Stop Guessing: How Neuroscience, Data, & Creativity Create Profitable Brands

Jeffro (00:01.873)
If you’ve ever felt like your brand is shouting into the void, posting content, running ads, and still not truly connecting with customers, then listen up because today we’ll be diving into the psychology of why some brands become irresistible while others struggle to break through. My guest today is Nicole Powell, founder of Halcon Marketing. Nicole is a certified brand strategist and neuromarketer with over 16 years of experience at media giants like Disney, ESPN, and Fox. At Halcon, she and her team blend creative ingenuity with psychology and data to help brands build powerful and profitable connections. So today, she’s here to share how brands can decode their customer psychology, merge creativity with their data, and actually turn those insights into growth. So Nicole, welcome to Digital Dominance.

Nicole Powell (00:49.784)
Hello, hello. Thank you so much for that wonderful intro. I appreciate it.

Jeffro (00:53.736)
Yeah, I’m excited for our conversation. And I really like this concept of merging creativity and data. I want to know, tell us, what does that actually look like in the day to day for a business owner?

Nicole Powell (01:04.974)
Sure. Sure. So what I’ve found is people are either overly reliant on just what those reports show. So that and I think that’s limited. Right. Because you’re not allowing yourself to be creative, to come up with new and interesting ways to attract your target consumer. So I get this question a lot like, you how many brands have you worked with in this particular industry? And that’s kind of how they judge. Right.

Jeffro (01:14.301)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Powell (01:33.102)
Well, you’ve worked with 50 of people that sell apples, so you must do great things, right? So what I mean by kind of blending both worlds is really enabling us to, yes, take a look at the metrics. Where are people coming from? What messaging is resonating? What ads are resonating? But not solely rely on that and literally take a step back and say, okay, how can we learn from the orange industry or the candy industry? Like what cool things are they doing? And really allowing ourselves to just be free and to come up with ideas and experiment and test those ideas and not solely focus on what last month’s report told us and not allowing ourselves to think bigger.

Jeffro (01:59.709)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (02:19.934)
Okay, so now hearing this, I’m sure there’s people at home. There’s the creative side and there’s the analytical side, right? And the creative people are like, I don’t like looking at the data. And then the analytical folks are like, you can’t just do what you want with the data. The data is the data, right? So how do you convince someone who’s in either the purely creative or purely analytical that they kind of need the other side to really grow?

Nicole Powell (02:24.44)
Correct.

Nicole Powell (02:33.516)
Yeah.

Nicole Powell (02:42.85)
Well, if I’m talking to, so everyone, my team consists of these individuals. So, and that’s where we all play on each other’s strengths, right? So there’s always someone to counteract what the other person is saying. But if I’m talking to someone who’s solely creative, you you got to look at actuals. Like you got to look at real time insights because otherwise you’re literally wasting your money if you’re not looking at what’s actually working.

Jeffro (02:50.353)
Right, okay.

Nicole Powell (03:12.344)
But then when I’m talking to the folks that are strictly like numbers, this is what the report is saying, I kind of pull out references of if this person did an experiment or this brand did an experiment with this, this wouldn’t have ever happened. If they didn’t try this kind of messaging, this would never happen. And also, if you don’t try it, you’re never going to know if it works. So you’re kind of just.

Jeffro (03:35.101)
Right.

Nicole Powell (03:38.454)
regurgitating and redoing the same thing over and over, but you have to allocate some budget, you have to allocate some resources to experimentation. Otherwise, you’re not going to know if you’re missing out on that one big campaign or one big creative idea that you just haven’t thought of yet.

Jeffro (03:56.593)
Right, so you’re not saying like, okay creative people, you have to become an analyst now and vice versa. It’s like, cause that’s not really gonna happen.

Nicole Powell (04:00.338)
no, no, never. no, no, no, no. It’s like, it’s a combination of all of those things. So when I create my teams or I look for folks to join the team, you know, there’s all those tests, the discs, any, you know, you know, all those things, but ultimately, you know, I want to come up with a good blend of folks that challenges each other. Right. And I think that’s what makes a successful team and if I lean too heavily one way or lean too heavily on the other way, I think we’re missing out on that secret sauce that’s in the middle, which I think is that mix of all of those different components.

Jeffro (04:38.928)
Yeah, and I think it’s more, it’s not about becoming the other type of person. It’s about accepting that the other person has something of value to bring, even though it’s not your most valued thing, like trusting that. So yeah, tell us more about how you make that work, you know, when you are so different.

Nicole Powell (04:47.246)
Sorry.

for it.

Nicole Powell (04:57.144)
Sure. So for example, there’s, if we have a client, we have one client right now that we do commercials for them. We do billboards for them. We do like pay digital advertising, right? Meta, Google, all those things. So obviously certain tactics yield better reporting. I’m sure everyone out there who’s in marketing knows that, right? So you can get impressions of all that fun stuff.

Jeffro (05:17.82)
You

Nicole Powell (05:24.706)
So we kind of took take a look at those analytics and say, okay, what are these things telling us? Like what are people gravitating towards? Right. But on the other side, we always have these brainstorming sessions where we all just kind of throw out whatever ideas come out and figure out what makes the most sense. So we, it’s really important for me. Yes, there’s account teams. Yes. All of those, those things that you’re used to at an agency level, but I think it’s really, integral to have those brainstorming sessions so that those folks who are in charge of the paid advertising, who have those metrics to share, we can lean on that. But those folks that are really excited to design the next big billboard can also share their creative ideas. And getting the right people in the right space is, think, there’s an over alliance when we’re specialists and we have to work in different silos. But I’m a huge huge, huge advocate of getting everyone in the same room and just talking, which I think is lacking a lot of ways.

Jeffro (06:30.485)
Yeah. Okay. And I mean, this whole thing makes me think of Walt and Roy Disney, right? Kind of a perfect pairing with Walt was the creative one. Roy was the numbers guy, the financial. He made this stuff happen. So he was able to take Walt’s ideas and be like, okay, here’s what we can actually do or how we can make it work. So it’s kind of like that.

Nicole Powell (06:39.031)
Uh-huh.

Nicole Powell (06:42.52)
Yeah.

Nicole Powell (06:46.038)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we also have, so we have a neuroscientist on our team as well. She kind of consults with me because I, although I love learning about the brain, I don’t know enough about it and don’t have access to everything that’s out there. So it’s nice to kind of hear her, her, her scientific tape. And she always says like, when she listens to us kind of brainstorming, because her work is her world’s totally different, right? Like she does studies, she like writes.

All these things, it’s very like sciency. That’s the creative term, sciency. So it’s interesting to hear her perspective listening to our brainstorming sessions and reading our brand books and things like that, where she’s like, my God, like I never would have thought that that’s how they did that. So it’s really cool to see different perspectives come to life all in one room.

Jeffro (07:19.215)
Science-y, yes.

Jeffro (07:39.672)
Yeah. Can you give us an example of when digging into the data led to a creative breakthrough?

Nicole Powell (07:46.496)
Yeah, sure. So when we do these brand books, so essentially a brand book brand guide, right, it kind of outlines all of the different core messaging or pieces that you want to display to your audience, whatever. So a lot of that we do a lot of interviews, market research, all of those things. But at the end of the day, we also really take a look at the marketing that has been done prior to us and do some investigative work. So what kind of ad creatives have been working in generating the most impressions, the most clicks, all of those things. And we take that data and look at it. So up to that point, think they were always using that same creative over and over. It was getting stale, as Amsu and everyone notices. But then when you take a look at it and we kind of

Jeffro (08:40.25)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Powell (08:44.334)
dug a little bit deeper and took that into our interviews and say, okay, why does this male, I don’t want to get too detailed into what this guy does, but let’s just put it this way. Like a lot of women were clicking ads that were centered on like the male experience of this particular medical process. Let’s just put it that way. So let’s just put it that way.

Jeffro (08:54.729)
Yeah, sure.

Jeffro (09:07.291)
Okay.

Nicole Powell (09:10.798)
once we kind of dug deeper and use those insights as to why the heck is this happening? And we took it back to our interviews and our focus groups and asked more questions. We came to find out that this story, this narrative and the male experience, how it pertains to the marriage, the dynamic was actually a really strong messaging point. So then we take that and then we… redo all the advertising that was originally like kind of doing fairly well. And we saw all of our numbers and also conversions increase because we saw that that actual narrative that we totally missed out on was actually resonating. So it was kind of this like circular process where we got insights from what ads were actually working. And then we built it out into a bigger brand story, which then influenced the ads that actually went out.

So that’s typically how it works, but I hope that answered your question.

Jeffro (10:12.182)
Right. Yeah, I think so. there’s, the creative side, there’s a lot more curiosity. So rather than just taking the numbers, like here they are, it’s like, wait, why is it that way? I was expecting it to be this and then digging in. So I can see how that works well together.

Nicole Powell (10:23.278)
Right.

Nicole Powell (10:27.532)
We call the whole brand strategy and the marketing piece kind of this relationship that is always fluid and learns from each other. Neither side is static. So yes, you can create the brand identity, all of that stuff. But then when you put it out into market and you’re actually getting the real-time insights from the marketing that you’re putting out there, you take that insight and then you feed it back into your brand strategy to see how you can adjust it come back out with new creative. I think for my experience, think there’s been this misconception that we create this brand, but we create this brand strategy and that’s it, right? Like we don’t take those insights from the marketing that we’re actually pumping out there to see how we can influence the core of the brand itself.

Jeffro (11:16.249)
Yeah, and I think this kind of back and forth and iterating helps you avoid letting data kill good ideas because there’s often a fear that, you know, it makes the marketing too safe or bland and, you know, if you just go by the numbers, it’s going to not. So it sounds like that’s not the case.

Nicole Powell (11:23.448)
Right.

Nicole Powell (11:29.122)
Yeah.

Yeah, but it’s interesting because a lot of clients I feel like also don’t know what the numbers mean, right? So they’re kind of getting fed like this ad is doing great because this is it. And then they’re like, well, I don’t even know what that means. Like I see the green arrow is up. So I guess it’s working. So let’s just keep going with it. So I think it’s important for also clients in general to feel empowered and then to ask those appropriate questions so that you know, when they are working with agencies and creative people and digital marketing agencies, they know what they’re actually getting.

Jeffro (12:08.727)
Yeah, and I think it can go the other way too, because sometimes marketing is like, we’re going to do this crazy idea stunt thing that no one’s ever done before. And data is like, I don’t think that’s going to line up with our market, right? Why are they going to like that? So yeah, you can rein each other in.

Nicole Powell (12:15.746)
Yeah.

Nicole Powell (12:21.558)
Great. Great.

Yeah, absolutely.

Jeffro (12:27.832)
So let’s talk a little more about customer psychology because obviously this is big part of advertising and all this stuff. How do you even start to figure out what your customers really want, especially when they’re bombarded with messages all day? Obviously you touched on it with iterative stuff, but I kind of want to hear your thoughts here.

Nicole Powell (12:31.011)
Okay.

Nicole Powell (12:40.526)
Sure.

Yeah. So, I love creating like brands, like brand strategies for folks. But when I was doing it, I felt like there was like a key piece missing, right? So you’re doing these interviews, right? You’re doing these stakeholder interviews, these focus groups, all of this stuff. You’re getting as much info as you can. But at the end of the day, people can lie, right? people are put into situations, especially if you tell them, hey, you’re going to be part of this interview and blah, blah, blah, blah. Already you set yourself up for answering questions, maybe that support how you want to be perceived versus how you will actually act. So that always bugged me. So you’re doing all this thing, and then I’m like, OK, but I can

Jeffro (13:28.587)
Yes.

Nicole Powell (13:37.006)
think that I’m a really great person, but at the end of the day, I might not give back $20 I thought on the street, right? So it’s one of those things where it really bothered me. So because of that, kind of went into this like neuro marketing kind of route, which is essentially like the middle ground between psychology, hero economics, and marketing, which consists of just me learning more about the brain and what our subconscious is doing, but also just getting a ton of research and insights from studies that exists from neuroscientists and applying that to some of our strategies to see where those things that are obviously evident in studies align with what people are actually saying, with what my clients target folks are actually saying and crafting something along with creativity, right? and merging all of those three things into really understanding what the client wants. So for example, like if we’re talking about a local, I’m making this up, orthodontist, I don’t know if that was my example. You do those interviews, you understand who they are, you send out surveys, all of those things. But then I also like to really understand from a marketing standpoint, you know, what are these folks not telling us? Right? So it’s kind of like being an investigator, right? Like trying to figure out the next case, like how do I unlock this cold case? On a surface level, you’re telling me you need your teeth fixed, but there could be some other things that, that you want to hear or that you’re nervous about that’s going to make you pick one person over the next. it?

Jeffro (15:06.337)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Powell (15:26.026)
because you don’t have any time is the neighborhood where you don’t have a lot of options. I don’t know what the details are, but getting into those underlying thoughts that people might not want to say out loud, I think is the fun part. I love true crime. I’m in for a good true crime podcast. So this is my version, I think, of uncovering what people aren’t saying and applying that to the marketing piece.

Jeffro (15:51.413)
Yeah.

Jeffro (15:55.03)
Well, I like that. So yeah, I there’s a couple things that I think people should pay attention to there. First of all, you’re not just guessing, you’re gathering information, right? But then you’re layering on the data that you have and the knowledge about the studies that have been done to find those areas where it might not be fully true or where there might be more below the surface, right? Because if you write your ad script after step one of gathering, might be surface level won’t

Nicole Powell (15:55.286)
orthodontist.

Nicole Powell (16:05.068)
Yeah.

Nicole Powell (16:21.196)
Yeah.

Jeffro (16:22.918)
as well as if you go that next level deep and you touch on the underlying issue, then people are gonna be like, looking over their shoulder like, how do you know I, that’s what I cared about, right?

Nicole Powell (16:31.15)
Yeah, you just hit the nail on it. You answered your own question beautifully. This is why you’re the host. You literally summed up what I said, like, perfect. That is perfect. Yeah. Sometimes what I see a lot of clients that come to us, like when they’re trying to see who they want to work with next, like one of their biggest complaints is like, my God, we spend all of this money on an ad or whatever. And we’re getting all these great reports that things are going really well.

Jeffro (16:39.274)
Ha

Nicole Powell (17:00.884)
we don’t see any new bookings. People are coming to us, but we’re not seeing conversions. Usually what I tell them is, okay, what are you actually saying? What is the content? What is the meat? Then they’re like, well, we’re saying this. Then we’re like, well, I actually think maybe we should take a step back and do the gathering and really understand who we’re talking to because sure, you could put… you know, $50,000 on a campaign, but if whatever you’re pushing out there isn’t resonating because you don’t actually don’t know what is resonating, then it’s like a waste, right? And the biggest argument or pushback I get is there’s no, after a brand strategy is done, you’re not getting anything, right? There’s no report. There’s no like, I just locked in five more clients because of your wonderful deck that you presented, right? So it’s,

Jeffro (17:34.249)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole Powell (17:54.964)
it can be a hard sell. Like you have to really trust the process and see the results after the marketing goes out. So this made my goal to like get people excited about it because it is a hard sell a lot of the times.

Jeffro (18:07.471)
Yeah. I think people don’t realize how much work goes into getting that. But you’ve given kind of a good example. And I think one other thing for companies that maybe don’t have the budget to hire someone to go do all that research or don’t know how to do it themselves. Make sure you’re asking the same question, like in pre-sale, like before they like, why are you wanting to update your website? And then after the sale for the customers that actually bought say, why did you decide to update your website?

Nicole Powell (18:12.045)
Yeah.

Jeffro (18:35.336)
Their answers might be different because at first they don’t fully trust you and they’re a little guarded, but they might open up more on the back end. And that’s where you’re going to get those nuggets as well.

Nicole Powell (18:44.982)
Yeah, for sure. Asking all the right questions. And sometimes you come in with like 10 questions and sometimes I don’t ask all of them because I’m like, you said something interesting. I’m sure you feel that way too when you’re, when we’re having these kinds of conversations, you’re like, wait, what did you say? It kind of run with it.

Jeffro (19:01.288)
Yeah. Is there anything that comes up frequently that, you know, businesses get wrong about the customer’s motivations, whether it’s a certain type of emotion or anything else?

Nicole Powell (19:12.974)
Well, I think that’s it that they, majority of people I talk to think everyone is a rational person when it comes to deciding things. Well, I have, if I say I’m the best, that’s great because I have 50 different versions of this one candle. That means it’s great. And a lot of the times people think just.

Jeffro (19:20.244)
you

Nicole Powell (19:38.99)
displaying the attributes or the features or the different packages they have if you’re a service based business is enough. But I think what most people don’t realize and understand is they have to look at their own buying habits. Like if we all sit down and think about how we analyze brands, how we figure out or what content on Instagram makes us stop scrolling.

Jeffro (19:54.1)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Powell (20:03.786)
we even our own behaviors contradict what we think we should do for our business a lot of the times. So it’s hitting that emotional level, especially with all the competition that’s out there. Like you got to understand and meet people where they’re at and have them actually root for you. And a lot of the times people won’t root for you if they don’t connect with you on an emotional level. And if you’re just spewing, I just sold five houses in the past. Great.

So did that person, right? Like what else are you giving me to make me feel connected to you and make me trust you at the end of the day? That’s all our brains want is to trust.

Jeffro (20:34.087)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffro (20:43.654)
Yeah. So how do you make that marketing resonate emotionally without feeling manipulative? Because when you do understand those underlying drivers, it can feel like you’re almost using emotional blackmail against them depending on how you do it. So what do think?

Nicole Powell (20:59.192)
Yeah, so I always say like there’s this a difference between in my opinion, authenticity and like being authentically strategic. So what I mean by that is authenticity. You’re there, right? This is who I am. Take me take me as I am right. But I in my opinion, if you are strategic but also authentic, you’re not just being authentic, but you’re being relevant, right? So yes, you understand your offerings. You understand your value.

But in my opinion, if you’re showing up as who you are and then you understand that that client or that target segment feels a certain way or needs something from you, you don’t have to mold yourself into that person, right? You already understand your core values, your brand values, your why, your purpose, your mission, your vision. Now, how does that fit into their fears? Like, how does what you have? to offer actually going to help them alleviate some of their fears and face their challenges. Like you’re not molding yourself into being that you’re already who you are. It’s just figuring out how who you are fits into their story and into their kind of customer journey. I like to say, when I show up for meetings, like this is literally like I’m not a suit and tie. I don’t wear heels. I don’t.

and for a huge part of my career, I wanted to fit that, that corporate like devil wears Prada. Like I’m going to wear my red purse, you know, mold. And I kind of realized that that’s not who I am. So I understand that my clients have certain fears, like they have certain needs and challenges, but in the way in which I’m going to show up for them, isn’t going to be that it’s going to be like my goofy kind of silly kind of self. And. I can still meet them where they’re at, I don’t have to change who I am to be a good fit. And if that’s who they’re looking for, then there’s a ton of other people that will show up for them in that capacity. But I also know that my client base and the people that drive well with me like this, right? Like this, like this monstrosity over here. So I think that’s kind of the same way how I approach building brands is it’s not necessarily changing who you are, but

Jeffro (23:12.624)
Yeah.

Nicole Powell (23:24.44)
but understanding that there’s different audiences for every brands and you just gotta meet people where they’re at.

Jeffro (23:32.146)
Well, that makes a lot of sense. Like letting yourself be comfortable allows them to feel comfortable and it kind of just works a lot better. And that’s where you’re most likely to get that connection. Okay, perfect. Well, I think this is a good place for us to kind of wind up or wrap up whatever term you want to use. But I appreciate you joining me today, Nicole. Neural marketing and all this stuff is fascinating how we can work together when you do it right and you don’t keep people in their silos. So I love that we got to talk about this.

Nicole Powell (23:38.038)
organically. Yeah, for sure.

Nicole Powell (23:47.915)
and

I’m sure.

Jeffro (23:58.838)
For those of you listening at home, if you want to learn more about Nicole and Halcon marketing, check out the links in the show notes. And Nicole, I have one last question for you. If someone’s listening and they want to tighten up their brand message right now, what’s one exercise or approach that you’d recommend they try?

Nicole Powell (24:07.16)
Sure.

Nicole Powell (24:16.462)
Pretend they know nothing and go back and talk to their customers. Pretty much start from scratch. Pretend you know nothing about your business and send surveys, to talk to your customers, your clients, ask them what are the questions that you might not want to know the answer to, like what could I done better or what were you unhappy with?

I think really getting to know those people is what’s really important before you even get put pen to paper and start writing. I’m gathering that research and data.

Jeffro (24:53.234)
Yeah, it sounds like that’s a good way to remove your bias too that’s built up maybe over time. awesome. Well, thanks again, Nicole. Thank you to everybody listening. I hope you learned something new that you can go apply to your business today. But that’s it for now. Take care and we’ll see you next time.

Nicole Powell (24:57.282)
Yeah. Yeah.