New Thinking

Changing Brand Preference at the Speed of Instinct with the Brand Connectome

By: Leslie Zane
When a consumer chooses the same brand over and over again marketers call that loyalty. As the dogma goes, brand loyalty is difficult to overcome一the holy grail of brand success. Brand loyalty is such powerful magic that an entire industry and a metric to supposedly measure it gained popularity in the early 2000s: Net Promoter Score. The problem with the...
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All Brands Have Unrealized Growth Potential

By: Leslie Zane
CMOs are experimenting with many approaches to kickstart brand growth,” observes Leslie Zane, CEO of Triggers®, “but it’s been difficult to find a winning formula. That’s why we see so many cuts in marketing spend. Marketing has lost confidence in marketing. We think that there’s a better way to rekindle growth.
All Brands Have Unrealized Growth Potential
Cracking the Code on Brand Growth

By: Professor Michael Platt & Leslie Zane
When Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin launched his now famous YouTube video in 2012, no one imagined that it would cause earth-shaking tremors under razor behemoth Gillette. But it did. The tongue-in-cheek style video explaining the Club’s many virtues had a seismic effect. The day it was released, the brand’s website crashed from huge traffic. Within 48 hours, 12,000...
VIEW FULL STORY ON KNOWLEDGE @ WHARTON
In Drive To Restart The Economy, Consumers’ Subconscious Might Be Key

By: Leslie Zane
Recovering from a recession, and perhaps even a depression, always involves something of a Catch-22. Jump-starting an economy requires consumer confidence. But consumers only feel confident to start spending when broad economic markers are improving—or at least that’s how it appears on the surface.
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To Flatten The COVID-19 Curve, Target The Subconscious

By: Leslie Zane
Even now, as fears about COVID-19 have grown across the world, there are still people ignoring warnings. They’re gathering in crowds on beaches or bars (those that are still open). They’re not washing their hands nearly enough. Despite the pleas of government and health officials, some people seem to be doubling down on social gathering rather than social distancing. And...
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The Mr. Peanut Super Bowl Commercial Lit Up Twitter, But It Could Still Backfire

By: Leslie Zane
No brand ends the life of a mascot after more than 100 years lightly. But will this “funeral” give people a new perspective on Planters? Mr. Peanut is dead. Planters killed off the mascot in a playful pre-Super Bowl ad that portrays him as a life-saving hero. The company “leaked” the ad early, generating a ton of buzz in the...
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To Win Support For Your Idea, Think Like A Marketer

By: Leslie Zane
Workplaces are much like marketplaces. They’re filled with people pitching — effectively, trying to “sell” — ideas and competing to get the go-ahead from their bosses, the “buyers.” Even CEOs have to sell ideas to their boards.
READ MORE ON THE HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
The Hidden Link Between Success And The Subconscious (Video)

By: Leslie Zane
What do Apple, Oprah and winning political candidates have in common? More than you might think. Through 25 years spent working with some of the world’s most iconic brands, Leslie Zane has discovered that all extraordinary successes have one thing in common and it lies deep in people’s subconscious.
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Let’s Throw The Idea Of Brand Life Cycle Out The Window

By: Leslie Zane
It’s a fundamental idea that has long been drilled into the minds of marketers: that brands have a predetermined lifespan. But it’s scientifically inaccurate, and leads marketers to miss tremendous opportunities.
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The Most Powerful Touch Point Of All: The Subconscious

By: Leslie Zane
Marketers are on such a treadmill—publishing reams of content, monitoring clicks and impressions, and segmenting target groups—that their attention is often distracted away from the most powerful mechanism for accelerating growth: making their brands the instinctive choice for consumers.
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Opinion: Super Bowl Ads Should Lead To Sales. Here’s How They Can

By: Deborah Malone
For all the incredible sums of money they pour into Super Bowl ads, corporations should expect better results. A study found that most of those ads (80 percent) don’t increase sales. In fact, because the ads often put little focus on the brand itself, viewers are actually less likely than usual to remember the product that was advertised. These mega-commercials...
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Trendsetters: TRIGGERS^® Leslie Zane Asserts That Every Brand Has Untapped Growth Potential

By: Deborah Malone, Founder Of The Internationalist.
Declining mall traffic, competition from direct-to-consumer brands, and concerns about transparency in managing customer data were just a few factors in 2018 that caused more marketers to think seriously about developing new brand growth strategies. Leslie Zane, Founder of Triggers®, a growth catalyst company that helps Fortune 500 brands become the dominant and instinctive brand choice believes, “Every brand, whether...
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Investing in Retail?
Here’s What to Watch For

By: Leslie Zane
“A cloud of confusion has hung over retail in recent days, after disappointing holiday earnings from Macy’s and Kohl’s sent stocks “reeling,” and gave “investors 2019 jitters.” Outperform rating. But because those numbers weren’t as impressive as a year earlier, its stock took a dip. Kohl’s also posted same-store sales growth, but by just 1.2%, creating a stark contrast from...
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Don’t Let Marketing Personalization Kill Your Brand

By: Leslie Zane
Brand managers are under intense pressure to personalize their marketing efforts. McKinsey calls data activation and personalization the heartbeat of modern marketing. Netflix is becoming a global giant by using machine learning to power personalization for customers. But there’s a big danger to personalization as well. When done right, it can give managers unprecedented access to buyers at the right...
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How And Why Does
Consumer Behavior Change?

By: Leslie Zane
How can you change consumer behavior? This is one of the biggest questions corporations face. But it’s also much more than that. It speaks to political campaigns, social movements, and anything else that requires winning over proverbial “hearts and minds.” How can you change consumer behavior? This is one of the biggest questions corporations face. But it’s also much more...
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Five Ways to Score Big in the Super Bowl Ad Game

By: Leslie Zane
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype about Super Bowl commercials, but at $5 million per 30-second spot, we think advertisers shouldn’t settle for people talking about their brand the next day, they should achieve top-line growth. So here are the TRIGGERS® five principles from our Advertisers’ “Playbook” to ensure that our clients get the most bang for...
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5 Ways To Fail At Emotional Marketing

By: Leslie Zane
If you want to succeed at emotional marketing, the last thing you should do is communicate emotion. While this might seem counterintuitive, over 23 years of case studies at the TRIGGERS® proves that emotion is the output to be achieved not the input. Here are the top 5 ways companies fail at emotional marketing today: 1. Overpromise, under-deliver When a...
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If You Want to Build Superiority, Don’t SAY YOU’RE SUPERIOR

By: Leslie Zane
Managers spend lots of time and money trying to substantiate claims that their brand is better than the competition: “Consumers prefer Coffee A over Coffee B, two to one! ” “Eighty-percent of microbiologists polled agree that Scrubbing Agent X kills germs more effectively than Scrubbing Agent Y!” Superlatives are trotted out like racehorses, but they don’t guarantee a winning message....
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