S3.E2: From Mind States to Messaging, with Will Leach

Tom and Curtis welcome back Will Leach, best-selling author of Marketing to Mind States and founder of the Mindstate Group, for a deeper dive into how behavioral psychology and neuroscience should shape the way marketers think, message, and measure. Building on their previous conversation, this episode moves from theory toward practice, examining why even the most intellectually convinced marketers default to feature-first thinking the moment they sit down to write copy or plan a campaign…completely misaligned with the psychology of the buyer.This episode builds and expands upon the themes from episode 1: why marketing drifts, why mirror marketing fails, and why AI can be a false prophet if it’s amplifying the wrong things. How do you know what the right things actually are? Tune in to find out, as Will demonstrates how customers make purchase decisions…and teases our next lesson: How you can find out how your customer truly feels!N.B.:Learn more and get the bookConnect with Will on LinkedInLet’s continue the conversation on our Substack! And please remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode!Takeaways:The brain’s filter—the reticular activating system—blocks most marketing before it ever reaches conscious awareness; only pain points and genuine aspirations get through.Marketers understand consumer psychology as individuals but abandon it when thinking as providers, defaulting to feature comparisons instead.Short-term revenue accountability is the structural reason most marketing stays shallow; optimizing for measurable metrics crowds out deeper customer understanding.Large language models are trained on the world’s data, not your customer’s—what they return sounds good but is essentially a very confident average.Temporal landmarks—predictable moments in time when a specific mind state is likely active—let marketers target context without needing to identify individual psychological states.The CFO conversation changes when you can articulate what makes customers tick and predict messaging outcomes, rather than reporting last month’s clicks.Before any marketing meeting moves to tactics or metrics, it should start with one question: what is the customer’s pain or aspiration right now?Review data, call transcripts, and social media all contain psychological “tells”; AI can help surface them if it’s been grounded in behavioral science frameworks first.Brand is increasingly the only durable moat—not pricing, distribution, or operations—and LLMs will recognize and amplify brands that have earned genuine psychological meaning.AI amplifies whatever you activate—right or wrong. Getting the customer psychology right before scaling is no longer optional.Find and Follow:Find all episodes at bullhornsbullseyes.com.Be sure to subscribe to our Substack to never miss an episode!Follow the show on LinkedIn!Learn more about Collideascope and Creative Mill at their respective websites.Connect with Curtis and Tom on LinkedIn.Check out our newsletter, Amplify and Aim!