← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
480. Marketing to Mindstates
00:39:27
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer welcomes Will Leach, founder and CEO of Mindstate Group, to discuss the powerful marketing concepts. Drawing from his extensive experience in behavioral science and marketing, Will shares...
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- [00:01]
Melina Palmer
Have you ever wished you had more influence at work? That people would naturally be more likely to buy in on whatever idea you're selling them, whether they report to you or not? Well, you're in luck. I teach a virtual 10 week class on internal communication and Change Management through Texas A and M University and it's enrolling now. Get details and enroll@hbl Tamu edu and click on Certificate program. You get to learn directly from me, including live virtual office hours over zoom with a cohort of interested brainy folks like you from around the world. Again, learn more and enroll in the internal communication and change management course at HBL Tamu Edu. That's HBL like Human Behavior Lab, TAMU like Texas A and M University Edu and click on Certificate program. Your future self will thank you and when you're ready, enjoy the show. Welcome to episode 480 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about Marketing to Mind states with Will Leach. Ready, let's get started.
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You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.
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Will Leach
Hello.
- [01:41]
Melina Palmer
Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Have you ever wondered if there's a right way to market your product or service? Like, is there an industry that should always be talked about in a certain way? As an example, I've had people ask something like should a personal trainer talk about the positives that come from working out and focus on the good side? Or should they only talk about the negatives that happen if you miss out or skip to motivate people from the bad side? The answer is it depends. Both can be great and both work. They don't all resonate with everyone, but brands that pick an approach and stick to it are almost always going to do better than those who mix messages and live in the gray area. How can you decide what to focus on for your business and how do you set it up successfully? That's exactly what Will Leach and I discuss in today's refreshed episode, which originally aired back in February 2020. About his book Marketing to Mind States. Will is the founder and CEO of Mindstate Group, a behavioral research and brand consultancy and best selling author of Marketing to Mind States, a practical guide to Applying Behavioral Design to Research and Marketing. Will is also a behavioral Design instructor at SMU's Cox School of Business, BLC and Texas a and M University, where we teach together through the Certificate in Applied Behavioral Economics. He has over 25 years of experience, including with Pepsi and Frito Lay, before starting his consultancy. Don't forget, links to my top related past episodes and books are waiting for you in the show notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 480 all right, let's talk about Marketing to Mind States. Will Leach, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
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Will Leach
Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
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Absolutely. So Will, I absolutely adored your book Marketing to Mind States, which there are going to be links in the show notes, all of that. I would love if you could tell the audience a little bit about you and the work you do and how you found behavioral science.
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Yeah, it's the classic. I didn't even know it existed until I stumbled on it. So I originally came from the US Military right out of high school I joined the military and out of there I went into college and I studied economics, classical economics. And so I was the quant JOC who learned that we all make our decisions based upon trying to find utility and cost benefit analyses, things like that. And I just found out about marketing research through a graduate program. And I fell in love with this idea of not just looking at economic behavior, but looking at why people do what they do. But I came at it through a purely economic point of view. That's the only thing I knew, which was tell people what they want to hear or tell people the price of something and then you'll convert. I did that for a number of years, and then I found out about behavioral economics and behavioral sciences through my work at PepsiCo. So in 2009, they started investing really heavily. I was doing marketing research at PepsiCo, and they invested about $20 million in a laboratory to understand the neurological impacts that messaging was having, which is really cool. So I had five neuroscientists on staff and I was testing all advertising, concept tests, taste tests, in fact, we're doing neurologically. But then I had this theater, it was about the size of a Best Buy that I got to run behavioral science experiments. And I loved it so much that I decided to do it myself, started a company and wrote a book all about it. And we're here today.
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Awesome. I love that. And I am so jealous of your team of neuroscientists that you were able to have at PepsiCo. And so you also did some work with Frito Lay. I believe you've talked about some other.
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I did big groups.
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And I love the story of Wicked Crisp. If you would be willing to share a little bit about that. It's one in the. In the book itself. And I don't know if you're worried about giving things away that are in the book, but I think it was such a smart use of the knowledge you had. Like you said, when you went out on your own.
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Yeah. So it was. It was a great. To this day, my favorite project I've ever worked on. So about three years into my consultancy, I got a phone call from a guy out in North Carolina. And he was an inventor, or he is an inventor. And he had been working as. It's called a co Packer. But the idea is that in a lot of our manufacturing, most people don't do their own manufacturing. They create the ingredients and the recipe to have other people make it on their behalf. So this company called me, and the guy by the name of Phil was on the other line, and he basically invented a brand new snack that to this day is the most, I think, the most innovative snack I've ever seen. And I remember I was at Frito Lay, we worked on healthy snacks. And we just couldn't get the product formulation down to where you could have a really nutritious snack, but then have the taste credentials you're really looking for. It's very difficult to pull that off. This guy in North Carolina did it. Brilliant, brilliant guy by the name of Phil Kosak. So his problem is he was a group of maybe 18 people, and he had been manufacturing chips for other companies like Frito Lay, or not like Frito Lay, but for other companies. Weight Watchers is one of them. And this time he's like, I want to do it for myself. I invented this. I want to do this for myself, but I don't have any marketing budget. Like, he doesn't have the money to compete against a Frito Lay. And he literally, from what he told me was he typed in behavioral science and Frito Lay, thinking that those two things may come together. And my name popped up, so I flew out to go see him. And he's just an incredible spirit. Not even just like his business, but also the people he hires and things he does for the cook community. He's. He's always winning awards for small businesses by hiring people who have disadvantages. Just an amazing person in general. So we went out there just to really kind of see what he had with me thinking, chances are we're not going to do work together, because fact of the matter is, it's like, how do you compete against behemoths in corporate America with billions of dollars of distribution leverage? And this guy sold me in about six hours. I was like, I got to make me and me and Steve, my creative director, said, we got to make this guy a billionaire. We have to do this because he's going to use the money for good purposes. So. So we actually designed the brand using purely behavioral sciences. And just to my knowledge, I call it still, I don't know of another brand that's been built from behavioral sciences from the ground up. I talk about it in the book, but basically what we did was we tried to identify from a target market with no marketing research, because he couldn't afford marketing research. But he did know that he wanted to kind of market to somebody who was like his daughter, who'd be a millennial mom. And so that was our target market, was his daughter. And we did some really basic research here with my company and identified a psychological mind state that we'll talk about later. But through this work, we were able to not only just kind of think about, okay, what is the psychology driving millennial moms as it relates to buying nutritious snacks for their kids and for themselves? There's a lot of psychology in food, of course, but actually, more importantly, was we designed because all he had was the invention. So we designed the brand name, the brand logo, the brand tagline, the bag, the website, and imagine that all of these things have a behavioral SC underlying every decision we made. Like with, you know, we talked about in the book by doing things like creating kind of a halo and a devil tail, kind of creating the sense of autonomy, it's kind of hard to get into it over a podcast.
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We'll share it on the. We'll share social links. We'll be able to let people see it.
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But what's so cool is every detail came from a behavioral psychology perspective. First, it wasn't about cost. It wasn't about, let's really talk about taste. It was like, from a behavioral psychology perspective, what should the font look like? What should the colors look like? How should we frame up the benefits of whether they're promotion versus prevention related? And so what was great about that whole project is we designed it from the bottom up using behavioral sciences. And then we let that thing run. And it was certainly back when it launched, it was the most successful chip launch of that year. And it's still gaining massive distribution for those guys. And they have no money for marketing, so they're only getting distribution based upon word of mouth. And so I think when you design things from behavioral sciences up, you can get lifts that other major manufacturers get by putting a bunch of coupons on the marketplace or getting great distribution or leveraging the muscle that they have in advertising. You can get some of those same lifts just by designing it for the non conscious. And that's what we did. It's my favorite project ever.
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Awesome. I love it. And I will. As you were talking, I'm going to link back to their episodes I've done on how to create a brainy brand. And I also have an episode on color theory for everyone listening, so you can check those out. And I would say another brand that I know that's been built specifically with all behavioral science in mind would be the brainy business. Hey, very different.
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Mine's not so good. At least one of us took our own medicine. Yeah, really.
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I don't know that anything is ever fully though, where we have so many biases that are impacting everything we do all the time. Where kind of like you're saying it's really easy to. I can spot in other people's companies the things that they should be doing and where to work and how you could incorporate herding or like you said, the halo effect or whatever that bias or whatever happens to be. But when you look at yourself, you get sucked into all of your own things that you can see so easily in everybody else.
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Oh, sure, sure.
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Melina Palmer
Yeah.
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Will Leach
You did mention the. The mind states and the framework I really enjoyed throughout the book and toward the end you kind of really dig deep on how someone for themselves that doesn't have a background in marketing per se is able to then go in and really pick who they're talking to, whether they want it to be a positive or a negative association, what that might look like and how to build it out. And I believe you also then have lots of extra stuff on your website. I'm all about freebies here. Everybody knows. So great that that exists. But if you can share a little bit about the model and the framework and what's available, that would be great.
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Yeah, so I didn't want to write a book, another behavioral economics book that just kind of talked about theory. So I came from a very. Like, I wasn't. I studied economics. I didn't study behavioral psychology. I learned it on the job. And one of my biggest frustrations was that in academia and even when you pay for consultants, they talk in a language that the Vast majority of people in marketing, or maybe me in marketing research or creative director, just don't know. We don't come from the same backgrounds. And so what I wanted to do was make a very practical book. And so I tried to strip out as much behavioral language as possible, because what needs in the marketplace, we don't need more theory books. We need more practical expertise of people talking about how they use this. Which is why I think you're so successful, right? Because we're using practical things. Where I think. I think I wrote in the book. I think one of my things was for those who don't want to earn a PhD in psychology while reading this book is for you. And I made that deliberate. So the book is very, very practical because I. In the way I make it practical is I use a lot of my own personal examples. I start the book with the birth of my child to explain this concept of a mind state. And then through stories, I try to convey a specific model at understanding and then influencing people, mostly through communications. But the problem I found was this, that you may read a lot of work around Dan Ariely. Right? And so we'll talk about cognitive heuristics and cognitive biases. And you can go for decades in on that one. Social science. And then I. So I did. That's exactly what I did. I'm sitting over there at Frito Lay. I go into a lot of behavioral economics. I'm reading all about it. And then I would start questioning things like, well, what happens if you have two companies or two brands doing using the exact same cognitive. Let's say it's scarcity. They both have coupons. Well, what choose. What makes me choose one versus the other? And classic branding would say, well, it's the brand equity. I disagree. I disagree. Because what if I don't have any associations with either brand or whatever? What if I'm in a marketplace that I don't have any experience in? So I said, no, there's something else. I think there's something else besides a cognitive heuristic. The cognitive heuristic assumes I have a motivation. It assumes that I want something. Well, how do I figure out the driver? That's motivational psychology. So I started digging into motivational psychology. Then I said, well, wait. Motivational psychology. We can drive human behavior. But what directs me from Coca Cola to Pepsi? Goal theory. I was inhibited from having to study like a PhD in economics. In one social science, I got to look at all four. Well, four. I looked at six total social sciences, and I found Patterns. And it was through those patterns here that I could hopefully tell lots of people about to make it very, very practical and turns into just understanding what people want, why they want it, how they approach it, and then ultimately any of these biases that people have and it just makes sense when you talk to people about it, it just makes sense that you would want to understand all four of those things. And so that's what I wrote the book about, was just making it very practical to understand these four concepts. And then with that, how do you message.
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Yeah, I really love that it's. So I interviewed Nir Eyal recently about Indistractable and he had, I think, a very similar approach in saying, you know, essentially I write a book about a thing that I was curious about and couldn't find an answer to.
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Melina Palmer
Right.
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Will Leach
So where in this case of you wanted to just how do I do this? And when it doesn't exist, you just figure it out and do lots and lots of research, read all the books, all the studies and everything that's there to really piece something together. And I love that. That's also kind of the foundation of behavioral economics in general. Right. When economics was no longer able to explain, explain, or when people realize that it was never really properly explaining perhaps the behavior of people, you just start branching out to figure out what is actually happening and how you can use that in a predictable way. So you were talking about. And I was actually curious when I was reading. So back when I was in corporate, had looked into the archetypes, right. And so I felt that there was at least some similarity to archetypes within the way that you were building out your mind state Persona space, even though it's not exactly the same. Was that similar or intentionally removed from that or totally unrelated?
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I can't believe you picked up on this. I've never had anybody pick up on this. So remember I talked about six social sciences. One of them was Booker's Persona work around narratives. And so it's inherently in that that I believe that we all live our lives around story and cultural narratives. And so I was using Booker's work in that space and I ended up actually pulling it out. And the only reason why I pulled out is because it wasn't brands didn't know what to do with it. And it sounds silly to think, well, even they don't know what to do with it. I found that it actually clouded what I was trying to tell, the story I was trying to tell. So the way I think about a mind state is this Think of a mind state. It's. You're right. It's not a personality test. It's not. It's not a segmentation at all. In fact, a mind state is just a moment in time where you're being influenced by these psychological factors that I overlay on top of personality tests that I overlay on top of archetypes. Right? So let's say if you're a company, you work with the archetypal system. I just had this conversation yesterday, as a matter of fact, and they're like, we already. We already use these. These archetypes. Like, that's great. Keep doing what you're doing. You have attitudes, you have beliefs, you have values. These archetypes are inherently intrinsic in all of us or in your customer. What I wanted to figure out is why is it that if I'm in the archetype, I'm just making up. Let's just say, let's call this segment I'm in the healthy eater segmentation. Because I did this whole personality thing or I looked at all these attitudes, and I want to eat healthier. However, on a Friday night, I'm slopping beers and having five guys on a Friday night. Why is it that my behaviors don't kind of express what my personality would have told you? Is it because my personality is wrong? No, it's not. I have values, I have attitudes. I believe, like, I believe that eating healthy is important. But in that moment, I was under a particular mind state, which allowed me to come up with all the psychology to make me feel good about having a cheeseburger. And that's what the mind state things is all about. This idea that we're not consistent with our beliefs, we're not consistent with our attitudes, our environment changes us, how we're feeling calories, all these great things. So what I was trying to do is think, what about these moments? These moments in time? That's what my book is about, is moments in time, where I can now identify, if you're archetype one, why aren't you behaving as archetype one? It's a mind state. What I tell my clients is like, by you applying mind states on top of what you're already currently doing, you'll understand their beliefs and their values and their traits. Awesome. But you'll also understand the impact of their environment, these moments. And so you're the first person who's ever picked up on that, which is, yeah, nobody. Which is really cool because we're all. We're all using all These sciences. And my point of view was nobody seemed to be talking about these moments. And I was looking at these moments. I'm running Shopper Insights over at Frito Lay.
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So important. They're everything.
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Yeah. And nobody was talking about these things. I had to segmentation. So I'm like that. I'm looking at my behavioral data. I'm looking at basket data. I'm going, our segmentation is screwed up. And I'm like, I don't know. Actually, it's not screwed up. We just never accounted for when people are really super hungry.
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Melina Palmer
Right.
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Will Leach
And that's why they chose what they chose. It wasn't their attitudes or anything. They just impulsively did something.
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Exactly. And if you're doing a study where you're sending someone in, say it's for Pepsi or for Frito Lay. And you send them into the grocery store and say, you need to pick.
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Melina Palmer
Up these 10 things and here's your list.
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Will Leach
And you're carrying it with you. And you're walking in in this totally contrived environment. That is nothing like when someone is actually shopping versus saying we're going to put you in super cognitive overload. And have you trying to remember 85 different things. I told you the list. But you don't get to carry it with you. And just set you loose in the store. And see what happens when you've got kids tugging at your pant leg or whatever the whole time. It's a very different mind state than if you're shopping by yourself or whatever that happens to be. And I would say too, and I'm sure this is where you come from in this. That five guys example is then knowing that there are multiple different brands and their styles and the products that they're putting out there. That it's important to understand first the type of person that we're talking about. And then the way they're going to be feeling. Knowing that once they maybe succumb to, like you said, all that psychological explanation for why they ate out and had their five guys and drank a bunch of beer or whatever it is. So then what's next? And based on the type of a product that you have, if you're something that is then motivating them to get back on track. Or someone that is understanding the state that they're in after they made that choice. Is that the best time to then talk with them about getting back into their running routine or back into a healthy eating. Or send them a recipe for low calorie beer? Or if that's the product that you're selling, understanding the choice they made and how that impacts the next step and the way they're able to tie into your company.
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So what's interesting, what you just said is that companies now. So I've been around doing trigger point anyways for about five, five years, six years. Right. Companies up until last year were very much like, I just want to have people buy my product, buy my product. That's what they want. Right. And I totally get that, what we're seeing. And I think it's because of kind of sustainability issues. And there are after effects of people using products that my clients are now starting to ask me. I'm working on a great project right now that I can't talk about, but that they're looking at through buying our product, which may not be the greatest product for people. They recognize that. But how do we now help them make the better choice after just what you just said after that impact? Because we're trying to look at the entire person and it's not to say their product is horrible, but they're like, how do we make the person better? Because if we make this person's whole life better, let's think about that whole life better. And they're going to be a snowball effect. They will give me permission to provide more things. It's such a different way of thinking because even just two years ago, it's like, no, I want to drive baskets, I want to drive penetration. My brand. Now companies are thinking very differently. They're thinking the after causes. And then what does that impact? How does it impact those associations? Like you said, if I walk out of a five guys full and feeling nasty about myself, the fact of the matter is I associate with five guys either way. They may not like it and they gave me the joy when I'm in five guys, but they also take away the pain when I'm like going, I feel terrible about myself. I think brands are getting smarter, saying, we can provide the joy, but let's lessen kind of those associations that we don't want to be associated with or at least try to mitigate that a little bit. So we're hearing more and more of that. Brands are getting smarter. They're seeing whole life concepts, you know.
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Right. That holistic approach is definitely something I've been seeing in conversations I've been having with clients as well. And you know, looking at the literary. I interviewed on a previous episode of the podcast as well, which is awesome. And if you haven't heard about them there, so It's a new company that essentially turns litter into lottery tickets and they have these smart garbage cans you're able to throw away into. And it knows and if you put something sorted properly into the bin, then it will give you a lottery ticket. And it's in association with the municipalities. They're working with several locations in Paris and they're expanding into the uk. They are getting ready to do their first initial launch. And so you know, Coca Cola and now they're having some of these bigger sponsors that are coming in to participate where Coke or whatever, any other Frito Lay, Pepsi, whatever. Big companies say why do they. Why would they care? But there's so much that you're putting out into the world and to show that you the entire life cycle with your brand, including not having it be ending up in a landfill or having it be detriment to society. And even just in the best case of not being garbage strewn around when you're walking around, you don't want your brand associated in that way. But being able to then invest in something that's helping people to use behavioral science to make better choices, like getting things into the proper receptacle is something where I just love that example and that change doesn't have to be difficult if you understand how the brain actually works and help people to make that right choice.
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Very much.
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Yeah. So more about, I guess with whether it's what you're working on or something on the in the mind states model. I mean, what's something that maybe what's something that you don't get to talk about very much? I know we got to talk a little bit about archetypes and whatnot, but that you just really love about the work that you've done. I know we were talking about some smaller businesses and things like that.
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Right now what I'm most excited about is so for many years I've been a marketing researcher who I did projects, I worked with big brands to do project work, which has been fascinating. I've worked lots of different exciting initiatives over the course of my career and I'm blessed to do that now I'm getting more excited around this idea of getting behavioral sciences, more mind states out to everybody for anybody to use. And that's one of the reasons why we made marketing mind states very practical. So like we talked about how you could actually go to the website and download these behavioral activation briefs which tell you specifically how to speak to each of these different mind states. Right. We do that not because there's money to be made in that, because there's not a lot of money being made to that. But there is a desire to get more and more people. You and I were talking about this, right? Get more and more people to understand that there is science behind our decisions, there is emotions behind our decisions. And if we could just understand a few small rules or tips, we could all benefit. And I don't just mean like you could benefit from sales. Like, I certainly know that we can increase the effectiveness of our marketing through behavioral sciences. What I would also tell you is I believe that we can better society with behavioral sciences. We can lower anxiety levels and we can lower. Like this one idea that we were talking about not too long ago with another friend of mine was this idea that everything you and I work on, right? It's about behavioral change, right. I just so happen to use a practice around advertising, right? But imagine I actually know the companies that are in this stuff are on organizational behavior. How do we help gender equality issues using these things? Understanding people's biases and not trying to educate around somebody's bias, but it'll create a system where those biases can be lessened in some way. Like those things matter. So I'm getting more excited about the education side of this. Maybe because I'm older and have a child and everything else. I want to make the future better. But I love this idea of getting these sciences and not to teach the sciences, but just to make people aware of these sciences. There's another book every other week that's out there that's talking about how our environments influence us every week. And if we just read a couple of these things, we can actually identify how to make our. Our world a little bit better. Like, so I work in goal theory a lot and I try to help people. I use goal theory to understand what people are trying to accomplish. And then I usually try to figure out how my brands that I'm helping support help them accomplish that goal. Well, imagine a world if we just helped understand if there is an inner city child who doesn't feel like they can reach their goals. Why can't we use these sciences you and I talk about all the time to provide an environment where they feel like they can reach your goals, right? And when you don't reach your goals, I can tell you that people feel marginalized. When people feel marginalized, they feel disrespected and angry. And then you see societal problems. So just small things like we're using for advertising. But I'm getting more and more excited about gender equality issues. Looking at things like how do you help people reach their goals? Because just simply reaching your goal can take somebody on a path of like from just kind of feeling marginalized, like I said and frustrated to hey, if I reach this goal, why can't I go to college? And I was that like I was the first to go to college in my family because somebody in the military told me and taught me how to reach go after my goals. Now they screamed at me because I was in basic training. Right. But that's how I did it. And so I get excited about this idea of using all these different sciences we're all using for not just making better advertising, which I think is really important, but also helping people reach goals make this world a little better place than kind of we have it in right now.
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Yeah. I could definitely tell in reading your book that we were kindred spirits in this space of using. So it's this advertising for good and help it giving the tools so that companies can help people find the products and services that will be better for them with less, you know, cognitive weight I guess would be the way to just make it easy for people to find you and choose you and helping everyone from the know solopreneurs like I work with more of those then. And I know you're working your way there but. And then all the way up through corporations and how we're both sort of bridging this gap. I thought the similarities were.
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Melina Palmer
Were great.
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Will Leach
So I'm going to put you on the spot and hopefully this is something that is not going to go crazy and you know, we can always edit it out if it's no good.
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That's a good segue.
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Yeah. So I was just looking at. So you've got the mind state profiles and I feel like it would be useful to help somebody to see just the difference between. And I know you dig into a couple of them in the book so I feel like you might have some good examples of them. But you have essentially there are. So these nine is it the goals are the achievements, the motivations.
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Yep. And then you have one way into each motivation. The regulatory approach. There's two different types of approaches. So there's 18 total mind states.
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And so that's where we have. So the motivations are achievement, autonomy, belonging, competence, empowerment, engagement, esteem, nurturance and security. And then you're approaching those either from an optimistic or a cautious place essentially. So do you have some that maybe you could show how a brand or someone that's selling someone something any possible. I know you Talked about gym memberships and shoes and all sorts of things in the book, but where it would be taking something, whether it's achievement or empowerment and showing sort of their. Whether they're dark and light, but optimistic and cautious examples of how that would look different.
- [30:32]
Yeah, I can, hopefully it's something that we can all relate to. And so I'll go into the health space like you just said. So we interview lots of different people for research and a classic thing that we ask people about is we have lots of products that are trying to make us healthier. And so lose weight is the big one. There's lots of money in trying to help people lose weight and products and healthy eating, things like that. So imagine that I go out and interview a bunch of Gen X guys, right? Guys my age who. And it happens every time we interview guys and we're like, okay, so we understand it's important for you to get healthy and so you're trying to lose weight. And so we'll ask things like, well, what are you trying to do? Well, I'm trying to lower my calories, I'm trying to go to the gym more, et cetera. Great. So why is that important? And inevitably all guys say this. They always say, because I want to walk my daughter down the wedding aisle, right? So in my world, that's a higher order goal. So I have goals, I have functional goals, I have high order goals. Great. Now from there, there are reasons why dads may want to walk their daughters down the aisle. Most of those are going around this idea of nurturance. And nurturance is the desire for love or to feel care or provide care for others, right? So just nurturance that, it drives people to do all sorts of different things. That's why Hallmark exists, right? It's about nurturance and love, right? So for the most part now there are other, there are other motivations that are outside that could cause a guy to really, this dad to really want to make sure he walks his daughter down the aisle for her wedding, but tends to be nurturance, right? So I say, okay, so now we have a goal. Walk my daughter down the aisle. He is driven by nurturance cues. That's what he wants because by doing that, he's there for his daughter with her big day. Now some people will think about that idea and say, okay, so I want to walk, walk my daughter down the aisle. So I can do that in what's called an optimistic, or they'll use an optimistic lens. We call it promotion, regulatory focus. Said Tory Higgins, work out of Columbia. Right. He's been doing it for 30 years. In that world, he's seeking to maximize all the gains possible to help him lose weight. So in his world, he may think about, I need to go to the gym more often, I need to eat healthier. So in his world, the way to get to become losing weight and to be able to walk his daughter, it's about maximizing his gains. So he's going to look for products, he's going to look for messages, brands that tell him, if you go down this path, you will go to the gym more often, you will eat healthier, etc. You can have the exact same goal, the exact same motivation. Other guys will use a prevention lens, not promotion prevention. They're going to look, they're going to think about strategies about how do I eliminate the risk of me eating unhealthy. So they're going to go, I want to avoid carbs, I want to avoid fast food. So they look at the world. Their pathway for resistance is that the path of least resistance is to find get away from anything that could cause me to eat unhealthy. It sounds like a small detail, but it's actually very, very big in the way you frame up your benefits. Right. Because now sudden, if I'm a chip brand or if I'm, I'm selling great, you know, healthy waters or vitamins, I can now talk to you in one or two ways. I can talk about by you taking these vitamins, I'm gonna give you, I'm giving you more of these good things, or by you taking these bad things, I'm gonna make sure you don't like those bad things. Same vitamins, man, same vitamins. But how you message is slightly different and why that's important. It's not just, it's better marketing, but that person who's about to buy vitamins which are better for this person or maybe, you know, join the gym or whatever. That path of least resistance where it just feels natural to that person, it's going to get that person going. Yeah, I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to go sign up for the membership. I'm going to avoid the five guys. And so that's called regulatory focus. There's a both. One of those ideas, the mind state was called optimistic nurturance. I'm seeking to maximize my potential to be there for my daughter. Or the other one was cautious nurturance, which is I'm going to minimize any risk of me not being There for my daughter. That's where we come up with optimistic nurturance versus cautious nurturance. We do that for basically nine total motivations. Optimistic or cautious.
- [34:23]
Love it. And I think everybody listening can tell that there's. You have so much knowledge and experience and you all can get a little piece of that in the book Marketing to Mind States, which will be linked for you in the show notes and will, what's the best way then, you know, for getting to your website, where that other download is and all the great stuff for people to be in contact with you? What's the best way to find you?
- [34:48]
I'm on all the social media channels, of course. LinkedIn seems to be my biggest platform, so lots of people connect with me on LinkedIn. And if you want to go to marketingtomindstates.com there's a tab called Resources. And on the Resources tab is where you can download all 18 mindstate profiles. I think we have briefs there to tell you the types of books that I tell my students to read in order, the types of podcasts, like all sorts of resources. Because again, we're just trying to get this stuff out to people.
- [35:12]
Melina Palmer
Absolutely.
- [35:12]
Will Leach
To be honest with you. So the more people that can hear about these things and not that you have to understand, like, I loved what you just said actually was. It's just one little tidbit. Like if you just walked away saying, am I going to help my customer avoid bad things or find good things? If you just do that, if you just make that decision, your messaging will change dramatically. So just small little tidbits like that can actually influence your advertising and get it to a much different level. So use it for where it is. Use all these different books for what it's worth, and some of them will end up doing great things for you.
- [35:41]
Absolutely. I just did an episode about Peloton and was talking about how they're really struggling in this, where their advertising is reflecting something that's maybe a little bit different than who they're actually trying to be in this one peloton community. And also then being for very wealthy people and what are you trying to look good walking down the red carpet and get those extra. Shed those extra £5 and get, you know, six full defined abs? Or are you just a community of people trying to be healthier and uplifting and. And whatnot? So I think, as I said there, and very much what I know you say in the book and all of this is none of these paths are wrong.
- [36:20]
Melina Palmer
You need to know who you're talking to.
- [36:22]
Will Leach
And it's okay to not have everyone be your client. You won't be the right fit for every single person and there might be a competitor that chooses the other side, the optimism to your caution or whatever that would be. But that's okay. But if you can define what you're about, your people will find you.
- [36:41]
Oh yeah, just, just like Donald Miller says in his book storybrand, just being clear and standing for one thing, it's the, it's the most important thing in this cluttered world. It's just clarity, clarity, clarity. So make a stand, take a stand and own that stand and you will benefit tremendously from that. So just echoing what you just said.
- [36:59]
Love it. Will, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Love chatting with you and thank you for, for creating this book and putting it out for the world.
- [37:08]
Melina Palmer
We appreciate you.
- [37:09]
Will Leach
Thanks for having me. I appreciate what you're doing. Keep on doing your stuff. Okay?
- [37:12]
Melina Palmer
Thank you.
- [37:13]
Will Leach
You too.
- [37:15]
Melina Palmer
So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about marketing to mind states with Will today? For me, I've always really appreciated how Will's process is both robust in its options, but also walks you through the journey of choosing the right approach for your company. You get a chance to really see and feel the experience on both sides sides of what the messaging could look like and to try some of them on to determine which is the best fit. That moment of realizing that they can all fit if you want them to is really eye opening for people. You kind of get over your own confirmation bias or bike shedding and feeling like you have to do it one way or there's a single best way to do anything. Instead, there are many paths which can all be right and relevant and strong and work for your brand as long as you pick one. This is just like when I talk about deciding if you're a quality or value brand in my book the Truth about Pricing and that you can't live in the gray because that creates unnecessary cognitive load and makes it harder for people to buy from you and you don't want that. If you try too many Mindstate Journey messages, you'll feel super murky. People don't understand what you are about and then they can't see themselves in the messaging, which means they won't feel compelled to buy. Not everyone will resonate with every message, but you don't need everyone. You need enough of the right people to love you and your brand to get it to be advocates. And that only comes when you pick a path and stick to it. Of course, if you aren't sure what you want to go with, you can try a couple on for size. Those can be tested in some ad campaigns or focus groups or emails or whatever you choose to see how they align with your ideal customer. Then you can comfortably move forward with your new messaging approach. And when you see your competition using different messaging strategies, you can realize that's actually a good thing because it gives you a comparison point to help the people who are best for you to find and choose you which mind state are you focusing on for your brand? What are you excited to try after listening to this episode? We would love to hear about it. You'll find me as the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere. And as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn, Will's information is in the show notes for you, along with links to my top related past episodes and books, including Marketing to Mind States and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 480 and just like that, episode 480 on marketing to Mind States with Will Leech is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Steve Phillips, CEO of Zappi and co author of the Consumer Insights Revolution. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.
- [40:17]
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.