The Cognitive Marketer

It seems that many businesses would rather bore everyone than risk offending anyone. Even though we know we need to differentiate ourselves from others in our category, we end up crafting communications so benign they could work for anyone. Years of focus groups, legal oversight, and risk-aversion has made us sand off any sharp edge that might give someone a reason to walk away. We've become s...

Persistent problems often require us to question our basic assumptions about how markets, customers, or organizations actually behave. This is one reason why breakthrough innovations often come from market outsiders rather than incumbent players. Outsiders don't know what 'no' means. They haven't been preconditioned to avoid "obviously wrong" approaches that sometimes tur...

Marketing optimizes for long-term value creation. Promotion optimizes for immediate response. Marketing asks "How do we help them succeed?" Promotion asks "How do we get them to buy?"

Most purchases aren't about finding the perfect solution—they're about avoiding the worst problems. Buyers pick the option that annoys them least, not the one that delights them most. Understanding customer dislikes isn't just useful research—it's often the fastest path to growth. Sometimes the best way forward is removing what holds people back.

If our audience can tell our message has been created using AI tools, we've already lost their trust. Most businesses don’t need an “AI strategy”. They need a business strategy that (might) use AI. Without that, it’s all smoke and mirrors without any tangible impact. Real wins come when our solution plugs into the messy irrationality of human workflows: intake, service, follow-up.

We've been trained to think in terms of campaign cycles: we launch, we measure, we optimize, rinse and repeat. But markets don't pause between our initiatives. They're not on a break, waiting for us to get ready for the next round to begin. While we're still stuck analyzing last quarter's performance, prospects are making purchase decisions without us. The brands winning in competitive categories...

What we call a "rational pricing strategy" is actually applied behavioral science. We’re not setting a price, as much as architecting an experience that begins the moment someone sees our price sticker, or rate card.

Creative styles in marketing are not just a matter of personal preference.  They are strategic tools that add (or take away) from communications effectiveness. In the attention-based economy that we have today, the scarcest resource isn't budget, but cognitive processing power. How we deploy that resource through creative choices becomes the primary determinant of campaign effectiveness.

Our communication doesn't occur when the message is sent. It occurs when the recipient constructs meaning from it. Not only that, but our audience's interpretation of our message is inherently subjective, significantly contextual, and heavily dependent on their emotion state at that particular time. It's a good job no-one ever told us this was going to be easy, right?

Most marketing failures begin not with poor execution, but with muddled thinking disguised as sophistication. The real challenge isn't simplification. True simplicity requires starting with coherent ideas, not reducing existing complexity. When each department adds its terminology and every stakeholder demands their language, we create intellectual exhibitionism masquerading as expertise. Successf...

Most business leaders believe their customers just need more information. Wrong product feature? Add more bullet points. Low conversion rates? Create longer presentations. Objections? Deploy bigger fact sheets. The problem isn't that people don't know enough about what we're' selling. They don't care about what we care about. And they don't care because they don't belie...

Spoiler alert: no one’s reading your fine print. They’re not basing their decision on your mission statement or your polished pitch. They’re watching. With the sound off. Trust is primal. It's earned through action, not declaration.

Customers don't buy what we're selling. Price is unrelated to the value we're bringing. Price is not just a number. Price is a feeling. Just about everything we buy, that we value, comes with a story included. And yet, most marketers don't invest enough, don't take enough care, and don't persist enough in making sure the story is worth what was paid for it.

The best salespeople are not trying to persuade someone to come to their point of view. They’re giving customers relevant and pertinent information affecting the purchasing decision, based upon what they understand to be the most important considerations for the buyer.

It's often not the "best" product that wins, as opposed to the one that seems the least risky . A surprising truth behind enterprise buying behavior: decision-makers aren't always chasing innovation, performance, or even value. They're looking for safety. B2B buyers lean toward what's familiar, trusted, and defensible, even if it isn't technically superior.

Still selling like it’s 2012? That might be your biggest problem. The way many businesses approach sales is outdated, outmoded, and flat-out ineffective. Today’s buyers are a different breed. They're educated, empowered, and already halfway down the funnel before they ever speak to sales. They've done their research, compared you to competitors, read the reviews, and maybe even made up the...

Most marketing today plays it safe. It’s inoffensive, generic, and built not to ruffle feathers> That means that, while it’s unlikely to get anyone fired, it's also unlikely to move the needle.