In a recent episode of the Clarity Digital Podcast, Tim Ash, a pioneer in neuromarketing and author of Unleash Your Primal Brain, shared his invaluable expertise on how understanding human psychology can transform modern marketing strategies.
With over two decades of experience, including helping brands like Google and Nestlé generate over $1.2 billion in documented value, Tim broke down the principles of neuromarketing, a field grounded in evolutionary psychology. He explained how marketers can use these insights to create campaigns that resonate deeply, all while staying ethical.
Key Takeaways from the Episode
- Neuromarketing Fundamentals
Neuromarketing applies evolutionary psychology to understand what drives decision-making. Tim emphasized that successful marketing starts with understanding human behavior and the universal psychological triggers that influence our choices. - The Importance of Ethical Persuasion
While neuromarketing offers powerful tools, Tim stressed the importance of using them responsibly. He shared examples of how unethical tactics, such as addiction-driven designs, can harm both consumers and brands in the long run. - Why Timeless Principles Matter
Tim cautioned against getting lost in the latest tools and trends. Instead, he urged marketers to focus on durable principles, such as the psychology of fear and reward, which have stood the test of time. - Using AI as a Tool, Not a Crutch
While AI has revolutionized marketing, Tim explained that its value lies in supporting creativity rather than replacing it. He recommended using AI for brainstorming and editing while letting humans handle the core storytelling and strategy. - Cross-Cultural Marketing Challenges
Tim also discussed the importance of understanding cultural nuances in international campaigns, noting that while psychological principles are universal, their application can vary significantly across regions.
Actionable Advice for Marketers
- Focus on creating campaigns that address both the pain points (fear) and the rewards (positivity) of your audience.
- Use AI strategically to enhance efficiency, but ensure your content maintains a human touch.
- Ground your marketing in customer psychology rather than just relying on metrics or technology.
About Tim Ash
Tim is a globally recognized thought leader in digital marketing, neuromarketing, and conversion rate optimization. As the author of Unleash Your Primal Brain and a sought-after speaker, he continues to inspire marketers to embrace the psychology behind consumer behavior to drive results.
For more insights, visit Tim’s website at https://timash.com and check out his book Unleash Your Primal Brain at https://primalbrain.com.
Final Thoughts
This episode of the Clarity Digital Podcast serves as a masterclass for marketers looking to balance cutting-edge technology with timeless psychological principles. By focusing on what truly drives human decision-making, marketers can create campaigns that connect, engage, and convert like never before.
Transcription
Hi, Tim. How’s it going? Fantastic, Al. Great to be with you. Appreciate you coming to my podcast. And I’ve been your fan for a long time for talking about the topics that most marketers in our space, at least in digital marketing, don’t talk about as much. I’m really happy to have you here.
So if you’d like to introduce yourself or audience and that would be great. Yeah, absolutely. My undergraduate background was computer engineering and cognitive science that goes back a ways. I stayed in grad school for seven years, almost got my PhD in neural networks or what would now be called artificial intelligence.
And then through a variety of high tech jobs, I finally decided to quit actually and start my own digital marketing agency and ran that for over 20 years. And the focus changed, of course, as the internet evolved. We did some search engine optimization, some pay per click marketing. Then we became a super affiliate and started driving.
Good high quality traffic to various websites. And then we realized that the problem wasn’t the traffic we were sending. It was the quality of the website. So we said, Hey, let us fix your website. That way we’ll all make a lot more money, including all of your other marketing channels. And that’s how the company turned into focusing on conversion rate options.
And I was one of the first people into the field. I wrote a couple of bestselling books about landing page optimization. I started up an international conference series called conversion conference that ran for about 15 years here and in Europe. And my agency site tuners was pretty successful. We were one of the O.G. me. Conversion optimization agencies. And about five years ago, I stepped out of that role of actively running the agency and sold it to business partners. They’re doing a great job running with it. These days I’m focused mostly on public speaking at conferences keynoting all over the world, as well as.
An advisor you working with senior executives at companies on an unlimited on call basis to help them with anything Related to making their marketing more effective. That’s awesome. Yeah, I totally remember you from those days where I was getting into seo and just like you mentioned I we did everything we could to drive highly relevant traffic, but we were not seeing the good results We wanted to see and you were one of the People that I followed on various publications online that used to contribute content to about CRO conversion.
And I’ve attended some of your public sessions, public talk speeches as well when you were talking about that stuff. And last time when you and I met in San Diego at a conference that we were both attending, you mentioned this concept of neo marketing that kind of was very interesting to me.
I had a kind of overall idea about what it was, but as a digital marketer, I don’t think we have a good understanding of it. So do you mind explaining to us what neo marketing is and how, It pertains to us marketers and what we should do about it to learn about it and all that good stuff.
Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do that. So I guess the place to start is we were pretty successful at my former agency site tuners. We created over 1. 2 billion in documented value for the Googles and Nestle’s and Expedia’s of the world on down to nimble startups. And what I’d say probably two thirds or even three quarters of that value was derived from neuromarketing.
And I’m going to contrast this with what most marketers. Focus on, and that is the technology. Most digital marketers are just like it’s measurable. It’s great. I have this great tool and it’s going to change everything. And whether it’s AI or clubhouse or virtual reality, or I don’t know what it’s going to be tomorrow.
Probably like hologram suppositories. I don’t know what the technology is going to be, but everyone’s focused on the nuts and bolts of the technology. And I believe personally, and again, the results speak for themselves If you want to be an effective marketer, you have to understand the fundamentals of persuasion, how people really make decisions, what influences them.
And if you build on that durable foundation, then you’re going to have a great marketing career. And so each of the technologies becomes just another way of applying what, to be our sound marketing principles. And so neuro marketing is. Essentially evolutionary psychology applied to persuasion.
And some people think of it more tactically there’s these various tactics we can use to manipulate people using fear or setting up the choice, a certain way to bias them towards one outcome or another, that sort of thing. So that’s the tactical level of it. But in general, the approach of using evolutionary psychology to persuade people, that’s what neuromarketing is.
That’s awesome. I actually, I’ve been thinking about this more of a, I want to say maybe the problem is in the right word, but a lot of us marketers can start using various tools and platforms. And we are so tactic oriented and we don’t really think about the psychology of the customers that we’re targeting Yeah, and one of the advantages of approaching it from that side is that the psychology doesn’t change Like I said, it happens at the level of evolution.
In your lifetime in my lifetime evolution isn’t going to change in a genetic level So this stuff is really durable and that’s the advantage of it. It works all the time It works as a tendency among all people all cultures because we all have the same brain wiring and evolution Yeah, how should marketers go about?
Neuromarketing how should they educate themselves about it? And how should start the marketing campaigns considering the human psychology? Like I said earlier, we focus so much on keyword search volumes and numbers and metrics that we get from our digital platforms.
But this new marketing seems to be more of a PhD level type of topic. How do we educate ourselves enough so we can have successful marketing campaigns? And how do we go about it? That’s a good question. I would say that my original books, I wrote two volumes on landing page optimization. As I mentioned, one of them’s, even the second one’s at least a decade old already, but even though some of the screenshots in there may be a little dated, I tried to put in some of this durable stuff, but really the best resource is my latest book.
It’s called unleash your primal brain. Now, if you want more info, you can just go to primalbrain. com. So it’s called unleash your primal brain, demystifying how we think and why we act. Now it’s not strictly speaking a neuromarketing book. It’s basically. a view of our psychology from an evolutionary standpoint.
It just recaps what we picked up along the way. There’s things that we share with fruit flies and insects. There’s other things we only share with mammals and or primates or things at the end of that evolutionary arc that make us bizarrely and uniquely human. So I try to cover all of that in a very readable way.
It’s also available as an audio book or an ebook. But the point is that it’s just if you understand the environment in which we evolved, you understand the biases we have and how to ethically use them to more effectively persuade people. Yeah. And I’m glad you brought the word ethically pursued in people.
What are some of the challenges, especially in today’s time or, being ethical is valued. More than ever. What are some of the challenges and that you think we can face when we don’t ethically? Go about just marketing general you can see the effects of it.
There’s, people like to think they’re rational. They make rational decisions. I call it their lie of rationality. You can show at the brain scan level that people don’t make rational decisions. They make subconscious decisions and then rationalize them verbally after the fact. So it’s, science fiction author Robert Heinlein once said famously man is not a rational animal.
Man is a rationalizing animal. So we make up excuses after the fact. But if you start with the premise that we are rational, we’re easily manipulated we’re looking for survival cues in our environment and we’re keying into those. So you can use this unethically to addict people, to make them almost have compulsive behaviors, to gambling would be an example.
If you knew all the little. The neuro marketing tricks that are used in the casino not have windows. So you don’t know if it’s day or night out pump extra oxygen in. So you stay alert on the roulette machines or the slot machines rather have near winds be much more overrepresented than they should be.
Seven, seven and almost seven on the third line. That actually makes us chase rewards. And since we sit there pulling that one arm banded handle all night. And all of this stuff is just very carefully designed to get you to keep doing some behavior unconsciously, almost automatically.
So that’s where it can tip into the unethical stuff, I would say. And the free alcohol doesn’t help either. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, judgment and decision making goes out the windows You have a drink. Yeah, absolutely and who doesn’t want a free drink, right? Yeah, exactly, and I myself You brought a roulette.
You know, I haven’t played it in a long time. Every time I go to Vegas for a conference or whatever reason I’m, I’ve been pretty disciplined not to gamble, but when I did, I played roulette a lot. And I just, like you mentioned, I was so much so close and You end up like losing more than you went and, that’s some of the unethical factors you’re talking about.
What are some of the ethical factors when it comes, what does take ethical tactics that it comes to neuro? It’s say it’s not the tactics. Cause again, the tactics are the same. It’s what’s, what are you using them for? So you have to, as a marketer. Or as a public policy person or whatever, think about what’s the, am I increasing people’s being or the social good, or am I just doing stuff from just self interest?
For example when on driver’s licenses you have, Like the donor opt in. So if you’re in an accident, can we, Use harvest your eyes and lungs or whatever and use you as an organ donor if you default people to being an organ donor many more people will do that They have to opt out not to be one but in states like california where I live You know, you have to opt in to be an organ donor, so it actually makes fewer organs available for transplantation.
I think, by setting that as a default setting that you’re opted in, you’re actually doing a social good, and other countries in Europe do it that way. And that way, they have a lot more organ donors, for example. Or saving for your retirement, if we Put something on autopilot. So let’s say this is a well studied social phenomenon Anytime you get a raise half of that increase from that raise goes into your long term retirement That way you’re not thinking about it out of sight out of mind But it’s compounding in your investments and interest over decades and you get much better outcomes than people voluntarily putting money into there.
It just happens automatically. So if you’re setting it up for the right reasons, the same tactics are working for the greater good, I would say. Got it. Got it. And that actually makes a lot of sense. And something could be said about how a lot of successful people, maybe not everybody, but a lot of wealthier, successful individuals have had, Successful parents, right?
So maybe subconsciously, even though they may not have been formally educated about making, financial sound financial decisions, maybe subconsciously, they have had that training. Is that is a part of a neuro science? Yeah, I would say that. You’re touching on another very important evolutionary psychology idea, which is that we’re very tribal.
So unlike other animals, which is basically adapted to their environments, physically, we adapted. Mentally, I’ll explain that. So for example, you have squirrels and squirrels exist all over the world. There’s flying squirrels that jump between trees. There’s ones that hibernate in the desert and hot environments that, there’s, and the ones that climb trees have these rotating ankles so they can run head first down trees.
That’s pretty cool. So they have adapted physically and there are some that are just a few grams in weight, others that are like kilograms in weight, huge variations. Human beings are essentially. the same size. So our secret of success is that we have these big brains that take a long time to develop and that’s very intentional so that we can gather the cultural tribal knowledge.
The people that grew up in a certain environment, which we’re born into, we get that cultural package from them by learning it. And if we just follow that cultural package that over time becomes more and more valuable, we’re likely to survive in that environment. And so as a result of that, we become very tribal.
We have to believe that the cultural package has value and even override our own direct experience sometimes in order to follow it. In a way, you could say that’s how cults form or strong tribes. But that’s a feature, not a bug. That’s what, that’s our superpower in a way. And so when you’re talking about the influence of your parents or your immediate environment, absolutely.
If you’re in a Yeah, let’s call it financially successful people. They say this is how you manage money. This is how you don’t spend it on squander and frivolous stuff. This is why you should be of service and volunteer. I mean there’s a certain kind of ethical code that many people with intergenerational wealth have and they’re passing on that tribal knowledge to their children.
That’s awesome. I can think of a cultural thing that I had to overcome was just eye contacts. Being Middle Eastern, we are often told that when you speak to people that are older or more educated or more senior than you, you don’t want to look him in the eye out of respect. And it feels like it’s quite different here in the West in the U.S. And that was something that worked really well back in Middle East. And here it’s if you want to be successful, you actually want to do it. Looking to the other person’s eye. And that took me a long time, and it goes back around to cultural and tribal stuff that you were just mentioning.
Exactly right. Like you say here being quote unquote shifty eyed and not making eye contact means you’re trying to conceal something or lie in a direct. Is very much, what’s required looking someone in the eye is a sign of both integrity and clarity and all that good stuff.
But yeah, like you say, that’s very culturally conditioned, right? So it works within the culture you’re in, but not necessarily across cultural tribe. When people ask me about we’ve had international clients. I can’t give you advice on a Japanese website, because to me it seems like really busy with all kinds of stuff, flashing and buzzing.
And it’s just like information overload, but apparently in that culture, that’s normal I’m not the person to ask about that. And I think, going back to marketing, this is why we, at our agency, we decided to get away from overseas contractors and team members we had really smart let’s say Google ads experts and SEO experts and PPC experts on our team that lived in other countries overseas, and they were really good with a platform.
They were really good with. certain strategies and Google ads that had high IQ. But there was still something missing, and the decision I made, and this is before I even knew about neuro marketing. It was like, you know what, we need people that live here in the U S at least Canada and U S that are accustomed with our cultures.
They know our holidays. They know. the things that are important to us. And obviously we ended up hiring team members that live here, that have lived here for a while because they know the culture and I feel like I may have subconsciously made the right decisions, but doing that, do you have anything?
Yeah. I don’t know if it’s the right or the wrong decision. There’s lots of ways to run professional services firms. When I ran SiteTuners, we pretty much were almost all US based with the exception of a few contractors in the present. I know that the current president, my friend, Marty Grave, he’s got, teams in Europe and the Philippines and Columbia and in Brazil.
And That works, but to your point you have to be honest about the fact that there’s going to be some cross cultural friction extra effort expended to understand that or to have productivity or quality control over remote people. It’s not just, looking at the hourly rate. Oh, look, it’s 10 times cheaper.
No, it’s there’s like you say, Oh, wait, what do you mean? You’re not answering your email today because there’s another holiday that. That kind of stuff. Or yes doesn’t mean yes. Yes means I heard you. Yes doesn’t mean I commit to something. So there are a lot of cultural differences and like you say, being I would just say fully cognizant of the impact of that and the extra effort you’re going to expend to deal with it is important if you’re going to do outsourcing of anything that’s going to brain work or, not mechanical.
That’s really good info. Thank you. Staying with the same similar concept is that how an international and you mentioned international marketing. How did you get it to work? What was some of the strategies you use to, to make, to have a successful international marketing campaign given the cultural differences?
Yeah that’s a great question. So yes, there are cultural differences. In fact, like I said, carrying and transmitting culture to our, or the tribe around us is the secret to our success. But that’s just one aspect of being human. And a lot of other evolutionary psychology things that we inherited are truly universal.
So for example we pay attention to threats and risk a lot more than we do upside. So if I said, Hey, here’s your favorite Flavor of ice cream what’s your favorite flavor? Vanilla. Okay. So you’re in a bowl of vanilla ice cream and just reach for it.
And as you do, I’m just going to whack you on the back of the hand with a hammer. Okay, just the one time and then you can eat the ice cream, what do you think probably? Wow? You must really like vanilla ice. Most people would say no way, right? No way because they’re much more sensitive to getting hit with a hammer than enjoying the ice cream from an evolutionary standpoint.
We have to deal with immediate threats If we don’t, we’re dead. So then enjoying the ice cream isn’t an option. So there’s about a two, two and a half to one, depending on the circumstances bias towards focusing on negative information. And I think for example, a lot of marketers. They say that’s not, within our brand guidelines, we never say bad things or compare ourselves to competitors.
So the example I like to use is, now let’s say you’re selling some kind of tooth whitening and most of the commercials are like, look at your bright white smile. And they have that little bling animation right on the commercials. That’s not how I would sell it. I would say, are your yellow grayish teeth?
Causing you embarrassment. Are you always keeping your mouth closed? Do people think you have resting bastard face? You’re gonna die alone because no one will you and when you die the only way they’re gonna find you is when your cat starts eating your body and After several weeks, because it hasn’t been getting fed and starts meowing at the door.
Okay, now, with the consequences of that, you want some tooth whitening? See, so the fear makes it much more likely that you’ll do something about it. And I’m not saying don’t use Upside, but you actually have to think as a marketer this way. Most of the time, the default in our brain is conserve energy and do nothing.
So what you have to do is almost like a car going over a pothole. You go ba boom, you go down. into the pothole and then bounce up. And that perturbation, that, that difference, that delta between the bottom of hell and the top of heaven is how much you’re willing to pay to have that problem go away. If you don’t perturb me using both downside and upside, negativity and positivity, then I don’t see much value in your solution and I’m not gonna be moved to do anything about the problem because I don’t see it as that big.
So that’s one massive move. Learning from evolutionary psychology is you got to use both sides. You got to use negativity usually first and then positivity and then sell whatever you’re selling. Would you say creating urgency? Hey, this deal expires. Is that part of the negativity or positivity or is that something else?
It’s resource loss. So the way to think about it is, we, when we were. Hunter gatherers and nomads were on the move. So we really couldn’t carry a lot of stuff. We didn’t have car trunks or big refrigerators to put stuff into your garages or storage units. So everything we own, we have to carry.
And so I had to make split second decisions about whether to acquire something. And the real question was, would it help my survival in the longterm? Not easy to answer. Here’s a sharp rock. I can use it as a tool. I can use it as a weapon. It might be useful, but I got to carry that frickin rock around the rest of my life.
And that’s using energy. And maybe over the next hill, there’s another big pile of those rocks, sharp rocks. Or maybe I’m walking into a desert where I won’t find another rock at all for forever. So these are non trivial decisions. And so focusing people on you’re about to lose a resource. This resource is going away.
You’ll never have a chance to acquire this resource again. Yeah, absolutely. That plays into what I call the ownership bias of, anything we own gives us a survival edge. That’s really awesome information. There is some usage of that that I see marketers do, but the challenges marketers have is that some of these, like you mentioned, the brand guidelines and content.
Tones and everything is often given to them and you have to go with a flow and what would be a good way to push back and also provide some data. Hey, I think this is what we should do. You have to look at the self interest of the people you’re talking to.
So yeah, there’s going to be the, the brand guardians and they just care. Very strict about making sure nothing’s ever violated logo appears in this font style next to nothing, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. But at the same time, you’re on the performance end of marketing is online marketers.
Like you say, we can measure things. And so what you can do is sometimes just. Say, hey, I like your idea of just doing on brand stuff. And let’s try a couple of variations that don’t do that. And let’s see how we do. Okay, so this is where testing and is actually useful in terms of conversion rate optimization.
Then you go, Oh, look. That on brand stuff didn’t perform any better But this other thing is making us several million dollars a year more Would you like us to turn that off and go back to the branded version? Then it’s a different conversation because you’re talking about money you’re going to make for the company
just quantifying by testing it like the old school. But it’s very important to co op The current stakeholders, the ones that don’t want to go along and have them actively involved in the process and say, Hey, come up with your best version. That is brand compliant. Then they have a stake in the outcome.
And then they’re interested in paying attention to what happens, because you can say, I came up with a brand compliant version while they didn’t even have a hand in that. So again, that ownership bias, anything that you influence or control or you’re more. Attached to so they’ll be more attached to the test outcome if they’re participating in the creation, or at least a review of one of the versions and that creates less friction too.
So if you like, let’s say the off brand version was more successful. They also have something to take credit for and learn something from, right? Yeah. If their on-brand version was more successful, they go, see, I told you so a hundred percent. And what about more junior level marketers who go into an environment let’s say PPC manager or SEO manager, they just have to execute what often told to them by their CMO, right?
.This is what we can do. How can they, implement some of these neuromarketing concepts without getting fired. Neuromarketing isn’t any more risky than anything else. They’re proposing ideas presumably in the course of their work. So make them based more on persuasion and psychology fundamentals, and you’re more likely to get good outcomes.
It’s not neuromarketing is extra risky. No, just the opposite. It’s more likely to work because of. Tendencies of large groups of people. I got my degree in computer science. And when I got into marketing just like many other marketers, I started with technical digital marketing, SEO and SEM.
And later I took some courses online at Coursera and other places. It almost feels like this concept is. Even though it’s been around for a long time, it’s a newer concept. The marketing courses don’t teach about it. I have an introduction neuro marketing course on LinkedIn.
So if you’re a paid LinkedIn member and you’re part of LinkedIn learning, you’re welcome to just look up Tim Ash and neuro marketing and in the LinkedIn learning search, I’m sure you’ll find my course. So that’s a good introduction, but yeah, there are courses out there on it. Awesome.
And then evangelism, right? Just, having, that can always be helpful about, just talking about it within your team and having those lunch and learns. Do you find that method to be impactful? Is that something that marketers should do? Yeah, but again what’s the subject of the lunch and learns?
I would say that the most important mind shift that I had to make as an effective marketer was stop thinking from the company’s perspective. And that’s really hard to do because again, you’re dealing with, okay, here’s this campaign. Here’s who I report to here’s what my bonus is tied to whatever, all of those.
Those are all internal company things. The best thing you can do is get on the front lines. Go be a secret shopper of your own products or services. Try to buy your product and see what the email communication is like try to assemble it if it’s a physical product or unbox it when you get it and say, what’s the total experience like?
So I like to flip it. Instead of an inside the company out megaphone perspective, you just take people that are having their issues and problems and misunderstandings and misconceptions, take them where they are. And then help them solve their problem. Part of which might be buying your product or service, but really that kind of customer centered orientation, that user centered design of.
All marketing materials, that’s really the key. So stop thinking company first. Start thinking advocating for your visitors or your users or your customers or prospects, and they don’t have a seat at the table. Usually even marketing departments and sales departments, they don’t really think about them other than again, how to manipulate them and separate them from their money.
But if you truly are passionate about taking your. customers and prospects perspective, that’s again one of the best things you can do for your career. That’s really good advice there. I can attest when I was in house marketer, I was always under pressure to meet certain KPIs and deadlines. And there was not a whole lot of proactive thinking there, just, plug and pray.
That’s what I was doing a lot, and I was, I just make it, make sure I last through this year. And get this year’s bonus and raise and we’ll figure it out next year. And I think that happens too much in the marketing circle. So new marketing, is that a within the organization you said sales should also be pretty aware of it, marketing business units.
Yeah I think that it’s just an understanding of evolutionary psychology and applying it to marketing or sales or leadership that, like I said, my book, unleash your primal brain can really be applied to any of those things, better relationships, personal development, it’s the operating system for human beings.
So start with the foundational stuff and you can apply it to anything to better sales scripts, better closing techniques, absolutely. Better team building. One of the things I talked about to executives is about. building culture and initiating people into your work tribe so that they’re more loyal.
So you can really apply it to any aspect of human or social behavior. I can’t wait to get your book, to be honest with you. And we will have a link of your book in the bio of this video for others to purchase it. And this is really good information. Now let’s talk about a I, I feel like we are focusing more on, like you said, the new trend is a I gen a I and then age a and most of the marketers are just talking more about more tools, more technology, more things.
How can marketers be more successful adopting technology while also embracing the I’m not a futurist. And even though, like I said, I studied AI during seven years in a PhD program that I quit and started my first company instead. But. I can give you a few quick tips or ways to think about it.
So what to do and what not to do. So on the, what not to do side, don’t make it spit out content for you. Okay. Don’t use it to generate content. So even the generative AI from scratch, it’s just Google and others are going to develop filters and defenses and be able to detect AI content with other AI.
And they’re just going to shut all that stuff down. So it’s just like keyword stuffing in the old SEO days. Just don’t do that. It’s not a permanent advantage. And in one of their upcoming updates, I’m sure they’ll nail you for it. But what you can do it for is brainstorming market research.
Editing your copy. Now, this is a really important. So one of the biggest advantages I think that companies don’t really avail themselves of is having an editorial voice, a clear editorial voice. And so if your company was a person and we just met, like what three adjectives would you use to describe them?
So in my case, it might be, direct funny, enthusiastic, okay, maybe something in that ballpark, right? And so what you can do is take your boring, corporate, compliant written copy, and then say, look, rewrite this text in a direct, enthusiastic way, and shorten it to 300 words.
That’s really easy to do it so if you have some raw stuff to work with you can make it consistent in terms of your brand voice and then anytime any touch point happens with a customer or prospect, then you’re like, oh, that’s those people and just the brand voice alone, just like a brand color logo can evoke a lot of things.
Your brand voice alone will carry it. And that includes email headlines, email copy, web copy, downloadables, all of that stuff, right? So I think taking your generic corporate crap, if you will, and running it through a brand voice filter that you very consciously design is a really great use of AI.
That’s really good advice. And this is something we are trying to do more in our agency try to stick to a certain tone and, and even though we utilize, gen AI to create content, like add copies and things like that. We try to be more of a driver’s seat. We don’t want it to just generate content for us.
We, we tell her what we want to create for us. We just using it as an efficiency tool, not necessarily the ultimate writer. And this I would so I guess what I’m saying is. I think AI helps on the front end and the very back end. It helps with brainstorming ideas and things you never heard of. Give me three, 35 more ideas about blah.
Okay. That’s great. And mostly it’ll be throw away, but that’s true of all brainstorming. But, Oh, I never thought of it that way. That’s, so it’s great at the beginning of the process. In the middle, I would still draft this stuff myself, write it with humans, and at the end, rewrite it into the right tone.
That’s, punch it up, make it snazzier, or make it more sober, or make it more sad, whatever. You can give it any kind of instructions you want. So I think editing, brainstorming and editing is what I’d use AI for. I wouldn’t actually use it for the writing. Got it. That’s a really great tip.
And I guess we talked about, your book and your website is a good place to learn more about new marketing and he can apply it to your day to day life, not just marketing. Do you have any other tips and advice to marketers who are so caught up with the digital world today, especially all these AI tools are popping out.
This, even for a geek like me, it’s getting overwhelming. Do you have any tips for us? How do we go about it? Should we just take it easy and Become a late adopter, but we also want to miss out on opportunity. There’s always a new marketing fad.
I remember during the pandemic when everybody was stuck at home or, jogging in the park by themselves, it was clubhouse. So listen to audio content. But again, that’s just that. A medium for listening to things in a serial way, right? You have to listen through the whole session of it. And so I knew that wasn’t going anywhere.
And of course it imploded. So I think most fads and most things that go up really quickly, come down just as quickly. There’s some inextricable laws about that kind of stuff. So I wouldn’t focus on that again. I’d say the thread that runs through our whole conversation is focus on the fundamentals and the fundamentals.
In marketing is persuading people and persuading is a function of understanding how we make decisions So that’s psychology and at the root of all psychology is Evolutionary psychology and how we got here how we evolved to be this particular kind of animal instead of another so Study the fundamentals and you’ll have a long marketing career.
Yeah, you have to keep up to the, on some of the tactical practical technology stuff, but you’re going to always filter it through. Okay. How do I use that to influence people effectively? That’s really good advice. I just came back from a conference and very similar talk was given there. The difference b2b and b2c is really the tactics at the end of the day you’re selling to other humans, you know Be it, consumer exactly There’s no such thing as a b2b brain versus a b2c brain the b2b buyer has different considerations They don’t want to lose their job or blow up their company in addition to the b2b the personal level, but those are still human considerations.
There’s a lot of emotional and maybe another term that gets thrown a lot in a marketing and just a business world is EQ, emotional intelligence. Do you have any input on that and how. Is that EQ, is it developed or is it something we can improve? Because I feel like they may be somewhat connected to the whole neuromarketing and, human psychology.
Emotional intelligence, I would describe as relational intelligence. It’s in other words, it’s your understanding of how to interact with other people. So that has to do, for a marketer or for somebody in that role with working as a team harmonizing diverse perspectives reaching consensus.
So that’s, to me, what emotional telecommunication and persuasion in your role being able to influence other people. Yeah, those are. Again, even beyond how you apply them to marketing, if you just have those general skills, how do I work in groups? How do I know when something’s finished enough?
How do I know where to get help or ask for help? All of those things are core skills that will help you in any professional setting. That’s really good information. And I guess since we are short on time, my last question to you would be, obviously, people can go to your website. What other services do you provide to other professionals And if you don’t mind, recapping that for our audience.
No, not at all. So these days I do a lot of public speaking and internal company training, a keynote all over the world. Last big trip was to Brazil recently, and that was about 10, 000 people at the startup summit in Florianopolis, Brazil, but I’ve been from Australia to Russia and everywhere in between.
But my main focus right now is working in an advisory capacity. With company, so I work tied to one senior executive and they can have unlimited access to me. So there’s no restrictions at all. And it’s strictly advisory. So just show up. We can talk about whatever we can review tactical stuff. We can talk about strategy.
You can have your colleagues subordinates on it. You can have your board of directors if that makes sense. And it’s strategic planning. So it’s basically unlimited access to me. For a very low price. And so if you go to timash. com and look for the executive advisory for digital growth if that makes sense for your company or your agency, then just reach out.
Yeah I’m definitely going to, come out of my own comfort zone being a geek into more of a executive as my company grows. So you’ll hear from me sooner or later, but for all of our audience, they can, go to timash. com and Timash. com or more information about the book and the evolutionary psychology stuff, primalbrain.com. And I’ll make sure we have both of the links in the bio of this podcast. Anything else you’d like to add before we conclude this podcast?
Again I’m going to stay on message, which is focus on the durable stuff, because that’s going to be the most widely applicable thing. You can be on the cutting edge of knowledge, but as soon as that knowledge becomes obsolete, you just have to run faster on the gerbil wheel. You have to figure out the next technology, the next trend.
And is that really where you want to spend your career? With other people coming up under you and learning those things more quickly because they’re younger. So the wisdom of getting older, like in my case, hopefully, is to focus on the more durable things that are more universally applicable.
And so I encourage you to lean in that direction instead of the latest cutting edge technology. And this is really good, great advice. I’m going to think about it all weekend. It’s something that I’ve been, it’s been in the back of my mind. I’m like I’m turning 50 pretty soon. And I can’t keep keeping up with especially the younger crowd that are growing up in the age of technology and they can pick things up a lot faster than I can.
So this is really good advice. I appreciate your time. Your time is valuable. Thank you for coming to our podcast. And I’ll make sure to tag you too. So you can share this podcast video network as well. Yeah. It’s been my pleasure, Al. Happy to chat. Appreciate it. Have a good one.
Take care. Bye.
