Episode 13:
Psychology in Email Marketing with Sarah Levinger

Scott Cohen: Hello, all. Welcome to that inbox army podcast. I’m your host, Scott Cohen. And with me today, the kip to my uncle Rico is my co host, Garin Hobbs. Garin how are you doing today?

Garin Hobbs: Your mom goes to college.

Scott Cohen: My mom did go to college. She did. She did. It’s true. Alright.

Today, we’re going to explore the art and science of moving people to engage. I love psychological discussions. I get kinda nerdy about this, so we may go off our preplanned questions a little bit. But how we, as marketers, compel customers to put hands on mouse and finger on touchpad or fat thumbs on whatever on your phone and follow through on a call to action. We’re excited about our guest today.

She is here to drop the science on on the psychology of email, and I had to slow that down because I’m a dad. Joining us today is well known speaker and acknowledged expert in how to merchandise what you’re really selling, founder, CEO, and principal consultant of sarahlevingerdot co. Sarah Levinger. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.

Sarah Levinger: Thank you for having me. I’m excited. This is a good chat. Even in even in the green room, it was good chat.

Scott Cohen: Oh, yeah. We don’t we don’t mess around around here. But alright. Let’s let’s before we get too far in the weeds here, I’d love to learn about people’s journeys, how they ended up to where they are now. Tell us about your journey to today.

Sarah Levinger: Oh my gosh. I have such a weird journey. Yeah. Just speaking of, like, your mom goes to college, I actually don’t have a degree, because I was one of those strange people that just decided I could probably learn it faster on my own. So I actually started as a graphic designer at, like, 20.

I was going to school just for all kinds of random stuff because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Randomly landed in, do you guys remember InDesign, Adobe InDesign? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I I went to this this is aging me a little bit.

But Adobe InDesign landed in one of those classes and just got hooked. I was like, this is fascinate. Like, I love the technology. So I switched majors, and then went to, the graphic design school. And I had a a college professor that said, you know, if you’re really good at this, you could just go be in marketing.

You could just go, like, in the marketing field, get a job. You don’t need a degree to do this. And I was like, cool. I don’t wanna pay for college. So I dropped out of college, and then I became a freelancer, like, overnight because I needed the money.

And I was a poor college student that was now, like, not a college student, just unemployed basically. So I started a freelance agency that was just straight marketing graphic design, and I started kind of writing every single marketing wave that came up. So, I got heavily into SEO for a couple years. I did a lot of stuff in WordPress websites. I did SMS, email.

Like, anything that came up that was, like, trending, I would just jump on the bandwagon, and I had to learn how to do it in real time because nobody was teaching anybody how to do it. It was just Fake

Scott Cohen: it till you make it, Penny. Fake it

Sarah Levinger: till you make it. Yeah. So I went to the library of all places. They still exist, people. They’re very important.

Please get a library card. The the tutorials on YouTube weren’t really there at that point because this was, like, 2010. Like, we had just started seeing people start posting all these different tutorials, and I didn’t like them because it was truncated information. So I went to the library, and I would check out those giant, like, marketing for dummies books and just, like, consume consume because because I just I’m a voracious reader.

Scott Cohen: I can’t get enough of it. So right next to all of the marketing

Sarah Levinger: books was this giant, like, very dusty shelf, full of all of these, like, consumer science and consumer behavior and economics and neuromarketing and, like, all of these really interesting books on human development. And so I just started checking them out because they were interesting. I had no rhyme or reason for it. It just was fascinating. And because this is a library, it was, like, massive amounts of textbooks from 1980 all the way back to, like, 19 fifties, 19 sixties.

And they had lots and lots of really interesting books on just how people behave. So I got hooked, and I just couldn’t get enough of it. And then I continued to consume for 10 years. Just any book that came out that was about the psychology of humans and how we consume products, I just devoured it. And so, again, I keep telling people I kind of accidentally gave myself a college education just by reading a lot.

Scott Cohen: So,

Sarah Levinger: that was kinda how I got here, surprisingly enough.

Garin Hobbs: I love that story. It’s, that’s and I’d say this all the time. It’s the thing I love about our industry. People come from all directions. They have all different paths here, but we all find ourselves in the same place.

Right? Yeah. I’m really excited for today’s topic. I’ve been a huge fan of, marketing psychology, starting with manipulating my mom as a child to try and get whatever it was that I wanted They

Scott Cohen: do it.

Garin Hobbs: Particular moment. Those kids, man. After after I entered my career in marketing, then it was, you know, kind of reading some of the, early writings of Daniel Pink kind of back in the early 2000s, really understanding kind of what lays below and beneath everything. Right? Just so fascinating and picking them up from there.

So really stoked to have you today, Sarah. Let’s jump right in. Why is psychology important in marketing messaging? Can’t we just throw product and price in front of our customers and expect they’re gonna snap up whatever we have to offer?

Sarah Levinger: Oh, gosh. I wish. That that would have been, the tactics that we use in 1920 to 19 thirties, which was product focused marketing. We’ve evolved through several marketing eras to get to where we are. It doesn’t work that way anymore mostly because we are a technological society now.

So everything is based on the psychology of the humans that you’re actually interacting with through a digital form, which, I might add is very difficult to do, if you don’t have any psychology knowledge because humans, at this point in, human history, are incredibly susceptible to the tiniest little things, little changes throughout their environment, and they always have been. But in today’s day and age in particular, it’s very, very difficult, I think, for any marketer to see good results, sustainable good results, without having some sort of knowledge of how the brain actually processes information, content, offers, prices, products, and then, obviously, consumption behavior. Yeah.

Garin Hobbs: I love that. I feel like some of the earliest models I’ve seen of this or I’ve read about this might be what I refer to as the Boardwalk Barkers. Right? I think modern correlation would be somebody like Billy Mays or Vince with ShamWow. Right?

So guys who just really pump the

Scott Cohen: emotion into what it is they’re selling, get you feeling what it is they want you to feel, and

Garin Hobbs: then use that to really kind of leverage the necessity of their product. Right? We all laugh because we all feel it’s incredibly ridiculous. Yet, I can’t tell you how many scrub daddies I got sitting in my kitchen because it works. Right?

It works.

Sarah Levinger: Yeah. Rest in peace, Billy Mays. He was one of the best salesman I’ve ever seen in my life. And infomercials in particular was, like, a really interesting medium because it, like, copy pasted over into paid advertising.

Scott Cohen: I was a huge believer in OrangeClean, my friend. OrangeClean was the bomb. I still have OrangeClean in my closet. Yes.

Sarah Levinger: Yes. A 100%. Well, all of these guys knew something that I think most people don’t know a whole lot about, like, how people actually, what’s the word? How they how they go through the process of deciding whether something’s important to them. And that’s why people would literally leave infomercials on from, like, 8 PM to 3 AM because they would just watch.

I mean, I’m sure some of our grandmas remember this. They just watched them over and over and over because it was fascinating content, and it was incredibly innovative for the time period that it was running, and people did not give it enough credit because it was so psychology based. Like, the way that they actually weave the story from starting with a problem, going into agitating it quite deeply, and then showing the solution, but then also providing social proof, authority proof, scarcity, urgency, pricing psychology. I mean, there was so much psychology that was involved in infomercials. I’m like, I study them all the time.

I can’t get enough. It’s amazing.

Garin Hobbs: I feel like it’s that classic storytelling model. Right? That, Aristotle game so many 1000 of years ago, the pathos ethos logos just kind

Sarah Levinger: of Yes.

Garin Hobbs: Starting it. Right? Stating the problem, getting the emotional buy into it, and then really kind of, you know, using proof to show you

Scott Cohen: that their solution is the best way to

Garin Hobbs: get rid of whatever is is, you know, making our lives miserable in that particular moment.

Sarah Levinger: 100%. It’s Chialdini I think it’s Yeah.

Scott Cohen: Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s the proof of evolution. Right? I mean, millions and millions of years need to take place for evolution to happen. Yeah.

And we like to think we’re vastly superior to the people in Aristotle’s time. We’re not? No. We haven’t changed all that much. We have more stuff to worry about, I think, just because with the technological evolutions and stuff where it’s sorta I always think about, like, the news.

Right? We think, man, there’s so many bad things going on out there. And I go, they were always going on. Yeah. We just know about them now.

Sarah Levinger: Know about it. Yes. Yeah. The massive amounts of information I think people have is just mind boggling, especially for, just for, like, content consumption. Because now we’re running into the issue of who’s producing the content.

Are they actually a knowledgeable person? How do you vet this information? Like, there’s just so much of it, and the brain is having to make these decisions incredibly quickly to try and decide, is this something I should pay attention to or not? And it’s all based on, like, the core biological needs that all humans have. It’s crazy.

So crazy. I can’t get enough.

Scott Cohen: Alright. Let’s I mean, you’re diving into this a little bit, but let’s talk what are those most important critical drivers of consumer behavior. Like, is there I I always have this in the back of my mind. I had a boss years ago that said people re you have to find out whether people react to the carrot or react to the stick. And Cool.

Interesting. I love it. I think that’s an an oversimplification, but kind of not at the same time. Right? Like, do people react to incentive or react to fear of

Sarah Levinger: Yes.

Scott Cohen: Failure or problems? Right? And I just would love to dive into where you sort of stand on those drivers.

Sarah Levinger: I have so much that I could say about this. Yes. Carrot stick. So a lot of people will talk about, like, are people gain focus or they lost focus. Right?

Do they wanna, like, be optimistic in life, or they’re pessimistic in life? We do a lot of these bucketing because that’s kinda how the human brain works, and we get to the point where labels for humans are incredibly important because it helps us identify which category we should bucket things into, which helps us understand how important things are. So that’s first step here. This, like, carrot stick thing is really interesting though because it has a couple different, I guess, foundational pieces to it. 1, every human on the planet is built with the same biological need.

We need security. We need shelter. We need food. We need water. A lot of us need relationships.

Right? Like, not just, like, romantic relationships, but family relationships, community relationships. We need to belong somewhere. These are all things that every human on the planet shares. Now because we all share this, we’re all very susceptible to deep seated feelings when they are absent, and the interesting part is they’ve done a lot of studies on this.

The first, like, 1 to 7 years in a child or a human’s life are very integral and impactful for generating what we call the worldview. Right? So this again, carrot or stick, are people, want the incentive, or are they, like, just fearful about being hit with a stick? Like, this is very biological. It’s just it’s interesting to see this come out everywhere, especially in marketing, because you’ll notice it in very, like, drastic ways where some people will be very, motivated by price discounts.

Right? Like, I need to get resources at a cheaper cost, and other people will be motivated heavily by messaging of you’re missing out on something, or somebody’s gotta get it before you, which is that kind of loss feature. So in general, I think some of it comes from worldview, which is created in the first 7 years of life. Some of it also coast comes from the generation that you were born in, though. So did a lot of studies on generations, and there’s quite a big discrepancy obviously between the age groups of people.

But from the studying that I’ve done, it’s very interesting because you can see some very drastic emotional differences between each generation. So silent generation was really interesting because they, lived through a freaking depression, and they had a lot of children. And it was very hard times, and they didn’t really have a lot of ways to manage their own emotional health around what was happening in the world, which was literally we’re all broke. We can’t afford basic biological human needs, shelter, food, water, clothing, and belonging to some community. So this kind of emotionally stunted, right, that particular generation, and they pass that fear down onto their children.

So the next generation, which would be boomers, heard from their parents, the world is not safe. Right? You gotta protect yourself. You gotta protect your own. You gotta be skeptical distrusting of everything because you just never know what’s gonna happen.

So because of this, boomers became very kind of, like, emotionally skeptical about things. Right? They’re distant kind of people where they’ll try to sort of make emotional connections, but they have a very hard time expressing emotional, needs in particular. So boomers, though, were really interested because they grew up at a time period of, like, Vietnam, lots of political unrest, a ton of places where they were able to kind of use their voice to show or display opinion about things, stuff within the political space. So they passed that kind of, sentiment down to their children, which was gen xers.

The gen xers came in. They’re all connected. Like, it’s all related. It’s, like, terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Gen xers came in, and because of the the political, what would you call it?

The more of, like, the political foundation that their parents had built and and kind of this, almost like justice kind of a feeling that their parents had. The Gen Xers were kind of, born with this idea of you are emotionally independent. So boomers were kinda going through their own thing and kind of like the eighties nineties where moms had to go back to work a lot. You had to have 2 parents working in the actual home just to be able to make ends meet, which was not something that we had seen in the fifties sixties. Even into the seventies, It was more common eighties nineties for 2 parents to be working at all times because it’s just getting expensive to have kids.

So Gen Xers, unfortunately, were left a lot. Right? So they were kind of, like, very free form key. Generation. Yeah.

Latchkey generation. Latchkey kids where it was like, I’m just home.

Scott Cohen: I’m technically not in that generation, but functionally am because I’m the youngest of 3 boys, and my brothers were definitely in that generation. And so there’s, like, that 1980 to 1985. It’s, like, the completely ignored transition. Yes. Years.

Sarah Levinger: They talk about this too. They’ve done a lot of studies.

Scott Cohen: Because I’m in that group.

Sarah Levinger: 100%. I’m a 1988 baby, and you’re, like, in a crack where you’re just like, I’m not a Gen Xer, but I’m not a millennial. Like, I’m somewhere in between.

Garin Hobbs: No. I think the defining characteristic I think the defining characteristic for those folks in that sort of smaller niche generation is the end of the cold war. Right? Me Yes. Squarely Genex, born 1975, lived through that, you know, duck and cover, did all those drills that stay sort of the feeling in art and music and and entertainment that Yeah.

The world could come to the end of the any any moment. All you have to do is listen to a Smiths or a Morris seesaw, and you’ll you’ll sort of see that see that present.

Scott Cohen: REM. REM.

Garin Hobbs: The end of the world,

Scott Cohen: and I feel fine.

Garin Hobbs: Yeah. The anthem for, for for annihilation. Right? But, yeah, I think that’s probably the defining characteristic. Obviously, the wall came down in in late 1989.

Right? When we saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union part, just very quickly after that. You folks weren’t living in the same amount of fear. You didn’t feel as though you had that sword of Damocles kinda hanging over your your neck at any moment. Right?

And I think that’s where that emotional independence sort of came from.

Scott Cohen: And

Garin Hobbs: that would be the difference of why, in my opinion.

Sarah Levinger: A 100%.

Garin Hobbs: You know a lot more about this than I do.

Sarah Levinger: You don’t love our history, though. I mean, I’ve studied history as much as I can, but it’s interesting to watch how history or world events play a giant role into how people emotionally consume things. So that’s why I always go through the generations first because depending on which generation you were born in and the world events that you had to survive, all of this comes down to survivorship bias. Depending on the world events that you had to survive, you become a very specific type of consumer because you believe something very specific about the world. Fascinating stuff.

So the interesting part is, though, Gen x’s were the very first generation to validate emotionally validate their children. So up until this point, nobody had really told a child everything you feel is real. It’s a real feeling, and we want you to feel it and express it in the way that you need to express it. Right? So the gen x’s, because they were emotionally independent people based on how they were raised by the boomers, came into the millennials and said, whatever you feel is valid.

Everything you feel is absolutely valid. And the millennials grabbed it and just ate it up, and they became this generation that was like inclusivity, community, belonging. We’re really into experiences. We’re really into changing the world. We’re just tired of the way it is.

Millennials came in and just dug out all of that, like, emotional baggage that we’ve been carrying. And they were really interesting though because one of the things that Gen Xers did not do well was they didn’t teach their millennial kids everything you feel is real. Not everything you feel is actually, like, usable. Right? Depending on whether you ate that morning or whether you had enough water yesterday, how late you stayed up, who you talk to, like, if you’re in a fight with your boyfriend, not everything you feel is actually valid.

So the millennials had an issue because we started to see this, like, almost pull apart of identity because nobody told them that feelings are just chemicals. That’s all they are. They’re just chemical imbalances in the body, basically. So the poor millennials got to their turn to have kids, and a lot of them chose not to because they’re dealing with these this feeling of now all the feelings that we feel are important and valid. And I just can’t I don’t know if I can handle another human who also has feelings that are different from my own.

So a lot of millennials chose not to have kids, but the ones who did are now raising what we term, like, Gen Zers. And the Gen zers are blockers. Like, they’re just the blockers generation because the Gen zers are the first, I think, to be finally emotionally centered. Right? They’re actually emotionally stable for the most part.

They’re a little bonkers just lifestyle wise, but they know a whole lot. I mean, like, the I the EQ on these people. The EQ on the younger gen z is nuts. They’re so emotionally aware that they just you hear it in their conversations with each other, even though they’re saying weird stuff like and nobody knows what they’re saying. They talk to each other in ways that are very validating.

Right? Like, that sounds challenging, bro. Like, what’s going on in your relationships? Like, why is this happening to you? How is your mental health is something that comes out in the gen zer conversation a lot, which never came out for any other generation.

But, anyways, all the generations have been impacted each other. All of them went through worldview stuff that, like, world events that was just heavy hard, but this impacts how we consume things and how we, respond to marketing messages in particular because your identity or the generation that you grew up in really does affect what you preach for out in the world.

Garin Hobbs: Interesting. So it sounds like a lot of that is sort of alignment with subjective sort of values that may be sort of segmented generation generation. But when I when I when I listen to you, you know, if I were just to distill this down, I mean, it all comes down to emotion. Right? Whether it’s gain, loss, reward, exclusivity, etcetera, etcetera.

We’re all driven by emotion. In fact, I’ve seen some crazy statistic that is 90 something percent of the decisions that we make or even whether it’s purchases, whether it’s life decisions, are very much driven by emotion and not so much Yeah. Not entirely anchored in sort of rational or practical thought. Right?

Scott Cohen: Yeah. But not conscious emotion. Right? Not necessarily conscious emotion because we think Yeah. We think we’re making rational decisions a lot.

Yeah. And oftentimes, it’s just

Sarah Levinger: They’re not.

Scott Cohen: Like, I think about how I buy a car. Right? I say, well, we might need to look at a car. We might need to look at a car. And then at some point, I just go, I’m doing the process.

We’re getting this done. Right? Yep. But there’s no there was no conscious, like, oh, that box was checked. Let’s go.

Like, I just go, alright. I’m getting this done. I’m tired of thinking about

Sarah Levinger: Oh, a 100%. Right? Yeah. Yep. That stat is interesting because that comes from, lots of neuroscience study that they’re doing around the brain and how we actually, like, make decisions as humans.

95% of our decisions come from the subconscious. That’s a lot. I don’t know if anybody’s not scared. You’re gonna be scared after this. 95% of the decisions you’re making every single day are not by choice.

They’re not by conscious choice. You’re literally just reacting to whatever’s coming in. And again, comes down to how well you slept, how much water you’ve had, how much you’ve eaten, what time of the day it is, what you have next. Right? Like, there’s so many different exterior stimuli that are happening on the brain all day long, every single day.

The brain is having to adapt at a such a massive rate, so the subconscious can process about 11,000,000 bits of information per second. That’s like freaking speed highway just all the time, all day long, every day, and often while as well. The conscious brain can only process about 40 to 50. That’s like dial up, basically. So as you say, if none of our decisions are really being made consciously, what does that mean exactly for the humans that we’re trying to interact with?

It’s it’s intense. It’s crazy.

Garin Hobbs: And and that’s where I think it becomes even more tricky for marketers. Right? So if all of the just the vast majority of the decisions we’re making are driven subconsciously Yeah. Marketers have to be conscious of exactly, you know, sort of the what those drivers are. And and I like your point about sort of how the brain processes bits of information.

Right? So I read a statistic some years ago that our brains are subject to something like 12,000,000,000 bits of information every second that we’re awake, whether it’s the things going on around us, promotions being thrown at us, the feel of the air through my hair as I sort of, you know, wave my hands around in emphatic gestures as I as we have this conversation. But we can only process 40 to 50 bits of that, and the rest of it just kind of fades into background noise. There’s a very narrow noise to signal ratio. So how can something as subjective, but more importantly, as dynamic and ephemeral as emotion be leveraged within marketing messages, specifically flatter Yeah.

Mediums, like email or SMS?

Scott Cohen: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s such a

Sarah Levinger: good question. So when it comes to actually speaking to the subconscious mind, you have to know a few things about how the subconscious actually processes information. So it’ll take this information in. It’ll basically store it. It’s just a recorder.

That’s all it is, and it’s recording literally everything all the time. Everything that you are interacting within the space, every sound you hear, everything you feel, everything is being recorded constantly. And that’s the reason why it’s pretty important to, like, be careful with what you do on a daily basis because the brain gets tired really fast. Usually, humans can only make about 7 really large scale, big, good decisions every single day. We have to make a especially if you’re a mom, upwards of, like, 30,000 decisions have to be made every single day.

And to your point, usually, we’re seeing, I think the average that I saw I need to look at this stat again. Was something between, like, 3,000,60,000 ads every single day. Because if you think about it, branding on a toothpaste bottle, that’s an ad. Like, milk bottle in your fridge, that’s an ad. We’re seeing ads lit exactly.

Doctor Pepper bottle. Like, everything you see is some sort of attachment to some sort of a brand that your brain then has to go in and make associations and trying to figure out, is this something that’s important or is that gonna poison me? Right? So because there’s so much going on in the background, marketers, I think need to be a little bit more conscious of the fact that, like, we don’t control a lot, which people don’t like it when I say that. We actually don’t control a whole lot about the purchasing process.

The only thing you can do is present the choice of whatever it is you’re trying to sell in a very specific way. And we could talk a little bit about choice architecture if you want, because it’s fascinating. But you present the choice in a very specific way and be in the right space at just the right time so that people will purchase. Now most of the time people ask me, are you talking about impulse purchases? I don’t believe in impulse purchases just knowing what I know about the brain because the brain is processing all the time.

So, I mean, Scott, to your point, you bought a car because one day you were like, it’s just time to buy a car. That could be considered an impulse purchase even though you were thinking about it for a long, long time. What made what made you purchase it on that day? It literally could have been you saw a car commercial 2 days ago, and the brain just held on to it and couldn’t let go of it, and then now it’s time.

Scott Cohen: I I see a I watch sports. I see a lot of commercials.

Sarah Levinger: Could have been a sport. So, yes, I I think, tactically speaking, familiarity is incredibly important when it comes to building brands. Really, it does it it kinda comes down to that kinda age old saying, like, you gotta spend as much money as you possibly can to get as many eyeballs on your product as possible. That’s incredibly important. Secondary to this though is I truly believe where brands like Liquid Death, who’s like $1,400,000,000, like, you know, equation at this point, really comes down to how well can you build emotion into your brand.

Because if you can emotionally connect from day 1, you have a much higher chance of getting millions of people to purchase from you than if you just go tactically.

Scott Cohen: I think that’s an interesting Liquid Debt’s an interesting example because I wanted to ask about commodity. Because if you if you go to Amazon to search for and, Garen, I just bought these for the show we’re going to next week, collapsible popcorn bowls so we can put our buttons in these because I wanna travel with it. There is 85,000,000 options. Yep. So how does emotion break through commodities?

Sarah Levinger: Oh my gosh. There is so, so, so much data that talks about the fact that emotions are how we actually, see the world. We make emotional decisions, and then we justify it with logic. Right? So we tell ourselves a, b, c, d, e is why I purchased this, when really it was just an emotional decision.

So in the case of liquid death and I bring up liquid death often. Like, if anybody’s listened to Sarah before, you hear me talk about them all the time.

Scott Cohen: Well, I’m just saying, at the at the end of the day, it’s sparkling water. Right? Yes. It’s water.

Sarah Levinger: It it This is why

Scott Cohen: I’m water drunk. Sparkling water. So how is it that they’ve become a $1,400,000,000 juggernaut?

Sarah Levinger: Oh, my gosh. So I’ve I’ve done a deep dive on that one. Sorry. Go ahead. Go again.

Garin Hobbs: The their founder and CEO was, presented at the Iterable conference. I believe it was the Iterable conference we were at, Scott, and, he presented there.

Scott Cohen: Oh, yeah.

Garin Hobbs: Yeah. He gave a lot a lot of that sort of deep background. And thing I appreciate about it most is rather than go up there and try to make it something it’s not, he literally said, this is just water. Let me tell you how we got to where we where we are today. So, yeah, I I I think this is a perfect correlation.

Sarah Levinger: I would love to hear him speak. I just wanna meet him because Mike is, like, one of the most brilliant marketers, and I don’t even know that he knows he’s doing it. But he is so emotionally focused, not on the product, but on the person. Right? On the people that he’s actually selling to.

And it’s interesting because I’ve done it in my own business, and I’ve seen this everywhere. Once I started focusing on the person and not not just trying to figure out, like, their problem or a solution or jobs to be done, like, all these kind of, like, marketing buzzwords that we use, but I tried to actually figure out where did this person come from? How’d they become a marketer? Where do they work? Is it at home?

Is it in an office? Are they currently, like, going through something frustrating in their personal life? What is this person doing on a daily basis? Almost like, very hamster style. Like, I just wanna, like, watch them in, like, their little environment because I need no.

Because, again, like we said, all the experiences that you’re experiencing on a daily basis lead into your decisions. So for liquid death, Mike Cecirel, is really involved in kind of, like, the what do you call it? Like, heavy metal scene. Right? So he was going to these show.

I don’t know if anybody knows this this background of the story, but he was going to all these, like, heavy metal shows. And he noticed that all of the, like, band members had, Red Bull cans. Right? That they were just, like, downing. And he was like, how the hell are you guys drinking so much Red Bull?

How are you not having a heart attack? This is insane. And the the drummer told him, he was, like, oh, it’s not Red Bull. It’s water. We just dump it out.

So, like, we open the Red Bull, dump it out, and fill it with water. And he was, like, why? That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. And the drummer said it’s perception. The the production companies won’t let us drink water out of a water bottle because it it kinda, like, it’s not as heavy metal.

Scott Cohen: Them. Yeah. It it

Sarah Levinger: offens it. So we, like, we just can’t. Like, legally, we can’t. They won’t let us do it. And so Mike, being the brilliant guy that he was, was like, holy crap.

What if I just make a cool looking freaking can and sell water in it? But he wouldn’t have known that if he would not have gone and actually went backstage and saw how sweaty these guys were drumming away for, like, 4 or 5 hours at a time, saw them just exhausted backstage, and watched them dump stuff out and refill it. Like, he watched what they did so incredibly closely before he even went into product development. He didn’t product wasn’t even a a part of this. He just watched what they did and then gave them That’s

Scott Cohen: a better solution. Fascinating.

Sarah Levinger: Behavior is crazy.

Garin Hobbs: That is branding. That’s just branding.

Sarah Levinger: Yep. Yep.

Garin Hobbs: Love it.

Scott Cohen: Well, let’s go on the flip side. What are some pitfalls, areas of avoidance? Where’s the line on creepy, like, you know, when does emotional driving go wrong?

Sarah Levinger: Oh my gosh. That’s a good question. So I have noticed in the past, there have been some brands that have made some very large missteps when it comes to try trying to, like, actually, build an emotional connection with their consumers. Probably one of the biggest brands that did this was Pepsi. They tried really hard to get in on the movement.

I think this is in, like, 2017 where every everybody was, yeah, was very heavily involved with, like, kind of, like, Black Lives Matter. And there was, like, these big political movements around protesting and all of us coming together. So they hired a Kardashian to come in and shoot a commercial where she takes a Coke, which is very akin to what they were doing in the sixties by taking a flower and and giving it to police officers and trying to, like, extend all of branches.

Scott Cohen: Now. Yeah.

Sarah Levinger: They were trying to make a connect. I understand what they were trying to do, but, man, they they botched it so hard. So they they came in with this Kardashian, gave a Pepsi to a cop, and the the person that’s playing this cop, like, kinda smiles, and then they all put their weapons down, and then everybody parties together. They got so much flack for this one ad that they had they had to, like, issue an apology for it because they I get I think they just didn’t realize there’s a right and a wrong way to emotionally connect. Now the way Liquid Death is doing it is fantastic because they’re making their own thing.

They’re humorous. They’re funny. They make fun of themselves constantly. They’re very misfit, I don’t fit in, but we don’t really care that we don’t fit in kind of a brand. They have doubled, tripled, quadrupled down on this, and they will never deviate from it.

And that’s what makes the emotion work. Right? You cannot, though, connect yourself to a world event as a brand and not run the risk that people are gonna find it icky. So, yeah, Pepsi was not a good one or Pepsi.

Garin Hobbs: I I was I was counting on Kylie Jenner to bring us world peace. So I was really disappointed in how that resolved itself. But

Sarah Levinger: So ready for it. We were so ready.

Scott Cohen: They make all this money. World peace? Come on.

Sarah Levinger: Well, I’ve seen a lot of brands do it. A lot of brands try it. Budweiser is probably the most recent one that tried to partner with people in a specific identity group and really got a lot of flack for it. Because, again, I I don’t I don’t mind if brands wanna be political. That’s, that’s the choice of the brand that you have to make.

But in general, I would so much rather you just do good in the world. You don’t need to attach. Like, you don’t really need to go that direction unless you really feel the need to.

Scott Cohen: It’s an authenticity piece. Right? I mean, like, liquid death is part of the humor. They were they’re also I mean, you talk about emotional, but then we rationalize. Like

Sarah Levinger: Yes.

Scott Cohen: He saw a problem.

Sarah Levinger: Yep.

Scott Cohen: And when, let me have fun with the solution. Yeah. But it’s still so solving the problem of we wanna look cool, but damn it. We wanna drink water and not blow our hearts open. Right?

So but it has to feel organic in that like, if like, I think about, like, Patagonia. Right? Like, when they do stuff, it’s been part of their bloodstream since the inception of the business.

Sarah Levinger: Forever and ever.

Scott Cohen: Budweiser’s trying to sell beer. Pepsi’s trying to sell Pepsi. Like, it’s they’re multinational corporations. You kinda go, guys, you unless you’ve been doing this forever

Sarah Levinger: Yep. It’s

Garin Hobbs: just You got a costume you put on. Right?

Sarah Levinger: Yeah. Just

Scott Cohen: just sell the Pepsi.

Sarah Levinger: Stay in your lane. Yeah. The consumers are like, no. No. Stay in your lane.

Garin Hobbs: If if you’re if you’re not Yvon Chouinard, leave it to Patagonia to do their thing. Everyone else do their others. I I think, an example that pops to mind is we’re having this conversation. One that certainly wasn’t political, but that I think everyone left everyone feeling a little icky was, I forget exactly which version of the iPhone that it was that rolled out or the iOS that rolled out. But Apple suddenly decided that everyone loves you too, and we’re gonna put the latest you too album, forcefully on every single

Scott Cohen: That was the iPod.

Sarah Levinger: So bad.

Scott Cohen: Thank you. The iPods. Okay. It was, I think it was when they came out with the little gum like, the pack of gum thing, the mini. It wasn’t the mini.

It was the oh, I actually had one of these too. Are you

Sarah Levinger: talking about, like, a shuffle?

Scott Cohen: The original shuffle. The original shuffle that was, like that looked like a pack of gum before they made it even smaller.

Sarah Levinger: Yep. So

Scott Cohen: yeah. No. That was that was a weird one. Yeah. I

Garin Hobbs: find it interesting. Buy item Microsoft soon. So

Sarah Levinger: It’s fascinating where the brands come up with this. The interesting part is, though, too, you notice that, like, depending on which brand it is, some people make, like, such an incredible connections with brands that they become the brand. So for instance, Nike has done this incredibly well with a lot of their consumer base where you if you are a Nike guy or girl, you’re a Nike consumer. Like, you do not ever deviate. For decades, people will just continuously consume anything they have because of the emotional connection is so incredibly strong.

So it can be done just very carefully.

Scott Cohen: You can make the argument with Apple too. There are Apple fan people that they buy nothing but Apple.

Garin Hobbs: Yeah. So this has now been identified as the additional step, beyond customer loyalty. So customer loyalty used to kind of define the apex of brand consumer cooperative engagement. And now we have what are called sort of the the hyper loyalist or the hyper the brand activist. So these are folks whose personal values tend to map or dovetail, very neatly into the displayed values of a particular brand of a particular product.

These are folks who wear it as an aspect of their identity. They would go to war for these brands. Yes.

Sarah Levinger: And it’s just, it’s

Garin Hobbs: it’s it makes sense. It always strikes me as a little crazy. I’m always I’m always trying to measure myself against that yardstick. Like, is there a brand I would die for? It’s really difficult for me to to, you know, kind of come up with that or, you know, someone I would really punch someone in the face over because I just felt so strong that their disagreement was blasphemy in my faith, you know, for this particular brand.

But, yeah, that’s becoming more and more documented, I think, with regards to brand marketers.

Sarah Levinger: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I would a 100% agree with that. It’s so funny. My 4 year old just walked in.

Speaking of 4 year olds, it’s fascinating too because the younger the consumer, right, the easier it is for brands to get, like, very, like, deeply integrated into the brain. So you talk about the fact that, you know, you don’t really have a brand currently that’s like, this is the one. This is the brand. Depending on your personality type, you’d get more addicted to some brands than others. So, like, my husband solidly was a Nike guy.

Like, all he did was Nike. And then he had one bad experience with one customer service rep and never purchased from them ever again. And even told all of us, he was like, we’re not gonna buy Nike. We’re not gonna be a Nike family. I was like, okay.

Calm down.

Garin Hobbs: We’re the team’s family now. Yep.

Sarah Levinger: Exactly. But this is the reason why the first one to 7 year is very important. Like, I watched a lot of Spongebob in the nineties. That’s all I did. So now if I see any Spongebob reference, I’m instantly laughing.

I don’t care what it is. It’s funny. Right? My kids, they have no clue who Spongebob is. It’s not funny at all.

I’ve tried to show them, and they don’t find it funny.

Scott Cohen: No. That’s interesting. Age where you hope they grow out Yeah. Of those. Right?

Like

Sarah Levinger: out of them.

Scott Cohen: I had to I had to deal with Paw Patrol twice. Ah. The instant don’t get I so much hatred for that show. Yes. Fuck.

And it it got to a point where, like, with my oldest, I kinda kept it to myself. I’m like and then they grew out of it, and then my youngest got obsessed, and I would just be vocal to the point that finally she agreed with my point of view on thing. I mean, I can’t watch this anymore. You’re right, daddy. I’m like, yes.

Yes. I won.

Sarah Levinger: Percent. Influence right there. Influence.

Scott Cohen: Yeah.

Sarah Levinger: Yep. It starts early.

Garin Hobbs: It does. And I it’s it’s interesting because I think that really started with my generation. Don’t get me wrong. We went back a little further. I mean, you know, Captain Kangaroo in the fifties and Hopalong Cassidy and all that.

But in the late seventies eighties, they repealed a law, that had previously prevented, toys from being developed into television shows and from television shows being developed into toys because they understood how influential it was against children. And they thought it was brainwashing, manipulation, etcetera. All of that went away, which is why I still have a closet full of He Man, GI Joe, all of that good stuff.

Scott Cohen: Yeah. Well, that’s where all the money from Star Wars comes from. It’s not the movies. It’s the it’s the merchandise. Percent.

Yeah. I mean, if you I I I read Mel Brooks’ memoir, and he has a chapter on, on, Spaceballs. And he said that he went to, George Lucas to ask about, like, the Han Solo character and doing stuff like that. And George Lucas was like, you can do what you want, but I won’t let you merchandise. And so that whole scene where he goes through yogurt’s going through with the merchandise Yes.

Was a joke because of that scene. So but he didn’t he didn’t actually merchandise it. He held true to the word of not merchandising. Now you can amazing. I literally have a shirt that says Spaceballs the t shirt on it, but it’s like somebody did it on their own with TeePublic.

Right? So That’s amazing. But you hear about that. Like, yeah. That makes total sense that we got obsessed because we could play with the stuff we were watching on TV now.

Sarah Levinger: Yeah. It’s it’s, like, it’s visceral for kids.

Garin Hobbs: I I know we don’t have too much time left, but I wanna dig in on this a little bit. So, Sarah, I’m curious what you’ve seen with regards to the so we talked about how this really kind of started in the late seventies, early eighties, right? With children being the target market and much more aggressively than they had in previous decades. In raising my children over the last couple of decades, I feel like that’s really only accelerated, and become much bigger and much more aggressive. I’m curious sort of what impacts you’ve seen with regards to consumer behavior as a result of that watching these children grow older.

Sarah Levinger: Yeah. It’s, I think it’s interesting because nowadays, TV is a little bit different for kids because they have YouTube. So for instance, my kids watch a lot of YouTube, and we’re very careful about, like, pair parental controls, and we make sure that they’re not watching anything weird. Most of the time, for my kids at least, we use parental controls that are, like, 2 or 3 years younger than what my kids actually are because I just don’t know what’s coming out. So our kids are actually, oddly enough, born in a generation where they are consuming, like, products from creators and not TV production Mhmm.

Brands. Like, I don’t even know who this is, but my son really loves LankyBox. Whoever LankyBox is, he loves him. And so we go to Target, and LankyBox has merchandise in Target. So we just go to Target, and he gets these little, like, figurines that are, like, ghosts and, like, little box.

I don’t even know what it is. And so I think as, as you grow, like, as a human, and it’s the same kinda thing as it was for us in, like, the eighties nineties, we saw it on television, they’re just seeing it on YouTube. The only difference being no one is policing the creators. So on TV, right, when you produced a show, you had to go through all kinds of red tape

Scott Cohen: and and practices.

Sarah Levinger: Yes. You had all this stuff that you had to do to just to get on the network because the networks were very strict about, like, this, this, this. You gotta make sure all of this is in place. You also had to have rights to be able to produce merchandise like you talked about. And then whatever merchandise you did produce usually stayed on the shelf for years before we saw it turn over.

Right? I think probably the Frozen franchise was probably the last one that I saw. That particular style of merchandise happen. And, yeah, you’re breathing heavy. Me too.

Scott Cohen: I’m so glad when Frozen was done. It’s like, no, bro. I went through that twice too. Oh, god.

Sarah Levinger: PTSD for frozen. God, every period everywhere was like, no. So it’s interesting because now any creator anywhere can literally go and generate product at any time, throw it up on their own site on Shopify, and start selling merchandise. No one is policing them. Nobody’s telling them no.

And nobody really tells them what they can and cannot sell, which is a little terrifying to me. So in general, I think it’s gonna be interesting to watch the younger millennials and Gen Zers, Gen Alpha in particular, because I think their consumption patterns are gonna be really different than everybody else.

Garin Hobbs: Yeah. Every frontier has their wildcatters for sure.

Scott Cohen: Yeah. Yeah.

Garin Hobbs: We’ve we’ve given a lot of examples of folks who had done it wrong. We talked about kind of where’s the lining creepy, and where’s some great examples where, folks really stepped over the line. You’ve given liquid death as an example of folks who were doing it really right. Who else, in your opinion, Sarah Sarah, it’s just is doing it right?

Sarah Levinger: Oh, gosh. I feel bad. Not a whole lot. I, the bigger part of the world

Scott Cohen: You can grade on a curve. It’s fine.

Sarah Levinger: I think Liquid Death is doing a really good job. I think, Red Bull was doing a really good job for a little while. They’re kinda straying a little bit. Yeah. There’s some some of the larger d to c brands I think are doing pretty well with this.

I haven’t seen anybody that’s been able to nail it down like liquid death is, though. Mostly because I just don’t think they have the founders with the emotional EQ to, like, kind of, pull it together. I’m, like, racking my brain. I can’t think of anybody. I feel like I’m a fan.

Garin Hobbs: This is temporal. I feel like it’s a temporal factor as well. Like, I don’t feel like anyone’s ever always doing it right. Like, Peloton, great example. Right?

Peloton owned everybody.

Sarah Levinger: Yeah. And

Garin Hobbs: everyone was just rushing to get it and eager to show off the fact that they had bought a Peloton. And then came those commercials around Christmas time a couple of years ago, right, where everyone was really concerned about the

Scott Cohen: The one their talent tell the woman to blink twice if she’s okay. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Oh, okay.

Okay.

Sarah Levinger: I will say, true classic is one of the ones that I follow very, very closely because True Classic actually, nailed the same issue. Right? Very, very deep seated problem. And they they

Scott Cohen: Just bought stuff from them. Did you? Literally. It’s interesting to me.

Sarah Levinger: Went off. They went heavy on the emotion. And, again, I I oh my god. Sorry if you can hear that. My dog’s being crazy.

But they went heavy on the emotion in this particular audience, that nobody had ever really broached before because it was an emotional issue and not, like, just a physical like, I need a shirt kind of an issue. So they went specifically after, like, embarrassment, which I found fascinating for specifically for a dude brand, because, like, a male focused fashion brand, that’s that’s pretty deep emotion to go after is this kind of, like, I’ll I don’t like the way my body looks in a regular t shirt. So they’ve made teachers t shirts specifically to basically accentuate specific parts of the body that made universal, like any man. Doesn’t matter what your body type was. All of you will probably look good in this, and I think that’s the reason why they grew it so fast because they went after deep emotion.

Scott Cohen: My wife likes it. I put put on 1 teacher, and she’s like, oh. I was like, that’s the right answer.

Sarah Levinger: That’s emotional validation on a scale you can’t get. And that I find interesting because, basically, what they’re creating is social proof in the home.

Scott Cohen: So

Sarah Levinger: Mhmm. I don’t think they knew they were gonna do this. But if your wife comes and says, dang. You were good in that shirt. True classic did something for you that very few brands have ever done for you, and you will remember that because the emotion is twofold.

Like, you’ve got appeal and embarrassment at the same time. Crazy.

Garin Hobbs: So doing it right sounds to me like it’s really subjective. Right? Yeah. Here are two examples where that I think I think that’s really clear to me. 1, Poppy Soda.

To me, there there’s no bigger turn off than Poppy’s commercials. They just seem so not for me. Right? It’s sort of like we’re excluding all other generations. We’re talking to you, Gen Z, and you only.

So, yeah, kick your parents out of the room. But I mean, there there’s a lot of product flying off the shelf. They have a lot of ass to charge $3 a can, but folks are snapping it up. Right?

Scott Cohen: Yeah.

Garin Hobbs: Here’s another one that’s very polarizing. Stay with me. Lume deodorant.

Sarah Levinger: Oh, that’s a good one, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Lume is an interesting brand.

I I mean, I’ve been watching them pretty closely for a while because deodorant brands are are interesting. There’s a lot of these natural ones that have popped up that are, like, incredibly aluminum free, like, supernatural, all these different things. But Lume does it a little bit different than everybody else, and I need to go take a look at their branding some more to see exactly which emotion they’re going after. But I again, I think as soon as you can kind of narrow down which emotions are coming out heaviest for your specific audience during the time period that they’re feeling at the most, that I think is when you become a brand like Liquid Death and True Classic and Lumi.

Scott Cohen: Well and they got heavy in the summer, right, with their advertising, and I think it makes sense because and this is, I’m intentionally saying it this way, but they want people to avoid swamp ass. Yes. So Yes. But that’s but that’s what they’re going for. Right?

It’s like, hey. Avoid swamp ass. Right?

Sarah Levinger: They nailed it.

Garin Hobbs: I call that emotion radical candor. Right? You’re earning trust and confidence through radical candor.

Sarah Levinger: Yes. Yeah. Especially if you could be honest. I wish more brands would just be honest about like, it’s hard to be a human. It’s just hard.

Like, this is nobody knows what they’re doing. This is also the first and the last today that we’re ever gonna see. Like, I’ve never been this age before. I’ve never had this age of kids. We’ve never had this style of life.

This is the first day I’m ever living like this. So we forget, I think, as marketers to remember that, like, this is hard, and we’re I understand that you need to sell a product, you need to build a business, it makes sense. But you gotta think too about the humans that you’re actually coming in contact with because they’re also suffering in other places of their life that have nothing to do with your deodorant. And if you could support a little bit of that emotion of, like, maybe we can make it so that you don’t have swamp ass and that will help your day a little bit, you again, you can sell so much easier because they’ll get

Scott Cohen: Lumi, that that’s a free tagline for you. No more swamp ass.

Sarah Levinger: No more swamp ass.

Scott Cohen: Yes. Whatever was that?

Sarah Levinger: Empathy people. It’s important.

Scott Cohen: I’m just saying. I’m just saying. We’ve all been there. Alright?

Garin Hobbs: Oh my god.

Scott Cohen: All had swamp ass at some time in our life. We all know what that feels like.

Sarah Levinger: That’s the reason why they’re growing as big as they are.

Scott Cohen: I’m just saying. I’m just saying. Alright. I would love we we talked we we touched on them a little bit at the beginning when you’re talking about your intro and just all the stuff that you’ve read. Yeah.

3 to 5 book recommendations. Right? What are, like, some like, if somebody goes, hey. Where should I start, or what are your top recommendations? We’d love to know what those are for you.

Sarah Levinger: I have so many. I have to, like, pull up my list because I have a giant list. Very first one I always tell people to read first is, like, just it’s like the Bible to me. Marketing the Mind States by Will Leach, one of the best books I have ever read ever, mostly because this was the first one I ever saw that broke down core emotions and applied them to marketing. I haven’t seen a whole lot of marketing books do that.

Marketing books are usually very tactical, very much like, let’s copy and messaging and imagery and blah blah blah. This one was straight emotion, so I loved that one. Secondary to this would probably be The Choice Factory by Richard Shawton. This guy is brilliant. I follow him religiously on Twitter.

Richard Shawton is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, very solidly in the behavior science space, and this one talks specifically about, like, like, things that influence you as a human. Right? Like, the weird little things that that will change, like, behavior just based upon how it’s presented. And that that goes into, like I said, choice architecture a little bit. What was the other one that I choice oh, elements of choice.

That’s right. Oh, who is this by? I have to look it up. I have this on my desk, and I always forget who wrote it, which is funny because I’ve read it many times. Oh, Eric Johnson.

So Eric Johnson’s elements of choice. This is one I read at least once a year because just the way you present options drastically changes how people respond to them. So I can’t get enough of choice architecture. It’s fascinating stuff. So I don’t know.

That’s 3. Do you want more than that?

Scott Cohen: Yeah. I mean

Garin Hobbs: Okay. Whatever you got.

Scott Cohen: Dog with a toy. Right? I know. 100%.

Sarah Levinger: One of the best ones I ever read was by Dan Ariely. It’s called Predictably Irrational.

Scott Cohen: Yes.

Sarah Levinger: Yes. I couldn’t get enough of this book. It was just like, I get myself. Like, I understand why I do weird things. Yes.

Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely. Now he’s in some hot water right now, but his book

Scott Cohen: Yeah. You know what? The one thing I wanted to ask about, and I we talked about generational. I think, like, you know, the the the value statement that is critical for Gen z and, like, Gen Alpha. Right?

That, like, the company values have to align. I say to my kids all the time, it’s mostly to do with, like, music and stuff like that. But I say Yeah. As you get older, you’re gonna have to learn how to separate the art from the artist Mhmm. And where the lines are for those artists.

Right? And I feel like Ariel is kinda the same thing.

Sarah Levinger: Like, you know,

Scott Cohen: he has some really good stuff.

Sarah Levinger: Yep.

Scott Cohen: May not be the greatest person in the world, but that’s okay. Like, you and I think, like, great one of the greatest examples, Michael Jackson. Brilliant music. Good. Oh, personally.

Right? So Yeah. Bill Cosby. You know? There’s so there’s there’s, like Yep.

There’s a and Gary knows this. I I say, like, if, you know, you find out that this person’s a terrible person, like, your your entire faith in humanity collapses, and the answers are Tom Hank. Tom Hanks and Keanu Reeves. Right? Like, you hear nothing but good things about them.

Like, if you found out that Keanu Reeves Keanu Reeves, especially, if you found out that he was a horrible human

Sarah Levinger: being, which

Scott Cohen: is not But you would be like, I’m out. Right?

Sarah Levinger: Like, I’m just

Scott Cohen: right?

Sarah Levinger: That’s good. Yeah. I would quit it. I’d just be like, we’re done. I don’t think we should do any more human stuff

Scott Cohen: because But I feel like whatsoever. Like, that’s that’s an emotional factor that I think is reasonably new. Right? It’s like, well, do their values align with mine? Whereas, like, brand loyal and that’s a brand loyalty aspect that, like

Sarah Levinger: Mhmm.

Scott Cohen: I mean, there are some brands I don’t I I’ve stopped using for political reasons or other reasons, but for the most part, I’m kinda like, but their shoes fit me or, you know, like, whatever it is. Right? Like, the what was it Michael Jordan said years ago? Republicans buy shoes too. Like, it’s

Sarah Levinger: Yes.

Scott Cohen: There’s a little bit of that going so yeah. But I think that that’s really yes. I love I got to see Ariel speak probably 8, 9 years ago, and it just That

Sarah Levinger: guy’s brilliant.

Scott Cohen: I’ve right. That’s my first recommendation to everybody. Just like, hey. Read that and you go, oh, crap. Yeah.

Humans don’t like to decide anything.

Sarah Levinger: Anything. Nope. Nope. Nope. And we’re weird too because, again, like, you could present the option in red and the option in blue, and it might change how I, like, accept it.

It’s humans are weird. Humans are, like, fascinating creatures. But, yes, anything by Dan Ariely, anything by Rory Sutherland, anything by Dan, Daniel Kahneman. Like, there’s just some killers in the space to have some really good books. So, yeah, that’s probably my top 4 or 5, however many that was.

Garin Hobbs: I’ll throw I’ll throw one of my own in there. I mentioned them earlier. To me, Daniel Pink’s got a lot of great works, but I would say to sell is is human. If you haven’t read that, folks, it’s it really kind of breaks down to you that any decision that you are trying to make or trying to get someone else to make effectively positions you as a salesperson.

Scott Cohen: Yeah. And what

Garin Hobbs: you are really doing is emotional manipulation or emotional engineering. Right? So Yep. Whether or not you feel you have a career in sales, you are in fact a salesperson, even if it’s coming down to you, trying to agree with your wife or husband or partner where it is you’re gonna have dinner tonight. Right?

You are selling.

Sarah Levinger: A 100%. Yep. Sales everywhere. The last one I will say is that, oh, yeah. Please do.

I wanna hear more of yours.

Scott Cohen: I’m gonna I’m gonna throw 1 in. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve read this, but, it’s, to think in bets. It’s by Annie Duke. She’s a former professional poker player.

And it’s it’s it’s like how to make decisions without having all the information. And I think that that’s really interesting. Like, I mean, it’s more of, like, a, you know, how to do it type book, but it’s really like, hey. I mean, that’s all poker is, right, is making decisions based off of assumptions. And there’s math involved and everything else, and you try to make it rational.

But it’s, like, it’s really it’s a really cool read, so I highly recommend.

Sarah Levinger: Yeah. I’m gonna read that one. Jeez. I love it that you could take it from different mediums. She’s a poker player.

She doesn’t do marketing. Right? But the way that she thinks about decision making might be drastically impactful

Scott Cohen: for some

Sarah Levinger: of these brands. So yes. Okay. I’m at that point. That’s a good one.

Scott Cohen: And then what was your last one?

Sarah Levinger: Oh, my last one. Misbehaving by Richard Taylor. Richard Taylor has a few books. This one is, like, the making of behavioral economics, though. So this actually talks about, like, how this particular, what would you call it?

Like, industry or, like, line of thinking actually came to be and how that kind of changes what we think about economics and consumers and behavior and, like, kind of more of, like, an economy standpoint. So if you’re, like, an economy nerd like I am, that was that’s probably a really good one to read. It’s I will admit it’s a little dry. Like, if you you have to really kinda, like, stick with it for a minute. But for today, it was also smart.

Just very smart.

Scott Cohen: I’m I’m literally pulling up my Goodreads now. What have I read in the last 5 years?

Sarah Levinger: I know. You and me both.

Scott Cohen: The One Thing The One Thing by Gary Keller is pretty good. It’s, like, the surprising simple truth behind extraordinary results. That’s a good one. Let’s see. What it’s just gonna be listing.

Pay you talked about Arielle. Payoff’s a good short read.

Sarah Levinger: Yes.

Scott Cohen: That’s a really short read. Power of Moments by Chip Heath is really good.

Sarah Levinger: Oh, I don’t think I’ve heard of that one. I just read Alchemy by Roy Sutherland, and that one was mind blowing. That one just broke my brain as a marketer. I was like, oh, no. This is gonna change everything.

Okay.

Scott Cohen: Those are the best ones where it’s like you get but it’s what I find with most of these books is, like, you’re not for, like, 75%, you’re like, alright. And then you get to, like, that one chapter where you’re like, holy shit.

Sarah Levinger: I know. It’s like,

Scott Cohen: oh, god. It’s yeah. Yeah. That’s the one right there, and then you start sharing it with everybody. Like, just just skip the rest.

Just read this chapter and yeah.

Garin Hobbs: It’s a it’s

Sarah Levinger: That’s a peak end rule right there as well. That Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing.

Scott Cohen: Yeah. Well, that I think this is a great place to stop. We’ve been we could go on for so much.

Garin Hobbs: If we don’t stop now, we won’t.

Scott Cohen: Yep. Yeah. Exactly. Well, Sarah, where can we find out more about you and what you do?

Sarah Levinger: Yes. I’m currently in the process of moving over a bunch of stuff. I’m moving kind of the Sarah Levinger entity over to a new entity called, Tether, Behavior Insights, mostly because I found that the brands that I work within the d to c space don’t really have an option for getting consumer behavior insights. So I’m currently building out a brand to solve that problem, speaking of solving problems. Other than that, though, you can find me basically anywhere you consume content.

So at Sarah Levinger on Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram, everywhere.

Scott Cohen: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This has been This is great. This has been awesome. Love it.

And thanks to you, our listeners and watchers, for tuning in or tuning in later. You’re not watching live. That’s okay. That’s for my benefit, not yours. If you’d like to learn more about Inbox Army, check us out inboxarmy.com.

Till next time, be safe and be well.

Garin Hobbs: Be as