Smith (02:40.772)

It came from the three words that were sent to me when I was in a really dark place in my life. It was in my early thirties and I had a friend from college that just texted me those three words. Just keep going. It wasn't you're going to be okay. It wasn't things are going to work out, which is our go-to when people are having a hard time and you're like, no, I'm not going to be okay. Things are not going to work out. But the three words of just keep going was exactly what I needed to hear. And so I did.

And then I continued to have great times and not so great times, just like we all do in life. And that phrase got me through a lot. And so I wanted to bring that concept to young minds because it's certainly what I do when I'm working with executives. I show them how to overcome their fears so that they can just keep going. And I thought, well, why am I doing this with 47 year olds or 57 year olds or 60, 70, what?

Why am I not doing this with seven-year-olds so that we don't have to get into the boardroom and be so paralyzed by those fears that we have?

John Jantsch (03:41.848)

Yeah. I mean, the lessons in this book, yes, you've written this for a young audience, but the lessons in this really do. mean, I, there a of, lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs and, you know, resilience is probably one of the core characteristics of a successful entrepreneur. Do you feel like you limit the message a little bit because somebody looks at that cover and says, well that's not for

Lynn Smith (03:57.916)

No,

Lynn Smith (04:05.243)

Well, I think that it's for, is there somebody that is an entrepreneur with no children that's going to buy the book? No, probably not unless they read children's books for themselves. It's for the entrepreneur that has their little one that they want to be able to instill this message that they've so brilliantly embraced because you can't survive as an entrepreneur without it. And so I think myself as a recovering W-2, what I like to call myself,

and now an entrepreneur that I hope my children will become because I think it's the greatest path in your career that you can have. And it does take a certain mindset. And there's a reason why in life there are two types of people. There are ones that need to be sort of told what to do and those that can take on the risk and the responsibility of not only doing, but also telling their team how to execute their vision. So can we

raise those many entrepreneurs. think we can.

John Jantsch (05:06.966)

So I've written seven books myself. I think my longest book topped out at slightly over a hundred thousand words. Was it hard writing a book that doesn't have that many words?

Lynn Smith (05:18.791)

Great question because I'm in the process of writing a nonfiction. Spoiler alert, there will be a version of a Just Keep Going for grownups. The challenge wasn't the amount of words. It was the way that you distill down a very complex topic like resilience, courage, bravery, and took years for me to accomplish. So everyone talks about their nonfiction books, which you being an author, you know this very well. It can take up to…

two years to write a book, the time that it takes to write a thousand words, but it took just as long to write 40 pages because there were so many different iterations and it helped me grow as a writer. I'm used to writing four minute television segments where I hook them and I give them twists and turns and then I button it up and I can't write like that. So I grew as a writer through that process and what we landed on, I'm confident, helps children understand and not a you

John Jantsch (06:03.758)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Lynn Smith (06:16.187)

be resilient kind of a way, but it takes them on the journey where they realize that they can just keep going through their fears and they can get to their destinations.

John Jantsch (06:26.486)

I'm curious, know, children's books and the illustrations quite often tell a great deal of the story. How was that having such an important collaborator really? You know, not just to mention the beautiful art, but that it helped tell the story.

Lynn Smith (06:32.103)

couldn't agree more.

Lynn Smith (06:42.505)

and Lauren Gallegos, who is the illustrator who I didn't choose because the publisher chooses it and I could not be happier because to your point, what she did with the illustrations was she brought to life the emotion. So when Mouse is feeling overwhelmed, you see this cloud around him with jagged edges and it slowly dissipates over time and the whimsical idea of breathing in and out and his ears.

John Jantsch (06:50.87)

wow.

Lynn Smith (07:07.371)

up when he breathes in look like he's about to float away and when they're down it looks like they actually move. I mean, only an artist can do that. And what I did, you know, because I've been asked the question, was it hard to let go of your story and hand it over to somebody else to bring it to life? What I learned throughout my career is you find the best of the best and then you trust them because they're the expert.

and maybe you learned that you didn't find the best of the best and then you move on to the next thing and you lose a little bit of money. We know as entrepreneurs how many vendors did we hire and we have just, it's like, okay, there's another 10 grand out the window. This was, it truly was the best and best out there and I just trusted her expertise.

John Jantsch (07:48.334)

So there are a lot of very adult themes in this book. Re-framing adversity, for example. A lot of adults really have trouble with that. How do you bring that, something that's that complex and make it not, I hate the term dumb it down because that's not what you're doing. You're making it understand. So how do you take something that is really hard for

Lynn Smith (08:09.241)

No, it's drill it down to that audience. Yes.

John Jantsch (08:16.17)

know, full adults, grown adults to understand and make it something that a seven year old, as you mentioned, understands.

Lynn Smith (08:23.495)

Throughout the book, Mouse starts in a forest and he's trying to get home and he encounters a animal along the way through each challenge he faces. So in some cases, it's sometimes Mouse has big feelings and that makes him scared. And a friend will come along and say, have you tried taking a deep breath in and taking a deep breath out? that helps. I'll just keep going. And he gets to his next scene, which is sometimes Mouse is frustrated because

someone won't share. Have you tried jumping up and down? that helps. And just keep going. And throughout each vignette, there are different physical techniques that are very simple that kids understand. So when my kids read it, they're the best test market, right? And that's what I did before the manuscript ever was finalized. I was like, does my six-year-old like this? And, you know, they were reading it and then they'd get off the couch and they'd start jumping up and down. Or they know this because I put it in the book.

because this is what we do when I say, a deep breath in and they're like, take a deep breath out. And so it is not, are overcoming adversity, which is what we would say to an adult. It is leading them to the water through these magical scenes. And then at the end he gets to his house and he realizes that putting one foot in front of the other, taking deep breaths helped him to get to where he wants to be. And the ultimate, okay,

we nailed it on the messaging was my now six-year-old, who's my youngest, my six-year-old at the time who is now nine is my oldest. That was my test market when I was writing this. But my six-year-old now said to me at the start of school, he said, Mom, can we bring your book into the class? And I said, well, why? And he's like, well, George just started at our school and he doesn't know anyone. And I think he's scared. And I was like, yeah, okay. They get it. They get it.

John Jantsch (10:17.112)

Mm. Yeah.

Lynn Smith (10:21.519)

because that's the situation that they can relate to. And I said to him, you're being a deer, you know, because with a deer is one of the friends in the book. And so it's like, can we teach them how to be the other animal that might help the mouse out there? Because I think there's a mouse in all of us.

John Jantsch (10:37.952)

Yeah. So, so speaking of that, while this is not purely autobiographical, I'm wondering how much you've had some reinventions in your career. I'm wondering how much of this you feel like is, is autobiographical.

Lynn Smith (10:47.441)

Just a few.

Lynn Smith (10:53.615)

Yeah, and I don't even know that word reinvention because that almost makes it sound like there's a restart to it. I would say more of a development of where I went with my career. So I was a news anchor for 15 years, felt the news business was no longer how I could serve. And so I wanted to reverse engineer what helped me to feel like I'm talking to you when you're sitting in your living room and like, I know her, I like her, I want to spend time with her.

How do I teach that to executives that are struggling with the boardroom or the presentation that they're giving? And so when I made that transition, were there just keep going moments? Of course. I was starting from scratch as an entrepreneur. mean, John, I didn't even know how to do an Excel worksheet. You know, I read Glass for a living. I didn't know how to do any of these things. I didn't even know what the term scale meant. Like, what does it mean to scale was an actual Google search?

John Jantsch (11:42.403)

Yeah.

Lynn Smith (11:51.97)

And what I had to do along the way was just keep going. You'll fail. I have bad business partnerships, bad decisions, bad people that came through. All of it's happened. It's going to happen again. We know this to be the case. What do we do when it happens? We just keep going.

John Jantsch (12:12.012)

Again, find myself keep going back to adults on this because it's so relevant, how much do you think self-awareness plays a role in being able to just keep going? Rather than like the world's against me, I'm a failure, I'm this, how much of it is, no, this was supposed to happen, for example.

Lynn Smith (12:17.137)

Yeah, that's.

Lynn Smith (12:37.895)

I think the reason that you keep going back to the adult piece is because we as adults, the things that we're struggling with are often rooted in childhood. So when I'm working with executives and I uncover for them the reality that what they're struggling with, which is their communication, is not actually their problem. Their problem is their fear. Am I going to say the wrong thing? Are people going to like this? Do I sound smart? That's what we fix first, and then I teach them the tactical.

And whenever I'm digging through the fear piece, I always ask the question, where do you think that comes from? And inevitably, and we're talking hundreds of executives that we've tested this with, and these are fortune 500 CEOs in many cases, always goes back to childhood. Well, you know, I was a latchkey kid and I had to sort of figure out things on my own or, you know, I had a very critical mother or whatever it was, it somewhere rooted back in

childhood and so much of this book I wrote for the parent reading it to their child as much as I wrote for the child.

John Jantsch (13:43.32)

Yeah. So as you've mentioned, you're a parent. And then obviously, I'm sure there are going to be a lot of teachers that see your book. How do you think adults then can model that just keep going kind of mindset in their own lives for those who might be paying attention? Because I do recall, I do recall they hear every word you say and see everything you do, whether you know.

Lynn Smith (13:59.772)

Yeah, and I, yeah.

Every word. And gosh, I could be so hard on myself for that reality because I'm learning how much that's true and how many times I have screwed up. And I am not a parenting expert, but I do host a parenting podcast. So I've talked to a lot of parenting experts and they helped me to change the way that I present to my children. I say, well, they say, and I'm believing, if I'm doing it 70 % of the time, then...

John Jantsch (14:09.1)

Ha ha ha!

John Jantsch (14:15.886)

You

John Jantsch (14:32.418)

Yeah, right.

Lynn Smith (14:32.481)

we're good. They'll forget the other 30. But what I have done is I've welcomed them into my failures. So I shared with them throughout the book process, you know what, someone rejected the book again. I'm disappointed. But you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do something that, you know, they said that maybe this could be worked on. So I'm going to go and do you want to help me? Like I brought them into the process so they could see me pushing through rejection.

and perceived failure. And then things like I've had my son when he was nervous about a game. What if I don't win? Right? Instead of, know, get out there, you know, win, right? That's what we teach our kids. Get first place and then you are on the sidelines and these parents are going crazy. And what does that teach our kids? Like, oh my gosh, wait, the stakes are really high. My mom and dad are on the sidelines. Like, they're screaming at me to just do better.

John Jantsch (15:21.048)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lynn Smith (15:30.119)

And instead it's like, you know, I was, cause this did happen to me when I was in middle school, I got cut from every single team. And instead of sulking, I went to camps during the summer and I, and I tried practicing every single second that I could. And the next year I made the team. And so I share that with them of like, if you don't, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to stop or are you going to keep going and practice and get better? Because that's entrepreneurship, right? You get knocked down and you don't get pushed out.

John Jantsch (16:00.942)

So have you, I'm sure in your consulting, you've developed some frameworks and some tools and there are some things that you mentioned in this book, breathing, asking for help, shaking it off. Do you envision some worksheets or things that could be used in the class or used by families?

Lynn Smith (16:20.763)

Yeah, we actually have an educator and a parent guide that we have on the website for the book. And we did that because we wanted this to be the starting point. We wanted this to spark greater conversations with your children. So in the guide, it's definition of brave. What is the definition of courage? What does it mean to fail? And then question prompts, like, have you ever felt like you failed at something? What did that feel like? And

What does it mean to be brave? And how can you be a friend to somebody that might be struggling? And then at the end of the guide, it's a worry journal. And this was from another parenting expert that shared with me the importance of writing kids' feelings down. And I started it with my boys. And now my son will say, mom, can you go get my worry journal? So we put that at the end so that they have a place where they can write down the feelings, the big feelings that we address at the beginning of the book.

mouse sometimes has big feelings. And I use that word specifically because I have a big feeling kid. So I have a big feeling, big reaction kid. And sometimes we're big feeling adults, right? We react bigger than maybe we need to because of our emotion. And so, yes, in my frameworks, what we work through are beating the brain bully, which is our inner critic, and

having the Goldilocks effect of preparation so that we walk into communications with the right messaging. All of those things are the big, big concepts. We just wanna teach our kids what does it mean to be brave? What does it mean to have courage?

John Jantsch (17:56.92)

So you mentioned already that you're working on a book that uses the same, really to use in your consulting, right? The same message. do you, do ever envision a series of books? Maybe it'll depend on how well this sells, right? Do ever envision a series of books that, you know, you have a whole group of emotional lessons that you could probably talk

Lynn Smith (18:19.707)

Well, from your mouth to the skies, yes. Of course, that's the dream for every author, that your message resonates and that it develops and it continues. And that's what I would love to be able to do with this book. As you say, you've written, you said eight books, is that right? Seven? Yeah. And when you're an author and you just feel like your content evolves and you want to share your frameworks and your IP with as many people as possible, because that's how you make an impact, right?

John Jantsch (18:22.1)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:37.294)

That's seven, but yeah.

Lynn Smith (18:49.765)

especially as a business owner.

John Jantsch (18:49.806)

Yeah, absolutely. So, all right. The hardest question, I said the hardest question for last, maybe it's not the hardest question. Was there a time in your life, career or not career related, that you had to just keep going?

Lynn Smith (19:07.025)

could give you hundreds of examples, right? I'll give you a great story for TV news. So I was a producer at the Today Show and they approached me when I had appeared in one of the segments and they said, have you ever thought about doing on air? Well, the skills of being great on camera are not natural for most people. And that was true for me. So they sent me to Hartford, Connecticut to cut my teeth.

get a reel and then they sent me to Philadelphia for a little boot camp and local. And so was my first day on the job. I was supposed to be a consumer reporter because clearly I could write great pieces. I was at the Today Show, but they needed me to be on tape so that they could train me to be great on camera. And the first day on the job, I was sent to a breaking news stabbing at a school and I had never reported breaking news. I was a disaster.

John Jantsch (19:55.349)

what? Huh.

Lynn Smith (20:00.433)

Bumbled through it. I said the wrong name. I said the wrong weapon. This is why people say that you should cut your teeth in a small market. We could have a whole other podcast in my disagreement with that statement. That being said, it was humiliating. It was on live television. It wasn't the last time something embarrassing on TV happened, but I continuously choose throughout my career and in my life to just keep going and not have those failures stop me from what I want to accomplish.

And I hope that this book inspires your children to do the same.

John Jantsch (20:33.422)

Well, again, Lynn, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there someplace you'd invite people to find out more about you, your work, and obviously just keep going.

Lynn Smith (20:43.779)

John, it was great to be with you. My work with executives is linsmith.com, where you can learn all about what we do. And then the book is justkeepgoingbook.com. It is out on September 30th, but available for presale, whatever you love to buy your books.

John Jantsch (20:59.63)

Awesome. Again, well, congratulations and I appreciate you stopping by. Maybe we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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Thursday, August 28, 2025

The Brain Science Behind Successful Marketing

The Brain Science Behind Successful Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

 

Michael Aaron FlickerOverview

On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Michael Aaron Flicker, founder and CEO of ZenoSci Ventures and co-founder (with Richard Shotton) of the Consumer Behavior Lab. Michael shares insights from their new book, “Hacking the Human Mind: The Behavioral Science Secrets Behind 17 of the World’s Best Brands.” They discuss how the world’s top brands—sometimes knowingly, sometimes not—leverage deep principles of behavioral science to drive memorable marketing, build loyalty, and create legendary campaigns.

About the Guest

Michael Aaron Flicker is the founder and CEO of ZenoSci Ventures and co-founder of the Consumer Behavior Lab, an organization dedicated to applying the science of human behavior to media and marketing. Alongside renowned behavioral scientist Richard Shotton, Michael explores how behavioral science can be practically applied to build more effective brands, campaigns, and customer journeys.

Actionable Insights

  • Great brands often leverage behavioral science—even if they’re not aware of the academic research behind their strategies.
  • Marketers should focus on concrete, image-rich messaging (e.g., “a thousand songs in your pocket”) rather than abstract claims or feature lists; concrete language is proven to be more memorable and persuasive.
  • Specificity and the illusion of effort (e.g., “17 brands,” “5,127 prototypes”) increase credibility and audience trust.
  • Creating peak moments—unexpected, memorable experiences—can dramatically elevate brand loyalty (e.g., a popsicle hotline at an average hotel).
  • Behavioral science helps decode why people really buy; understanding these principles arms you to design smarter campaigns and better experiences.
  • Marketers must use these tactics ethically; understanding human shortcuts is about guiding, not manipulating, decisions.
  • The best way to apply these principles is to test them: run A/B tests, observe outcomes, and iterate—even small businesses can experiment and learn.
  • Success comes from a mindset open to science, measurement, and continuous observation—move beyond gut instinct to evidence-based marketing.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

  • 00:55 – What Does It Mean to “Hack the Human Mind”?
    Why the book starts with brands, not academic studies, and always ends with “so what?”
  • 02:00 – Ground-Level Psychology
    Why both big brands and small business owners have direct insight into consumer behavior.
  • 03:20 – Debunking the Feature Stack
    The Five Guys story: Why less is more, and focus beats feature overload.
  • 06:53 – The Power of Concrete Messaging
    How Apple’s “a thousand songs in your pocket” leverages proven behavioral science.
  • 09:21 – Why “17 Brands”?
    Specificity and the illusion of effort make numbers more credible and memorable.
  • 11:00 – The Peak-End Rule and Creating Brand Moments
    Why a popsicle hotline at an average motel generates top-tier reviews.
  • 13:32 – How Any Business Can Create Peak Moments
    Small, intentional actions can create powerful, memorable experiences for any brand.
  • 15:10 – Ethics and the “Dark Side” of Behavioral Science
    Why marketers must use these insights responsibly and educate consumers.
  • 17:20 – How to Get Started in Behavioral Science Marketing
    Adopt a science-based, test-and-learn mindset—not just gut instinct.
  • 18:52 – Measurement and Testing
    Why even small businesses should observe, experiment, and iterate.

Insights

“Great brands use behavioral science principles—sometimes knowingly, sometimes by instinct—to create memorable, effective marketing.”

“Concrete, image-rich language is four times more memorable than abstract claims. Show, don’t just tell.”

“Specificity and visible effort—like a precise number of prototypes—build trust and credibility.”

“A single, unexpected peak moment can make an average experience legendary in the minds of customers.”

“Behavioral science is about understanding humanity’s natural shortcuts and designing better, not more manipulative, marketing.”

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Consumer Behavior Lab (00:00.365)

perfect.

John Jantsch (00:02.467)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Michael Aaron Flicker. He's the founder and CEO of ZenoSci Ventures and co-founder of the Consumer Behavior Lab alongside renowned behavioral scientist Richard Schotton. The CBL's mission is to explore how behavioral science can be applied to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of media and marketing. Michael Aaron and Richard's book.

is what we're going to talk about today, hacking the human mind, the behavioral science secrets behind 17 of the world's best brands. So I go welcome the show.

Consumer Behavior Lab (00:42.191)

Thanks so much for having me, John. Excited to be here with you.

John Jantsch (00:44.909)

So let's start, a lot of times I have to start with the title of a book. So what does it really mean to hack the human mind in the context of marketing and branding?

Consumer Behavior Lab (00:55.723)

So, so many books about behavioral science, about the academics of marketing start with the studies or start with the, with esoteric research. And we said, what if we turned it around? And what if we said some of the best brands in the world have insights into human psychology that they're taking advantage of whether they know it or not. So let's take those examples.

break them down, understand what they're doing, and then explain some of the science behind it so that you can have confidence using it in your own business for your own brand. So we wanted to start with the brands rather than with the academic studies and make sure that we always ended it with, what? So what do I do with this knowledge so that I can apply it to the brands or the businesses that you're running?

John Jantsch (01:48.579)

So you mentioned something I was curious about. said whether they know it or not. I mean, how often did you find that brands were like, what are you talking about? I mean, we just, it's like, that's why my mom said you should treat people. Is that not good?

Consumer Behavior Lab (02:00.014)

I think what we find is that great marketing strategists, great marketing creatives have an insight into human psychology in a way that many of us do not have. But we also found folks that are selling hot dogs on the street, those that are running florist shops on the corner market have those same insights because they're this close to the consumer.

They're next to the consumer, they're selling every day. And so at both extremes in the vaulted agencies and brands of the world, and at the ground level, when you're actually selling to people every day, you learn things about human psychology that get put into practice. so it was, so our, our, our belief is that most of the campaigns, most of the brands we looked at, they understood that they had access to something special.

We don't think they knew many of the academic studies behind it that proved why it was likely to work.

John Jantsch (03:01.687)

Yeah. So in some ways you were validating something they had already discovered, but didn't realize it was a secret. So were there any myths or best practices in quotes that you found that you could challenge head on or that you were even trying to challenge head on?

Consumer Behavior Lab (03:05.902)

It's a nice way to say it.

Consumer Behavior Lab (03:20.375)

I don't think we sought, we set out to challenge this, but one of the most common things we see marketers do is they have something they want to sell and then they start stacking the RTBs, the reasons to believe this thing goes faster and is quieter and by the way, it'll clean your teeth while you do all those other things. And you know, we did not set out to debunk that, but we opened the book with a story about five guys.

which is, if you're an American listener, one of America's fastest growing, better burger chains. And that founder, Jerry Morrell, started with an insight that he was just walking along a Maryland boardwalk where he sees one company stall with a massive line when everybody else's stalls were empty. And Thrasher's fries on the Maryland boardwalk

John Jantsch (03:48.697)

Mm-hmm.

Consumer Behavior Lab (04:16.63)

had this massive line. And he got to thinking, is this stall that only sells one thing fries, doing something better than everybody else that sold burgers and milkshakes and sodas? And so anyway, that's one of the founding beliefs of Five Guys. And even to today, $1.6 billion franchise, they don't sell chicken, they don't sell salads, they don't sell ice cream, they only sell burgers and fries. And there's some interesting academic

studies that back that up.

John Jantsch (04:47.213)

Yeah, yeah.

I can think just in my own experience of some kind of local places that only do like fried chicken or something. And they're just, they're kind of legendary because they, I think there's something about the experience of that too. It's like, we know why we're going there. So let's get into the lab work. mean, you, you and Richard are both, I mean, you have consumer behavior labs. So there is a little bit of laboratory work involved in that, right. In the research. How do you take insights?

Consumer Behavior Lab (05:15.55)

That's right.

John Jantsch (05:19.006)

I don't know, academic behavioral science and turn them into like real campaigns or product design.

Consumer Behavior Lab (05:26.528)

I think what we're always looking for is that there's an incredible wealth of knowledge happening in the universities that stops short of, so what do we do about it? And so it's this goldmine of insights and goldmine of observations that gets validated. But then the question is, so what do you do? And so what we've been looking for is saying, well, we have high performing campaigns in the UK. They have something called.

John Jantsch (05:38.497)

Yeah, yeah.

Consumer Behavior Lab (05:55.786)

the IPA effectiveness database, is campaigns that are proven to drive sales. And there's a lot of data supporting that. So you look at famously effective campaigns, and then you look at, what's the academics that could help understand that. And there's not always a match, but when you can find a match, you can mine the academics and you can match it to the effective work. Now we have a starting spot.

But if that match is just kind of a fun uncover, we don't think that matters. Then we have to make sure you can apply it to a business or a brand that you might be working on. And then we feel we have some material that's worthy of conversation.

John Jantsch (06:39.641)

Do you want to give me a couple of concrete, specific, detailed examples about, I don't mean a whole campaign necessarily, but here's one human behavior that we discovered you could impact this by doing it. Give us an example.

Consumer Behavior Lab (06:53.515)

So often as marketers, we get this idea that we can just paint in the picture of the mind of somebody, how amazing our brand or our product is, that they're just going to buy it. And what the data tells us is that may be true, but how you paint it really matters. And a brand that we dissected in the book was Apple, but not all of Apple, specifically when Steve Jobs

reveals the iPod and he stands up in stage and he holds the iPod up and what he says is it'll be a thousand songs in your pocket. And up until that point, everybody else was saying five gigabytes of storage, 128 kilobytes of this. And so what we got thinking was, well, what's the science behind why a thousand songs in your pocket really connects with people?

And the study that we went to was in 1972, Ian Begg, Western Ontario University, recruits 25 students and he reads them 22 word phrases. Some phrases are impossible amount, rusty engine, flaming forest, and others are apparent fact, common fate. And when he asked the group to remember as many terms as they could, they can recall

just about 23%, just about one out of five. But here's the observation that matters. They can only remember 9 % of the abstract words, like impossible amount, but 36 % of the concrete terms, like white horse. That's a four-fold increase if they can picture it in their minds. And so what it teaches us is that great taglines, great phrases,

Conjure an image in your mind red bull. It gives you wings Eminem it melts in your mouth Not in your hand skittles taste the rainbow Maxwell's house good to the last drop you can picture what I'm saying as you say it and that really can make the same idea much more sticky and much more concrete in the mind of the buyer

John Jantsch (09:09.594)

Great example. I was curious when I read the subtitle, did you choose 17 different, was there some sort of like psychological trick being played or hack being played by the number 17?

Consumer Behavior Lab (09:21.606)

the answer is yes. The answer is yes. And, you know, there's, there's a few things at play here, but the illusion of effort is something that Richard and I are really, are really interested in. And the basic psychological principle here is that by getting to a very specific number, it shows a lot more intentionality and a lot more purpose. We think if we had said 20 of the world's best brands, know, we just roll right over it.

There's some interesting science behind it, but that's why. Yes, we're trying to show specificity. We're trying to show the effort that went into that. And we know that that has caught more people's attention because of it.

John Jantsch (10:03.354)

Yeah, 3000 % increase as opposed to 3217. Way more believable, right?

Consumer Behavior Lab (10:09.916)

In our book, we dissect a brand Dyson. And I don't know if everybody knows this is a famous vacuum cleaner. James Dyson is the inventor. And when he invents it, his first ad that he puts into the market was 5,127 prototypes to get to the world's first bagless vacuum. He loves it so much in his autobiography. It's the first line of his autobiography. Look at the effort to get that bagless vacuum. It's just more believable.

John Jantsch (10:35.508)

the

Consumer Behavior Lab (10:39.721)

than if he had said 5200 prototypes.

John Jantsch (10:44.056)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. you, since you did profile and you, actually chose 17 brands, were there any like that really surprised you? mean, somebody doing something behaviorally significant or savvy that, that you didn't expect.

Consumer Behavior Lab (11:00.714)

You know, I think there was one that had a big impact that I wouldn't have originally thought. And it's this concept that comes from Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner economics. 1993 Kahneman and his colleague, Donald Radelmeier come up with a study on colonoscopy patients. And here's how the study goes. The colonoscopy patients are going through an actual procedure and every 60 seconds,

they register their pain level. At the end of the experience, they get two chances to give a retrospective rating. One right after the experience is over, and then another one a month later. And what you find is that those retrospective ratings do not correspond with the total pain level at all. In fact, the retrospective ratings, whether it was the hour after or a month later, coincide with two

critical moments, the peak intensity that happened during the experience and the final moment of the procedure. so Kahneman calls this the peak and rule. So that's kind of interesting. Like this is where academic stops. But what does that mean for brands and marketers? There's a LA hotel called the Magic Castle Hotel. It was featured in Chip and Dan Heath's book, The Power of Moments. And the Magic Castle Hotel

has top 5 % of all TripAdvisor hotels in LA. 94 % of their reviews are very good or excellent, better than the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. But what's surprising about this hotel is it's a 1950s motel. Gated decor, mediocre rooms, small swimming pool in the courtyard. But what have they done so well? And what does almost every review talk about? They have a popsicle hotline in the pool. And you pick up the phone.

John Jantsch (12:44.74)

Mm.

Consumer Behavior Lab (12:59.165)

day or night, and they will bring out on a silver platter as many popsicles as you'd like to eat. It's a peak moment in a average hotel, and that makes everybody love going there, and everybody loves to dial the phone. So thinking about how you can use what would otherwise be a very hard to advertise LA motel and make it into an all-star in the city, you don't have to redo everything.

John Jantsch (13:05.242)

Yeah,

Consumer Behavior Lab (13:26.736)

In fact, if you could just come up something that everybody loves, a lot more people will be endeared to you.

John Jantsch (13:32.858)

Well, and I suspect also one of the key ingredients is it's kind of unexpected. Like, who does that? Right.

Consumer Behavior Lab (13:37.98)

I think you're right. Yeah, I mean, I think that the point of the peak is that it stands apart from everything else. If they had just the softest pillows, somehow you think it might not make as much of a difference, but something fun and social in a courtyard surrounded by all these relatively uninspired rooms, it stands out.

John Jantsch (14:02.298)

Yeah. And I think the beauty of that message, I mean, obviously it's a hotel, they've got a different application, but almost any business could do something like that, couldn't they? mean, something that just really has somebody go, you got to see what these guys did.

Consumer Behavior Lab (14:16.416)

I think it can be a customer experience like that. It could also be, we had a guest on our podcast a few weeks ago and they were talking about, go every month they go to this shore town and when they get there, they always go to their favorite restaurant. And the favorite restaurant has flowers on some of the tables.

But whenever they come in, he brings over the flowers and places it on the table they sat at. And they say, now the table's ready for you. It's a small act. It's intentional. He's just using this little vase with three flowers sticking out of it. But it makes the person feel special. That's a peak moment that requires no extra money, requires no grand strategy, but it does require intentionality and consistency. And that's another example of how anybody can use it.

John Jantsch (14:50.68)

Yes.

John Jantsch (15:10.522)

All right, let's go to the dark side, shall we? Understanding these things, what risk do we run in exploiting, manipulating, using them to not necessarily do what's in the best interest perhaps of the customer?

Consumer Behavior Lab (15:13.286)

Yes.

Consumer Behavior Lab (15:30.951)

So we would say, first of all, that these insights into human behavior and human psychology are facts. And understanding them is first about understanding why we are naturally prone. We have a quote from Kahneman in the beginning of the book, thinking is to humans like swimming is to cats. They can do it, they just prefer not to.

Humans naturally want shortcuts. naturally want to think as little as possible to get to the decisions we need. first, understanding these is about understanding humanity and human psychology. Second, we write books for everybody to read so everybody can be aware of them. So we're educating marketers about how they can use them for positive ends. And we want consumers to understand that these are

our natural leanings and inclinations that we got to be aware of. But yeah, for sure there's ethics in behavioral science, like there's ethics in marketing, like there's ethics in AI. And we have to be aware that we've got to use these for ethical and moral purposes.

John Jantsch (16:43.07)

Years ago, had Dr. Childani on the show wrote influence, know, probably the earliest. Yeah, yeah. And, and he told me during that interview that he actually wrote the book, so people wouldn't be exploited. And of course, you know, then, unfortunately, you know, people turned around and used a lot of what was in it, you know, in a way that wasn't intended necessarily. So if a marketer is listening to this, and they want to hack their own campaign,

Consumer Behavior Lab (16:47.59)

a seminal book in our field. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:12.154)

or customer journeys or whatever it is they're working on. Are there certain habits or mindsets that they're going to need to adopt? mean, where do they start?

Consumer Behavior Lab (17:20.678)

Yeah. So we would say that this is a field, behavioral science is a field that's really blown out in Europe and in the United Kingdom. Here in America, it's a much more nascent budding place. So if you're interested in the approach of behavioral science and how it could prove marketing, lots of material online, lots available, of course, including our book.

But in order to get started, think you have to have an interest in the academics and the science that powers why we do what we do. If you're a marketer that believes everything's done on hunches or on gut instinct, it's going to be hard to embrace this type of marketing because this is based on a belief that you can decode human behavior through science and through observation.

It's not that you can guarantee what's going to happen, but you can make your campaigns more likely to be successful if you use this science-backed thinking. So we're increasing the probability that you're going to have good outcomes in your marketing.

John Jantsch (18:33.754)

The flip side of that mindset though is measurement, mean, understanding, okay, this is our hunch, if this is our hypothesis based on research, how do we prove that we were right? And is that become a stumbling block for a lot of folks?

Consumer Behavior Lab (18:38.757)

you

Consumer Behavior Lab (18:52.269)

We would say that there's a massive industry around consumer insights that has its place for some marketers, but for every marketer doing tests and seeing the outcomes, everybody can do. So if you are an e-commerce based or a web based, A-B tests are very easy to do. If you're not, we would advocate for observational research.

John Jantsch (18:59.876)

Mm-hmm.

Consumer Behavior Lab (19:19.043)

do something and see what happens. And you could do that on a small scale and you can watch the outcomes and then you can continue to innovate or go down this path. So what we would say is, if you're a small business owner, if you're a solopreneur, use these tactics and then find ways to test them small and learn from those tests.

John Jantsch (19:42.01)

Mike Irwin, I appreciate you stopping by to talk about Hacking the Human Mind. Is there some place you'd invite people to connect with you?

Consumer Behavior Lab (19:48.866)

We have our website, the consumerbehaviorlab.com, where you can learn about the book, about the masterclass. And then we also have a podcast that's been much shorter than John's called Behavioral Science for Brands that we invite everybody to take a listen to.

John Jantsch (20:06.383)

Well, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Consumer Behavior Lab (20:11.791)

Thank you, John.

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