The Power of Instinct: How Customers Really Make Decisions

Almost everything in marketing rests on a premise that turns out to be false — that people weigh their options and decide rationally. They don’t. Leslie shows how the instinctive mind actually works, why the brand with the strongest network of positive associations wins before the comparison even begins, and what that means for anyone trying to grow.

Audience takeaways

• Why persuasion underperforms and instinct outperforms
• How to read the web of associations a brand already owns
• The first three moves that shift instinctive preference

Why Most Rebrands Fail — and How Lay’s Beat the Odds

Delivered to the Yale Center for Customer Insights. Rebrands fail when they quietly sever the instinctive connections a brand spent decades building. Leslie walks through what separates the rare redesign that accelerates growth from the many that destroy value, using one of the most instructive turnarounds in packaged goods.

Audience takeaways

• The brand assets you must never touch, and why
• How to modernise without resetting customer memory
• A practical test for whether a redesign will help or hurt

Traditional Marketing Is Dead: Breakout Growth Requires a New Playbook

Delivered to the Harvard Business School Women’s Association. Segmentation, funnels and persuasion were all built for a deliberate, conscious decision-maker who does not exist. Leslie lays out what replaces them, and why the teams chasing their most loyal customers are the ones quietly capping their own growth.

Audience takeaways

• Why targeting the loyal few puts a ceiling on growth
• The case for competing for the entire category, not a segment
• How to brief a team against instinct rather than demographics

Also available

Human Instinct in the Age of AI

As AI reshapes how people discover, compare and choose, what stays stubbornly human? A forward-looking talk on where machine recommendation ends and instinct still decides — and what leaders should build now.