Latest Posts
What If We Could Design for Emotion?
Why the next great marketing advantage may lie in the one variable we’ve never truly measured. For all…
The Emotional P&L of Flying
Why Airlines Keep Losing Trust – and What That Reveals About Us When we looked at thousands of…
Sentiment Signals: The Next Layer of Intelligence
Beyond performance metrics like accuracy and latency lies a subtler yet more powerful layer: emotional trust. In intelligent…
September 22, 2025
Is It Time for CustomerOps?
Think about how much customer expectations have changed in the past few years. It’s not just that people…
AI’s Double Impact: From Data to Customer Insight
Lindsay Bayuk, CMO at Fullstory – on the Customerland podcast In the rush to make sense of customer behavior,…
In Trust We Calculate – Rebuilding Confidence in the Age of AI
Welcome to the final installment in our series on AI and human behavior. If Parts 1 through 4…
When Brands Carry the Flag – What the 2025 Brand Keys Survey Really Tells Us About American Patriotism
In a year where everything seems political – and almost nothing feels unifying – consumers are still rallying…
Futurescape: What Comes After Apps, Ads, and Algorithms
There’s a phrase that comes up often in this conversation with Jess Leitch, Executive Strategy Director at frog:…
Passikoff: On Brands and Politics
“Politics makes strange bedfellows.” That’s an 1870 quote from American journalist, Charles Dudley Warner. At the time he…
April 8, 2025
Passikoff on Brand “Temperature”
The 1st Baron Kelvin who (unless you were a physics major, and I don’t count many of those among…
The Missing Link in Retail Loyalty: Travel Rewards
For years, retailers have relied on discounts to drive customer loyalty, but as consumer expectations evolve, traditional price-based…
February 21, 2025
The Thanksgiving Effect Might Just Make Us Better Merchants
I love Thanksgiving. It’s the one holiday that calls us to pause, reflect, and genuinely connect with others—free…
Passikoff: The Dangers of the Human Brand
Have you had your 15 minutes of fame? I was referencing the cultural idiom, “In the future everyone…
November 12, 2024
Deus Ex Marketer: What it Takes to Orchestrate Customer-Centricity in a Data-Driven World
Editor’s Note: This piece has been marinating in the backwashes of my brain for a long time –…
Breaking Loyalty – Part 2: What Customers Want and What Companies Need
In Breaking Loyalty Part 2, Mike Ribero and Mike Giambattista explore the shift from traditional loyalty programs to…
October 9, 2024
Impulse Buying and Brand Loyalty in Beverages
How consumer psychology is reshaping the beverage industry: Digging deep into Alpha-Diver’s Bev50 Report. How is consumer psychology…
How Technology is Responding to the Wave of Overnight Stockouts
From makeup and skincare to phone cases and kitchen tools, products can quickly become overnight sensations thanks to…
Navigating Sociopolitical Shifts: Prioritizing What Matters to Gen Z
In the ever-changing landscape of sociopolitical views, the past two years have brought about some notable shifts in…
How Generational Dynamics Are Shifting Expectations and Experiences
When it comes to people’s expectations for remarkable experiences, all the hype is around what Gen Z and…
Passikoff: Is Your Brand on the Right List?
People love lists. If that statement seems intuitively obvious, good! Apparently, it should be. Here’s a list of…
Passikoff: Brand Color Wars
If I say the name, “Louboutin,” what do think of? Shoes with red soles, right? How about “Post-Its”?…
Deep Dive into the Consumer Motivations that Drive Sales
Does Psychology Provide a Crystal ball into Brand Performance? Human beings have always longed to predict the future…
Loyalty Reimagined (Pt 1)
A Blueprint for Active Customer Engagement in Today’s Market Alone we can do so little; together we can…
Planes, Trains, and Engaging with Strangers – a New Year’s Missive
Editor’s note: E.B.’s holiday story is generating a lot of interest and interesting commentary – like this one…
January 2, 2024
Media at the Intersection of Latinx and LGBTQIA+
Brands and Media Can Make a Difference Given the current backlash against LGBTQIA+ and its impact on the community,…
December 13, 2023
The Science of Holiday Gifting: Unwrapping what Really Drives our Buying Behaviors
Understand what Need State you are uniquely positioned to serve, and which consumer target is most likely to be seeking that emotional payoff.
Neuroscience in Market Research: Beyond the Hype
While neuromarketing is simpler than many perceive, it does require discipline in changing bad habits of many legacy marketing research practices.
October 20, 2023
Why the Pumpkin Spice Bubble Hasn’t Burst Yet (and Why We Should Worry if it Does)
If you’re wondering when the pumpkin spice craze will finally die, neuroscience has the answer –hopefully never.
August 11, 2023
Creating Resonance: How Values Shape Consumer Engagement
Unlock the power of values in marketing. Join us on this enlightening journey with our guest, David Allison,…
Unpacking the Psychology of Snacking
The neuroscience-driven team at Alpha-Diver recently released the “Snack 50 Psych-Pulse” – the first comprehensive measure of the…
Passikoff: Big Brand Blunders
“likes” and “tweets” have become surrogates for real ROI and where, unfortunately, in the rush to rush to…
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Consumer Behavior
It’s not always obvious why people make the decisions they do. If a customer buys a certain product,…
January 19, 2023
Is Nothing Sacred? Why Branded Bowl Games Rub Us the Wrong Way
The college football bowl season promises an ever-growing slate of games with corporate logos on them, held in…
Three Pillars of User Delight
Delight can be experienced viscerally, behaviorally, and reflectively. A great design is supported by all three of these pillars and is best evaluated with specific research methods.
Future Forecasting: Predicting Customer Behavior with Data
Anticipating your customers’ wants and needs isn't a superpower or gimmicky mind trick – it's a valuable business strategy that supercharges sales!
TikTok Isn’t the (Only) Answer: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Digital Engagement
The reason someone engages with a given digital medium matters, and that reason isn’t the same across all platforms.
Love Me and Be Loyal to Me
If only we could know our customer’s thoughts, and in that moment when perfection is achieved, two hearts beat as one.
September 22, 2021
Conversations with TheCustomer: Elissa Moses, CEO of BrainGroup Global
Consumer research has come a long way over the past decade but particularly so over the past year…
Passikoff: Is Your Brand Really a Brand?
“What about all those famous people online and on TV? Aren’t they brands?” The answer is, “No, they’re celebrities.” Being a celebrity does not QED a “brand” make.
July 13, 2021
Consumers Want Brands to be More Human
Given the permanence of changes in customer behavior, identifying and adjusting to the new consumer psychology is a priority.
Passikoff: Customer Expectations – Smartphone Edition
You need to be a brand that meets customer expectations and emotionally engages. That's different from being technologically-advanced.
Overcoming Privacy Inertia in Financial Services Means Innovating for Trust
Transparency bridges that gap. Authenticity fills the void. Asking for permission, as it turns out, is more effective than making an apology.
3 Ways to Build Retail Trust
Consider this: Only 11% of consumers trust retailers to properly handle data breaches, according to a survey by First Data.
Passikoff: The Bare Naked Truth about Your New Year’s Resolutions
It’s that time of year when people make New Year’s resolutions. You know, those promises that go in one year and out the other.
January 5, 2021
Passikoff: Black Friday is Getting a Little Grey
Tracking indicates Black Friday shopping has decreased over the past 10 years, replaced, pre-pandemic, by the rest of the year (with one in three consumers reporting shopping online at least daily)
Conversations with TheCustomer: Matt Johnson & Prince Ghuman, founders of PopNeuro
Johnson and Ghuman are founders of "PopNeuro - a Neuromarketing Blog for the masses". You gotta love a website that opens with "A Neuroscientist and a Marketer Walk Into A Bar..."
October 30, 2020
Designing for Customer Wellbeing: a Conversation Andrew Hogan, Principal Analyst at Forrester
Andrew is a Principal Analyst at Forrester focusing on their CX practice, but his writings betray an affinity for design and designing for customer wellbeing.
September 14, 2020
Podcast: Insider Interviews with VaynerMedia’s Claude Silver
My version of scaling Gary,” acknowledges Claude Silver, “is to remind people that every single person is responsible for the culture at VaynerMedia.
The Politics of Consumer Sentiment: Changes in the Trump Brand
Since his election to the Presidency, the added-value the Trump name brings to consumer categories has ‘ping-ponged’ according to changes in the political landscape.
December 4, 2019
