S2.E35: Season Finale — Storytelling, Algorithms & The Future of Community

S3.E5: Brand as AI Override, with Mark Schaefer

Marketing strategist, author, and businessesgrow.com founder Mark Schaefer joins Tom and Curtis to make the case that brand is still the most durable competitive advantage a company can build—and that AI has made it more important, not less. Drawing on his books Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World and How AI Changes Your Customers, Mark explains why chasing AI visibility is largely a Sisyphean task for most businesses, how to close the gap between what a company sells and what customers actually buy, and why community—not audience—is where the strongest brand loyalty lives. The episode closes with Tom’s story of a pest control company that won his loyalty without a single performance claim, and a preview of the next episode with Brian Clark on converting audience into community. N.B.: * Learn more at businessesgrow.com [https://www.businessesgrow.com/]. * Connect with Mark on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/markwschaefer/]. * Pick up Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World and How AI Changes Your Customers wherever books are sold. Takeaways: * Brand preferences are AI overrides—if customers trust and identify with a brand, no algorithm changes the decision. * Chasing top AI visibility is a Sisyphean task for most businesses; investing in brand and word-of-mouth is more achievable and more durable. * The "Only we…" exercise is a fast diagnostic: if five executives give five different answers, the company does not yet have a marketing strategy. * Companies often confuse what they sell with what customers are actually buying—and the gap between the two is where brand strategy lives. * Real customer conversations, conducted with regularity, are irreplaceable; AI research produces the same homogeneous output your competitors are already using. * The emotional hierarchy runs from advertising to audience to community—and community is where goodwill transfers to the brand most permanently. * People in a brand community form relationships with each other, and that social bond becomes the strongest attachment to the brand itself. * In a world flooded with AI-generated content, the content that stands out must approach the level of art—an interpretation of the human experience that only a specific person could produce. * Competent content is now ignorable; AI exceeds competence. Distinctly human perspective is the only durable differentiator. * The most human companies will win in an age of AI—and the engagement data is already bearing that out. Find and Follow: * Find all episodes at bullhornsbullseyes.com [http://bullhornsbullseyes.com/]. * Be sure to subscribe to our Substack [https://bullhornsandbullseyes.substack.com/] to never miss an episode! * Follow the show on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bullhorns-bullseyes/]! * Learn more about Collideascope [https://collideascope.co/] and Creative Mill [https://www.creativemillco.com/] at their respective websites. * Connect with Curtis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayscurtis/] and Tom [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tnixon16/] on LinkedIn. * Check out our newsletter, Amplify and Aim [https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/amplify-aim-7281036460491751424/]!

S3.E4: The Narrative Machine, with Kristian A. Alomá PhD

Kristian A. Alomá, PhD — behavioral psychologist, founder and CEO of Threadline, and author of Start with the Story: Brand-Building in a Narrative Economy — returns to Bullhorns & Bullseyes for a second season to answer the harder follow-up question: once you have the customer truth, what do you actually do with it? Tom Nixon and Curtis Hays dig into signal loss, the STORY Framework, and why most organizations let the best insights die in translation. From Nike and FedEx to Peloton and McDonald’s, this conversation is a field guide for anyone who has ever come back from customer research with something real—and watched it get polished flat. N.B.: * Learn more at threadline.com [https://threadline.com/] and kristianaloma.com [https://kristianaloma.com/]. * Connect with Kristian on LinkedIn. [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristianaloma/] Takeaways: * Signal loss is the real enemy. You can do the research right and still lose the truth at every handoff—brief to copywriter, copywriter to AI—until what started as something real comes out sounding like everyone else in the category. * Your brand is not the hero. If your marketing centers on how great you are, there’s no room for the customer in the story. The relationship doesn’t go far from there. * The STORY Framework: Struggle → Tool → Objective → Reward → Yearning. Most brands start at Tool and skip Yearning entirely—but Yearning is where loyalty lives. * Build the hymnal. A documented, organization-wide source of customer truth is not a slide deck. It’s the guardrail against drift, the creative brief anchor, and the only thing that keeps the whole team telling the same story. * AI amplifies what you give it. Feed it your customer’s reality, and it amplifies signal. Feed it nothing, and it amplifies your own reflection—faster. * Show, don’t tell. Claims are unverifiable to anyone who hasn’t already experienced them. Stories are felt before they’re evaluated. The difference is the difference between copy that sells and stories people actually believe. * Brand is a relationship, not an asset. The companies that get it right—Nike, FedEx, McDonald’s—invest in the emotional experience of the customer, not just the product or the logistics behind it. Find and Follow: * Find all episodes at ⁠bullhornsbullseyes.com⁠ [https://bullhornsbullseyes.com/]. * Follow ⁠the show on LinkedIn!⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bullhorns-bullseyes/] * Learn more about ⁠Collideascope⁠ [https://collideascope.co/] and ⁠Creative Mill⁠ [https://www.creativemillco.com/] at their respective websites. * Connect with ⁠Curtis⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayscurtis/] and ⁠Tom⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tnixon16/] on LinkedIn. * Check out our newsletter, ⁠Amplify and Aim⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/amplify-aim-7281036460491751424/]!

S3.E3: Customers Have Secrets to Tell, with Emily Bielak

Emily Bielak, Director at The Martec Group, returns to Bullhorns & Bullseyes to dig into the hidden costs of customer blind spots…and how behavioral research can expose them.  Building on the previous lesson with Will Leach, about the emotional nature of purchase decisions, Tom and Curtis bring  Emily in to explain what actually happens when companies think they already know their customer. Emily walks through The Martec Group’s approach to customer segmentation and journey mapping, including the Martec Emotion Score, the Peak-End Theory, and the “what, so what, now what” framework that separates actionable research from reports that collect digital dust. The conversation covers why segmentation goes far beyond the ideal customer profile, how to read the emotional signals at every stage of the buyer journey, and what a minimum viable research program actually looks like—whether you’re a scrappy small business or a company with unlimited budget. N.B.: * Learn more about The Martec Emotion Score and Customer Journey Mapping and Segmentation at martecgroup.com [https://martecgroup.com/]. * Connect with Emily on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilybielak/]. * Be sure to subscribe to our Substack [https://bullhornsandbullseyes.substack.com/] to never miss an episode! Takeaways: * The most dangerous assumption in marketing isn’t “we don’t know our customer”—it’s “we already do.” * Emotions drive 96% of decisions. Rational analysis is the post-game recap, not the game. * Segmentation goes beyond your ICP. The customers outside your ideal profile still buy—and understanding them unlocks growth. * The Martec Emotion Score quantifies the net pleasantness of emotion the way NPS quantifies advocacy—giving leaders a metric they can actually manage. * The peak-end rule says customers remember how they felt at the peak and at the end of an experience. Design for those moments, not the average. * Research that sits in a filing cabinet isn’t research—it’s a sunk cost. The “what, so what, now what” framework turns findings into a roadmap. * AI is a useful brainstorming and organizing tool, but it can’t replace the human judgment required to act on emotional and behavioral data. * The minimum viable research program is a one-on-one customer interview. No budget required—just the willingness to ask. * A qual–quant–qual approach is the gold standard: qualitative context, quantitative validation, then qualitative depth to bring segments to life. * Misaligned marketing doesn’t mean bad execution. It means execution built on the wrong foundation. Fix the strategy first. Find and Follow: * Find all episodes at bullhornsbullseyes.com [http://bullhornsbullseyes.com/]. * Be sure to subscribe to our Substack [https://bullhornsandbullseyes.substack.com/] to never miss an episode! * Follow the show on LinkedIn! [https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bullhorns-bullseyes/] * Learn more about Collideascope [https://collideascope.co/]Creative Mill [https://www.creativemillco.com/] at their respective websites. * Connect with Curtis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayscurtis/] and Tom [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tnixon16/] on LinkedIn. * Check out our newsletter, Amplify and Aim [https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/amplify-aim-7281036460491751424/]!

S3.E3: Customers Have Secrets to Tell, with Emily Bielak

Emily Bielak, Director at The Martec Group, returns to Bullhorns & Bullseyes to dig into the hidden costs of customer blind spots…and how behavioral research can expose them.  Building on the previous lesson with Will Leach, about the emotional nature of purchase decisions, Tom and Curtis bring  Emily in to explain what actually happens when companies think they already know their customer. Emily walks through The Martec Group’s approach to customer segmentation and journey mapping, including the Martec Emotion Score, the Peak-End Theory, and the “what, so what, now what” framework that separates actionable research from reports that collect digital dust. The conversation covers why segmentation goes far beyond the ideal customer profile, how to read the emotional signals at every stage of the buyer journey, and what a minimum viable research program actually looks like—whether you’re a scrappy small business or a company with unlimited budget. N.B.: * Learn more about The Martec Emotion Score and Customer Journey Mapping and Segmentation at martecgroup.com [https://martecgroup.com/]. * Connect with Emily on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilybielak/]. * Be sure to subscribe to our Substack [https://bullhornsandbullseyes.substack.com/] to never miss an episode! Takeaways: * The most dangerous assumption in marketing isn’t “we don’t know our customer”—it’s “we already do.” * Emotions drive 96% of decisions. Rational analysis is the post-game recap, not the game. * Segmentation goes beyond your ICP. The customers outside your ideal profile still buy—and understanding them unlocks growth. * The Martec Emotion Score quantifies the net pleasantness of emotion the way NPS quantifies advocacy—giving leaders a metric they can actually manage. * The peak-end rule says customers remember how they felt at the peak and at the end of an experience. Design for those moments, not the average. * Research that sits in a filing cabinet isn’t research—it’s a sunk cost. The “what, so what, now what” framework turns findings into a roadmap. * AI is a useful brainstorming and organizing tool, but it can’t replace the human judgment required to act on emotional and behavioral data. * The minimum viable research program is a one-on-one customer interview. No budget required—just the willingness to ask. * A qual–quant–qual approach is the gold standard: qualitative context, quantitative validation, then qualitative depth to bring segments to life. * Misaligned marketing doesn’t mean bad execution. It means execution built on the wrong foundation. Fix the strategy first. Find and Follow: * Find all episodes at bullhornsbullseyes.com [http://bullhornsbullseyes.com/]. * Be sure to subscribe to our Substack [https://bullhornsandbullseyes.substack.com/] to never miss an episode! * Follow the show on LinkedIn! [https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bullhorns-bullseyes/] * Learn more about Collideascope [https://collideascope.co/]Creative Mill [https://www.creativemillco.com/] at their respective websites. * Connect with Curtis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayscurtis/] and Tom [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tnixon16/] on LinkedIn. * Check out our newsletter, Amplify and Aim [https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/amplify-aim-7281036460491751424/]!

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 book [http://mindstategroup.com/] * Connect with Will on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-leach] * Let’s continue the conversation on our Substack [https://bullhornsandbullseyes.substack.com/]! 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 [http://bullhornsbullseyes.com/]. * Be sure to subscribe to our Substack [https://bullhornsandbullseyes.substack.com/] to never miss an episode! * Follow the show on LinkedIn! [https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bullhorns-bullseyes/] * Learn more about Collideascope [https://collideascope.co/] and Creative Mill [https://www.creativemillco.com/] at their respective websites. * Connect with Curtis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayscurtis/] and Tom [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tnixon16/] on LinkedIn. * Check out our newsletter, Amplify and Aim [https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/amplify-aim-7281036460491751424/]!