Philippe Gamache  0:07  
What's up, guys, welcome to the humans of martech podcast. His name is Jon Taylor. My name is Phil Gamache. Our mission is to future proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in marketing. What's up everyone today, we have the pleasure of sitting down with Carmen, Simon, Chief Science Officer at corporate visions, and brain science instructor at Stanford. Continuing Studies, Carmen has spent her entire career in multimedia design, writing books, creating and selling companies and more recently, conducting brain science research. She wrote a book called impossible to ignore, a groundbreaking approach to creating memorable messages that are easy to process but hard to forget, and she started it, and still is at Stanford, continuing studies, teaching several brain science courses, and today she's Chief Science Officer at corporate visions, where she runs neuroscience research to help businesses increase their persuasive power. She also recently published a second book called Made you look a full color image pack, guide on developing persuasive content. Carmen, thank you so much for your time today. Really excited to chat.

Carmen Simon  1:15  
Thank you for inviting me and welcome everyone. This

Philippe Gamache  1:19  
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Carmen Simon  3:34  
I really like that question a lot, and I think the audience will find the answer related to some practical guidelines, because one trend that has become very popular in brain science, in fact, one of the hottest trends in neuroscience is called embodied cognition. The book is about attention, but we're starting to recognize that the way that the brain pays attention and focuses on things and starts building memories, and as a result, starts planning and making decisions. It's not based just on mental representations. We create from the reality around us. We create those perceptions and the attention and the memories and the decisions at the intersection of how the brain, body and environment all interact together, brain, body and environment. So therefore the trend of embodied cognition. So a practical guideline that I'd like to offer all our listeners is as you're thinking about your audiences, as you're thinking about growing your business. Always wonder, how can I involve my audiences, internally and externally, physically? For instance, a very easy technique that I have started applying even in my own neuroscience studies, is to simply allow people to take notes during a study, so we may show them a sales presentation, for instance, or some marketing collateral and. The years past, we were asking people, begging people, participants, to not move during the neuroscience study, because, as you're wearing an EEG cap and all sorts of other biometric tools. At the time, we couldn't really distinguish between cognitive functioning and muscular movement. But now the algorithms are getting better, and just a physical process of enabling somebody to take notes. So as you're talking to customers, say, please write this down, this will serve you well. As you're talking to team members, say, please write this down, it will serve you well. But now you're involving the fingers, the hand, the the rest of the arm, the neck, almost the entire body, contributes to that to that function. One of the reasons why taking notes, by the way, is turning into a much more memorable affair, versus just sitting passively and listening to things. So I'm hoping that all of our listeners right now are taking note out chair. Do you

Philippe Gamache  5:54  
think this is harder to do in a remote world where a lot of meetings are done on zoom over video, just like our podcast right now is done remotely.

Carmen Simon  6:04  
It's not harder, but it does take discipline, because the temptation is there, as you're already using a digital tool to take notes digitally, for instance. So people might you might see them typing, and they should say that they're really not multitasking. They really are taking notes regarding what you're saying or what you're sharing. In one of the neuroscience studies that I've completed just recently, I was comparing what happens in the brain and the body as people are taking notes in a handwritten type of way, and as people are taking notes in electronic way. And while it is true that people took longer notes when they were typing, people remembered better in the handwriting condition, and the quality of those notes was better. Because what happens is, if you decide to take some handwritten notes, and you really are using pen and paper, you have to synthesize what you're hearing. You have to, quite often, provide a brief summary for your own brain as to what's happening, because start being a little bit more critical. You're not writing everything down, whereas when you're typing quite often, you're tempted to write verbatim what the other person says, and as a result, you're not contributing with though that's much and of course, physical Note taking is only one way to involve the body if you're ever in the position to conduct demos. For instance, for your clients, let's just say that you're selling a platform of sort. Invite them to grab the mouse, so to speak, and move around the screen and give them some instructions. Versus you do the demo for them. You have an experience center. Invite them to physically come around and move around, if they can. The more that you involve the body, the better off. People's attention, memories, and as a result, decisions are

Jon Taylor  7:46  
I find that fascinating. Phil's probably laughing a little bit because we did a whole episode on handwriting notes way back when, and I felt like a goof, but I had no brain science behind it. I just had my own kind of anecdotal experience of teaching myself, like writing something by hand. Just it encapsulates it. It keeps it in my head. You mentioned so many things that I think are fascinating around the physical cues that could happen, and just to tie it into what Phil said about the virtual world, like, I I'm curious if you have any other pointers for folks. Like, I'm sure there's some people on the call or listening who could think, like, Hey, I'm in a demo. How can I make somebody have this, like, physical body cue to remember this information and like, in a virtual world, like you said, it's kind of tough, like the idea of taking over the mouse and clicking. Is there anything else from your studies that we can think about for body cues that we could incorporate into our messaging?

Carmen Simon  8:35  
Yeah, especially if you're presenting virtually another neuroscience study that I've completed was comparing what happens in the brain you're showing your products and the merits of it simply through an array of slides. Everybody has some slideware of sorts these days, versus using a whiteboard. Now, on a whiteboard, I don't have one here behind me, every so often I'll bring one. You're grabbing a marker, and you start drawing physically, and now people are seeing the movements. And you can take it a level further, which is what we did in the study as well. You're not just watching somebody draw and move as they do, but you're asking the audience to draw along. So a practical guideline for anyone listening, if you have some concepts, perhaps not all, perhaps not all, but some that render themselves to some whiteboarding, definitely apply that technique and invite people to draw along, because that is the ultimate in not only just handwriting, but in creating some sort of framework, a mental model, that now you're putting in somebody else's brain. And of course, that also has a superior recall effect. So after 48 hours in all the neuroscience studies that I complete, we send people a memory test to see what what is still there. The reason for that is because people make decisions based on what they remember, not on what they forget. So of course, you're participating in a call like this or listening to this podcast. Cast, because at some point you want to influence your customers decisions or your internal team's decisions. That means you have to create memories in people's brains. So always look, regardless of modality, to see, how can I create this into something that is likely to stick after 48 hours and ideally longer, and somehow, through this virtual medium, we have started to dismiss things that used to work face to face, such as whiteboarding. So I'm calling this plea to rescue that modality. Even if you're not with people in the same room,

Jon Taylor  10:31  
there's something else to be said. I think around and I'm sure this is going to come up later, but I've been thinking about this with our shrinking attention spans right in the virtual world and the land of social media, like our attention spans seem to be so short, but the idea of making memorable experiences and tying that to some you know, as you said, physical modality like this, seems like a way to break through that and actually create a memorable experience, instead of just another demo, just another meeting, just another slide presentation.

Carmen Simon  10:59  
Yeah, definitely break through that in the sense that you're after sustained attention. And here's the good news for everyone, and especially for those and I'm glad that you brought this up. Who believe that we have shrinking attention spans from a biological perspective and evolutionary perspective, that's actually not accurate. We are capable of sustaining our attention across time. Should the stimulus be interesting enough or important enough? And you don't even have to work in neuroscience to know that it's possible to get the brain to focus. All you have to do is be humble enough and admit how many hours, not minutes or seconds? How many hours we tend to binge watch on TV shows? So anytime you ask, like, I don't know if you guys want to share with us some of your numbers, like, the longest, maybe not ask that question, but here we'll pose a rhetorical question, and for our listeners as well, what was the longest time that you're able to just really be so glued to your TV or to your phone, and that's when you start debunking those myths that say human beings have the attention span of a goldfish or can only stay focused for a few seconds. That's that's not entirely true. So given that good news, though, there is the question, well, how do you get people to stay focused on what you have to offer and not what everybody else has to offer, because at any given moment, you are indeed a few seconds away from looking at something else. So I know that we have quite a few participants in this call in the marketing field, and that is already an attention field. So always look to to see, how is it that you can, you can get people to focus on what you have to say, not on what everybody else has to say. And I know that one of your questions were, was around contrast. That is one way to get people to say, I want to look here versus looking over there. And contrast is one such practical technique that you can think about. And the trend that I'm noticing for business content, let's just say even marketing content, for instance, is that it's not differentiated enough, or the brain can perceive contrast. Because if you're telling me that your solution is better than everybody else's solution, that means you're already, you always already want my my brain to perceive time contrast. And the brain needs at least a 30% difference between entity a versus entity B, C, D, however much competition you have to say, Oh, now I can see how this is different. The contrast is very clear. It's perceptible. So another practical guideline from our conversation is for everyone to ask, especially if you're in a competitive field, do I have at least a 30% differentiation between what I say or do or offer and what everybody else says, says, Does or offers? Super

Philippe Gamache  13:54  
interesting, I know, like I read your book in the topic of contrast and distinctiveness comes up a lot in in the book, and the idea of, like thinking in opposites and not trying to replicate what your competitors are doing, and like striking that contrast there, but in your book, you unpacked, like, this idea of the the power of human touch and deep meaning in achieving distinctiveness. And you know, today, we just chatted before we started pressing recording with like generative AI, I feel like it continues to pollute the web, and it's not necessarily a new problem. I listened to a talk that you did at inbound eight years ago. You spoke specifically about this trend of content abundance, and that a lot of content is feels like it's the same after a while, we'd love to ask you, like, how, how can marketers still leverage generative AI tools while applying this idea of a human touch?

Carmen Simon  14:53  
There are a few items that you're covering here in this the observations that you have and and the question and. Thank you for reading the book. By the way, that's always one of the biggest compliments. Let's think about this. In order for the brain to perceive some distinctiveness, it has to first of all be familiar with some sameness. So don't feel like everything that you're doing right now or offering your customers or offering your internal teams, if that's the reason for you listening to this has to be distinct all the time, or in all of its components. Because how can the brain notice that something is deviating from a pattern? Unless it notices the pattern first, right? Or in your field, look for pockets of sameness, sameness, sameness, sameness, and then build the courage to deviate. I say, build the courage, because sometimes we aspire a distinctiveness, but we don't have enough courage. So there might be a mindset shift as well. But to take, for instance, an example, and they have quoted this in the in the book as well. People say dirt is bad, the dirt is bad. Dirt is bad. Then there comes this company that says dirt is good. And now you can follow some some things around the that pattern, or I was just looking at this commercial the other day, is, is Krispy Kreme as popular for you guys as it is for us here in the in the States? No, I

Philippe Gamache  16:13  
don't think so. It just not, not a big Canada thing, but tasted it in, yeah, for sure. Clip tristically, create

Carmen Simon  16:22  
posted like giant ad that had, maybe I want to say seven paragraphs. I imagine in the world of marketing, seven paragraphs is like, seriously, especially I was talking about attention. And can you really even get people to to read this? But the headline of the ad says, donuts are bad for you. Donuts are their foundation. Like Krispy Kreme exists to sell you donuts. So imagine the distinctiveness, because usually you see headlines that will say, this is good for you, this is good for you. Buy this because it's perfect for you. Perfect for you. So here comes a company that says, this product that is the lifeblood of our business is bad for you, so instantly draws you in through that distinctiveness, and of course, a little human touch, which is what we're building toward. And then when now you start reading the paragraphs, and they're so cleverly pointing out other things that are bad for you, like germs are bad for you, and too much water is bad for you, and watching TV is too in too much of a proportion is is bad for you. And of course, donuts are bad for you. And of course, the conclusion is that you shouldn't over indulge, but every so often you haven't lived if you haven't had the crispy green donut. That was the main message. But you see, follow pockets of similarities, similarity and similarity. Similarity. And then do you have the courage to even kill your own, at least contextually, your your own main made product? But let's get to this, this human touch, because I really like your your question, and I have recently completed two studies on AI versus humans, so the human touch was alive and well, and other practical guidelines that had emerged for this, and I think our listeners will find this useful, is that the difference that I've observed between AI and humans, at least in these studies, is that humans are able to make some content more memorable compared to the AI, because they Know how to elaborate better around a concept. So for example, in the study, I was looking to see what happens in a seller's brain as they try to complete a role play simulation with a customer and resolve a customer issue, and then receive feedback from that role play. So if you're a seller, usually you have that role play with your manager. So the manager will pretend that they're your customer. They will give you the scenario. You try to resolve it, and the role play is done. And then the manager will give you feedback. Now there are AI tools that can do exactly that. They will pretend to be your customer. You go at it for for a bit, and then it gives you feedback on on how you did when we had the human coach. The human coach elaborated around the context with such vivid details, much more so than the AI. So the context was the customer is calling in, and he's very upset because he had received a broken laptop case. So you as a seller are supposed to resolve the situation. There is a little tension that's being created because the customer really wants a refund, and your policy such that you cannot offer a refund. So in the human condition, the human coach said, I needed this laptop because I was on my way to a wedding. And then he elaborated around what was happening at the wedding, irrelevant for the scenario, really, but the elaboration the context was there or in another situation, he was appalled that he would not receive His refund. And he would say, you know, I own a cheese shop, and if somebody came to me and asked for a refund, I would give them a refund. In another situation, he was owning some silky soaks business. Another one, he was selling blanket. In another situation, he was just so upset that he had caught his son watching something shade. On the internet. So see, it went all over the place, and this is just at the beginning of the role play in the AI condition. If the seller had asked the AI coach, why is it that you needed a laptop case anyway, the tool would have said, well, that's irrelevant to the situation. Let's just get back to the issue at hand. So as a practical guideline, look to see if you have the opportunity to elaborate around the context and to add some vivid details, because in the absence of that, we're becoming way too robotic and undistinguished from the machine.

Jon Taylor  20:35  
The Sea of sameness is the phrase that comes into my mind when you think about AI and content creation. But the examples that you you were talking about, totally drew me in as you were talking, I was like, you know, I was imagining the seller coming in with all these problems.

Philippe Gamache  20:50  
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Jon Taylor  22:31  
I with like chat, G, P, T, and all these tools that are coming out, like the idea of content creation is particularly in marketing. We're seeing, for instance, LinkedIn right now is full of what I call GPT isms like, clearly, content created by GPT. As we speak, Google is we're recording in March, but as we speak, Google's updating and brand new algorithm specifically aimed at hitting AI generated content and low value, thin content, so punishing people who've built entire websites based on generating content from Ai, because it's actually relatively easy to spot today, I'm curious what your take

Carmen Simon  23:10  
on like, what are some details that when you're looking at something thinking, Oh, I can kind of see this.

Jon Taylor  23:15  
I for me, it's, I don't have any science behind it, but I can, I feel like I can spot them a mile away. Phil and I constantly chat back and forth spotting them. The language is really robotic. It's formulaic. It's it's

Philippe Gamache  23:28  
in a closely evolving world of Marte, there's phrases that are always used. It's so

Carmen Simon  23:35  
I guess, spread some words even for our audience, that they should never use if they want to be distinguished from the AI like unlock. Nobody should say you should be unlocking anything. Elevate, optimize. What else are you guys seeing?

Jon Taylor  23:50  
Delve? Everywhere is Delve, yes, yes, yes. This is such a common one is. But I think that we're maybe at the beginning of this with these large language models, like you can sometimes you with some finagling. And I know there's lots of tools out there that are coming out that say, No, you can write content with these AI tools that won't get detected by by AI detectors. And I've tested it, and I've used GPT to create content that doesn't get detected. I don't feel good about it, and I don't publish it, by the way, for anybody who's listening, I'm still a humanist, but I wonder about the future, like, Can AI create real, meaningful stories like, and what does it say about the human brain that you know we could ever have a computer to generate meaningful, heartwarming stories for us?

Carmen Simon  24:39  
So there's just so much in what you said, and thank you for sharing all those details. I have a few thoughts and suggestions around this. First of all, if you start outsourcing too much the machine at some point, like you're saying, you'll become just as robotic as it is, and what will happen in the process is that you will. Lose your critical thinking skills and thinking skills in general, because typically, writing equals thinking. The moment that you have started jotting down a few things, preferably in a handwritten kind of way, and at least initially and you're putting your thoughts on paper, that's when your brain starts going through a process. Oh, this is what makes sense. This is what has meaning. Can have a good story without good meaning, by the way. This is what it might make sense to somebody else. This is what reflects my own experiences. And initially, you might not necessarily have a lot of clarity, but they are your own original ideas. Whereas, if you're looking at chatgpt and the like those large language models have undistinguished ideas expressed clearly, so you have an approximation of all these things that other people have created. And with each iteration, I feel like they're getting blurrier and blurrier, almost like the if you're looking at the way that an image gets compressed. What gets compressed in an image? You're taking a pixel and then you're predicting what the next pixel near it is going to be like. So you're encoding just that the difference in value, and you're not encoding the original thing. You're just encoding an approximation of the of the real thing. This is why, if you encode and compress too much, after a while, you get a blurry picture, it's the same with these large language models, and the more that we allow them to create, the next version gets blurrier yet, blurrier yet, blurrier yet. So to the point where, if you had the picture of this beautiful apple, and it was so nice and green and crisp, what you get five iterations later is this blurry thing where maybe just looks like a round blob, and that's that's all you see, is that the generation that you want to live in, is that the kind of content that you want to consume, I would imagine, not so avoid the blurriness by putting in a lot more effort. And speaking of efforts, I would say, just to save humanity in general. This is what happens in the brain. You have a task. Let's just say you're creating a marketing campaign, some content of sorts, and you instantly go to chatgpt, and maybe through some prompts that you have evolved in time, Evolve is another verb, by the way, that we can, we can avoid using, but some, through some prompts that you have created in time, you know that this process works. So initially you get a spike, because those tools are so incredible to give you something that is plausible. I'm not saying it's true, but it's plausible. And then you get a dopamine hit. It's exactly I got it, I got it. So that happens at the beginning of the process. And then perhaps you do some iterations, and you add your own human touch, but by then the dopamine starts dropping down. So you start associating the effort with the lack of dopamine, and you're starting associating the machine with a spike in dopamine, whereas the process should be exactly reversed, because otherwise, in time, you won't be able to sustain any kind of human effort. You'll always be reliant on the machine. So discipline yourself. Tell your children to discipline themselves, such that as the beginning, especially at the beginning of a process, and especially if it's a creative process, you put in the effort first, and perhaps let the machine, if you really want to rely on it, give you some pointers, but not the other way around. Very

Philippe Gamache  28:15  
fascinating. I want to ask you, did you see the Microsoft Super Bowl copilot. AD,

Carmen Simon  28:23  
no, I haven't, okay. I'll

Philippe Gamache  28:25  
send you a link to it, but it reminded me a lot of what your previous answer was. Basically talking about like, if they're Microsoft, is trying to position their copilot, basically built on top of GPT four. So it's a chat GPT ish type of tool, and they're trying to position it as an everyday AI companion. Or the whole ad was trying to, like, democratize AI tech. But you know, aside from it being a rip off of chatgpt, I disliked the commercial personally, and it reminded me a lot of your answer. And this idea that the ad was showing AI equipped teenagers who can now accomplish any creative or technical task, it was showing like this, this kid trying to, like storyboard a movie, or this other person trying to write code for a 3d open world game but it's a simple prompt, and then the co pilot is like outputting all of this code, and instantly they become like a world class, like game developer now. And the problem I have with the the message that they're sending is that, like they aren't saying, learn this new skill and use AI as a tool and an assistant to help you along this learning journey, the message they're sending to youth is learning is really hard, so use our AI tool to do things for you instead. But yeah, curious your thoughts. There

Carmen Simon  29:53  
I was. Thank you for describing this to me. And the first thought is that quite often I observe in the neuroscience studies that I conduct that. The Learning is associated with a state of tension. However, it's not impossible to have learning that happens when you're in this blissful mode or a calm state, but quite often when you're learning something, when you're having some eureka moments, those that Aha feeling, usually that happens in a state of tension, and there is some tiny touch of stress as well some anxiety that happens. Of course, it's not long Lin, but that's a that's when we're recognizing that the brain is starting to change. Now there is, there is a hope, and I'm afraid, exactly for what you're describing, that especially for the younger generations that have not had the chance to build some skills that now we're teaching them that the reliance on the machine is is okay to do, and it's a shame, because the brain before the age of 25 learns differently than after the age of 25 so here you have these beautiful ready To be developed minds, and we're connecting them to machines way too way too soon. So the practical guideline is for us and for the for the kids that are coming after us, let's try and be disciplined enough to find pleasure in the efforts, not just in the result.

Philippe Gamache  31:18  
Very cool, yeah, that's

Jon Taylor  31:21  
I'm honestly just fascinated just listening to you. So I'm pausing for half a second just to be like, Whoa. This is crazy. I think that that going back to the sea of sameness, like the idea of creativity in the human brain's ability to spot the contrasting differences. Like, maybe there's some people listening to this who are thinking, great, go ahead, use, use GPT, go into the sea of sameness and create things that are completely recognizable with everything else. It gives the human people who are still kind of humanist and being creative, the opportunity to flex those muscles and to be differentiated.

Carmen Simon  31:57  
If you want to go for that, at least. Know of this, this other aspect, which is giving your audience's brains intermittent rewards. So let's just say that you consider it unrealistic for your business to come up with a human created anything all the time. So maybe pick a sequence, a cadence, where you're saying, automated content, automated content, automated content, suddenly something that was indeed generated by somebody in your team, and that's that's more human, and the more unpredictable the sequence that is to somebody else's brain, to your audience's brains, then the more they will still be linked to or stay connected to you, because now they Don't know how to predict when the next human reward is coming versus the machine content,

Philippe Gamache  32:47  
very interesting. I was looking at the time, and I'm like, wow, like, there's, there's so many like threads I want to pull on on some of your answers there, but when I was thinking of cool questions to ask you based on a lot of your education and some of the more recent research that you did. I wanted to step into the speculative future a little bit with you and ask you a question about the future of martech and, like, neuromarketing, as well as, if you will speculate a little bit here this idea of, like, telepathic mind to brain marketing idea. So last year, John and I went super deep on this AI rabbit hole, and we took a look at the speculative future, and it verged on Sci Fi a little bit, but it was a fun episode. And there's two categories that I want your thoughts on. So the first one is neuro marketing experts. So this idea that like marketers, should invest and learn more about neuroscience, because AI and neuroscience have already started converging in a huge way. You've actually mentioned on a LinkedIn post that I found that through an MRI machine today, we can see the birth of a memory. So the question I have for you is like, do you think one day marketers could have access to such a massive level of insights into consumer behaviors that decision making that, or is thought of as like sci fi today, like emotions or thoughts like could become a reality.

Carmen Simon  34:18  
It's possible. I mean, we can. We can picture the future in multiple ways and simulate it in a black mirror kind of way. Are you guys familiar with that? It could be that in the future, if you know how, right now, you go to a website and you have the ability to accept or reject the tracking mechanisms that are happening in the background. It could be that in the future, somebody could ask for your permission to get closer to your to your thoughts, and you can accept it or reject it, and if your thoughts are already of the kind that can be downloaded onto your face. Book post. I'm curious, would you guys choose? Like, let's just say you could download your dreams to a Facebook would you do it?

Philippe Gamache  35:09  
I mean, I would love to know where that's being stored and if it's being shared with third parties, but I'm curious enough to probably click, yes, yeah,

Carmen Simon  35:23  
absolutely. Of giving permission and how intimate you want somebody to get with you? I'm very grateful, by the way, to all of the participants in our neuroscience studies, because they are giving us access to their most intimate part, which is, which is the brain. So technically, biologically, it can be possible to get as close and in mass, but it just depends on if people will will allow us to do so. Ideally, we still think critically enough to not let a machine decide if this is okay to do or not. That's why I have this continuous plea for humanity to say, preserve your power through hard work and appreciate hard work so that you don't let the machines decide for you way too frequently. Yeah,

Philippe Gamache  36:14  
great point. The the second one was this, like telepathic mind to brain marketing expert, so I found an article, and this is like dated a few years ago, but scientists at the University of California claim to have developed an AI that can convert thought into text, and if tech advances to enable direct communication between human minds and brands, things are gonna get pretty wild, pretty fast. So I'm curious, like, do you think this will ever be a reality one day? How would we think about how marketing messages can be crafted in this, like far future communication channel?

Carmen Simon  36:54  
It's possible, and know that these tools are advancing exponentially. So if we're impressed by some advancements now, even by the time this episode would have aired, there have probably been some additional advancement in AI tools. And the situation will be like this. You will allow the tool to perform some tasks, and I'm hoping that we don't give up on some like you're saying them, some of the skills that we still learn for ourselves to evaluate the outputs. Because, yeah, let's just say that you turn thoughts into into text. Are those the how do we know those are the best ones? How do we know that? What do we even do with those? So allow the machine what it does best, which is pattern recognition and pattern predictions and predictions just in general, but build enough skills to evaluate the output otherwise. How would we know right from wrong?

Philippe Gamache  37:53  
Yeah, very, very, great point.

Jon Taylor  37:55  
I'm curious like so we did this episode on, you know, future AI enabled jobs. But what do you think would be the most safe position for human knowledge workers in the future, like, if AI is going to exponentially, you know, improve? Where's the human niche?

Carmen Simon  38:15  
The human niche can come from, from various various angles. One is at least for now. This will change in the future, but at least for now, we are the ones that are experiencing the world through our bodies. Remember embodied cognition, and we experience the world through our senses, and we can report on those experiences. Of course, the AI is starting to build eyes and legs and all sorts of other facilities to which it starts capturing the world, but it's not at the same level, at least for now, as as we are. So don't give up on these. First of all, live a little so go out, have experiences, live your life through your senses, and report on those in an elaborated kind of way. That's how people will be able to tell if it's a human that wrote this or produced this versus versus an AI. So that's that's one area. Another is humans build worlds around themselves that have some sort of meaning. Like, even as I'm looking around my desk, I have some binoculars, just because every so often you can look here in the distance and see some things and just get some joy out of those. I have this pen, just because I was talking about the power of handwriting, and in the notebook, I have some things here that are meaningful to me, and I have built in this, in this small world that I live, at least for. Now, the AI doesn't have that need. It doesn't go out and say, I'm going to buy this, I'm going to build this physical world around myself that is going to build meaning. So a practical implication of that is you still have to cater to the human brain, because it's a human brain that keeps the economy going. It goes out and buys things and builds these worlds, but also keep on building these worlds in the. Associate meaning around those and then report on that, because that, yet again, adds the human touch and the niche that you're looking for.

Philippe Gamache  40:07  
Very cool. I like where you went with your answer. If I had to predict where you were going to go with that, I thought you were maybe a mention like emotion and like storytelling, but you actually went a different path. And like embodying cognition is, I think, coming out as as a main theme of of this episode. But I wanted to ask you about emotion and attention, and maybe we're getting close on time here. Maybe we don't have time for for storytelling, but the three main pillars of your first book are attention, memory and decision making, and the impact of emotion on these pillars is a strong theme throughout the book. You explain that when humans are faced with emotional events, the amygdala modulates memory and ensures that the event is actually retained. And some of my favorite ads of all time are deeply tied to emotions, and I remember them fondly because of the emotion that I felt when I first watched it. That being said, though there are plenty of examples of poorly executed messages that overplay the emotional factor, and I'm some side. I'm sometimes left like feeling desensitized by like folks like pulling on the heartstrings too much. So in a world where every ad aims to do that like tug at the heartstrings, how can marketers avoid the novelty wearing off and people tuning out?

Carmen Simon  41:34  
Oh, I really like this reminder about emotion, because it is such a strong driver. It is something that the AI is currently not doing as as well, but I'm sure that it will catch on soon. It does report on various sentiments. Here's a neuroscience study that I conducted last year on this notion of emotion that our listeners will find practical. I was looking at the difference between emotion laden words and emotion label. Words emotion label is where you're simply telling your audience how to feel. So perhaps you're saying in your fields right now, perhaps you're experiencing frustration, or you're disappointed with some results, or you're concerned with this, that or the other. So see how I'm labeling the emotion versus if I say, in your industry right now there is some market shift, or perhaps you're doing win loss analysis for your deal. So see when loss those are some words where I'm not telling you how to feel, but expressing the emotion in more of a covert kind of way. So I'm allowing your brain to draw conclusions. So one way that we can approach your question, a very strong one, is to often say, am I telling people how to feel too much in the marketing content that I create, or in the approaches that I have? Or can I allow them to infer some emotions on their own? Give them the joy of getting it, even if it's a negative emotion, it doesn't always have to be possible, but positive, but allows them to extract it, versus spoon feeding that emotions, because the brain can detect plastic very quickly.

Jon Taylor  43:10  
It's one of the things that just jumps to mind as you talk about this is, and it's something I've heard you talk about on other podcasts as well, which I wanted to dive into while we still have some time remaining, is this idea of visuals like you are doing this throughout the podcast, like I'm just going back to the binoculars, like you're showing the binoculars. I'm sure all of our listeners instantly envisioned a pair of binoculars and then made all these inferences about like bird watching or spotting an animal off in the distance. Phil and I have a shared background. We both worked at a dashboard, data visualization company many years ago, and we've got very familiar with all kinds of data cliches. One of my least favorite is that data doesn't lie. And I've heard you talk about data storytelling and stuff like, that's like, I'm wondering if you can connect a few dots here for our listeners and for myself, around what are the lessons around working with very abstract things, like data that is hard to put a visual to, but it's still super important to our day to day. Like, how do you turn this into impact, these routine tasks to have the appropriate amount of impact? Maybe not desensitizing folks, but yeah, I'm just curious your take on that

Carmen Simon  44:17  
we can look at data through some of the angles that we've discussed. So for instance, we're talking about contrast initially. Sometimes the reason that data falls flat is because we're not enabling somebody else's brain to really perceive the contrast in numbers. If somebody gave you your cholesterol numbers, for instance, but didn't contrast it against some sort of baseline, and you could see the difference, then you mean nothing to you. So building contrast and enabling people to see the importance and the meaning of that very quickly is one way to approach it and not let it die dead. Data would probably be the title of, maybe of the of your next. Uh. Um, another way is to build some some physical context around it. So for instance, if somebody gave you their address and it had numbers in it, obviously it might be just very quickly forgettable. But if that was your new lover who gave you their house address, those numbers would be memorable instantly. That's a one trial learning. We would call it in in science. So you see the context around what happens is what, what puts data into perspective. And unfortunately, when sometimes people present their data is so disembodied, you see that the and placed flat in an Excel spreadsheet, and you're allowing somebody else's brain to bring ends and too much cognitive effort to it the moment that you embed it into something that's quite often physical as well. I remember sharing some stats on a neuroscience I completed on what people should wear as they present their value proposition virtually, so it's contrasting totally casual attire, like somebody had just come from a gym. They were wearing just a t shirt, somebody wearing a button shirt, and somebody wearing a jacket and a shirt. And when I was presenting the stats, I took the barb charts from Excel, and I was placing them on somebody's suits because the jacket proved superior. So you see how now I'm not just taking the Excel spreadsheet and presenting it like that. It's now in a context. You know, in some other slide, I had that bar chart embedded in like somebody's wardrobe, a wardrobe, so when you open it, now you have choices, and those bars are now associated with the formal attire. So try to look to place your your data in a habitat. Because all of us live in a habitat. That's what distinguishes us, at least we're now from the AI remember building the worlds around you, place your data there. Very

Philippe Gamache  46:51  
cool. I did get the pleasure of watching that on your YouTube channel, like the breakdown of a sales attire. So we'll link out your YouTube channel to folks. I think there's some really cool stuff that you're working on there. This interview is flown by Carmen. This has been super fun and fascinating. I wish we had more time. But there's last, one last question we ask all of our guests on the show. You're an accomplished author, a renowned keynote speaker, a consultant, a scientist. You're also an addicted tennis player and also addicted to studying the brain. One question we ask everyone on the show is like, how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find this idea of balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy?

Carmen Simon  47:36  
I think the key phrase that you offered is this notion of balance. From a brain science perspective, anyone looking for happiness, I would advocate that you're looking for a balance between your emotion capabilities, your cognitive capabilities, and your physical capabilities, and the more that those are intact, the more that you are performing at a very good level, therefore you're feeling good, one of them goes off, then the other two suffers. So for instance, if you're in a great emotional state, cognitively, you're doing fine, but you haven't slept for a while, so the physical capabilities are now weaker than the other two are impacted. So look to see the those three angles and capabilities and keep those intact. Those are some of my techniques as well. Sometimes starts with sleep. Sleeping well means living life. Well,

Philippe Gamache  48:31  
yeah, sleep is definitely key. Having a newborn myself this year, I see the effect on my body that a lack of sleep can do, but I've only got the one one daughter right now has four at home, so I can't imagine the sleep effect on John

Jon Taylor  48:47  
sleep consulting, training, we paid for it. It's worth every penny recommended to every parent.

Philippe Gamache  48:54  
Thank you so much for your time. Carmen, this has been a super fun interview. We'll link out to your new books, or your new book, as well as your previous book, I think there's a goldmine of insights in there, especially around storytelling, like there's some questions we didn't get a chance to cover there, but you got some some awesome frameworks there, and yeah, really appreciate your time.

Carmen Simon  49:13  
Thank you so much. Thank you everyone.

Philippe Gamache  49:22  
You folks, thank you so much for listening this far. We really appreciate you being here. I just wanted to call out two things before we go. Number one, the best way to support the show is by signing up for our newsletter on humans of martech.com we send you a quick email every Tuesday morning letting you know what episode just dropped. We include our favorite takeaways, so if you don't have time to listen to that one, no pressure, we have you covered with some learnings anyway. And number two, proceeds from sponsors this year have allowed us to venture into video. We recently launched a YouTube channel where we publish full length episodes. So if you want to see our radio faces, check that out. That's it for now. Really appreciate you listening again. Thank you so much. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai