In this interview, Leslie Zane explains how the human brain processes brand decisions primarily through the subconscious mind, which operates at 40 million bits per second versus the conscious mind’s 40 bits per second. She cites research indicating that roughly 95 % of brand purchases are driven by the subconscious, with the conscious mind merely rationalizing after the fact. Traditional marketing that targets the conscious mind—feature lists, logical arguments, overt persuasion—faces resistance because the conscious brain detects sales attempts and pushes back. Zane argues that marketers should instead target the subconscious by using imagery, symbols, iconography, naming, flow, and emotional cues, combined with functional benefits, to embed a brand into the consumer’s memory network. She introduces the “brand connectome,” a physical‑like network of associations (images, language, experiences, sounds) that attaches to a brand’s central node in memory. A large, positive, salient connectome makes a brand the instinctive, go‑to choice in a category. She illustrates this with a supermarket orange‑juice example, showing how shoppers reach for the familiar brand without conscious deliberation. For SaaS founders and marketers, the takeaway is to design branding and messaging that builds a robust subconscious connectome—through visual cues, metaphors, naming, and emotional storytelling—while still supporting functional messaging, to accelerate growth and market share.
Chapters
And can you speak a little bit more about the coin term you called the triggers strategy? And specifically for our audience who are mostly SaaS founders or SaaS marketers, investors, why is it important for them to consider that when building their companies?
So, the answer to that question goes back to kind of understanding about the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. So, can I spend a few minutes just explaining that?
Go for it.
So, we have 2 different types of brains, so to speak, just to say it figuratively, a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. The conscious mind exists in our neocortex. That's the newer part of the brain and it moves very slowly. It thinks very slowly. It only processes information at 40 bits per second. In contrast, our subconscious mind, our instinctive brain, which is in the older part of the brain, the reptilian complex, that processes information at 40 million bits per second and it's automatic.
Mm-hmm.
We're not aware of it. It turns out that 95% of the brand purchases that we make are made by our instinctive brain, not by our conscious brain. We may rationalize after the fact with our conscious brain. We may think that we made the decision voluntarily, but the fact is, it's actually our instinctive It's the instinctive brain, and we'll talk more about how this works in a minute, but it's the instinctive brain that actually controls most of the decisions we make, and that's particularly true in the world of brands.
I think that I've heard those studies where your instinctive mind, if you're hungry or you're tired and you go into a store, you're just more likely to spend more or make a purchase that maybe you wouldn't have with a full stomach or a clearer mind.
There are all kinds of things like that that are going on. You're exactly right. But, why this is important for marketers and for business owners and startups and entrepreneurs to understand is that it turns out that if you market to the conscious mind, which is basically how most marketing is crafted today, we try to persuade people, we try to tell them the rational reasons they should buy something. We go up against the conscious mind with most of our marketing techniques, and frankly, a lot of our research also asks people what they think. But what people say is notoriously unreliable. What people say has very little to do with what they actually do. We just saw that in the US presidential election, and we've seen that over and over again in most polls and in a lot of different types of research. In terms of marketing, when you try to persuade the conscious mind of something, you're met with resistance. You're met with skepticism. The conscious mind sees you coming. It says, ah, this person's trying to sell me something.
Mm-hmm.
And, it pushes back and it's resistant. So, when you market to the conscious brain, you're pretty much going to run up against a wall. It's going to be really hard to get results. It's going to be hard to gain share. It's going to be hard to grow your company. Now, let's look at the conscious mind and see how that works. The conscious— I'm sorry, the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind doesn't see you coming. It works automatically. It's not aware that it's being marketed to. It turns out that you can accumulate information about your brand In the subconscious mind much more easily. It goes down easier. You're piggybacking on ideas that already exist in the subconscious mind, and it accumulates there without the person realizing it. And it's much more malleable and easier to influence.
Right.
So you can make progress faster. You can gain share faster. You can drive revenue growth on an accelerated level. level by marketing to the subconscious over the conscious. By the way, that's where brands form. Brands form in the subconscious, in your memory, not in the conscious mind. Does that make sense?
It does make sense. Just being more specific there, conscious mind, what comes to mind to me right now when I think of that, the marketing that we see is features, solutions, this is what it can do for you, this is the benefits. You're trying to rationalize, is this for me? Just thinking it through logically. Subconscious, what would that look like from a SaaS perspective, if you can mention?
Imagery, symbols, iconography, the flow, the feeling, the names, naming, things that have different dimensions to them. Because it's not that I'm saying the features and the benefits don't matter. I'm not saying throw all of that out the window. Because it turns out that the optimal is a combination of rational and emotional. Functional and emotional wins over functional alone, and functional and emotional wins against emotional alone.
Right.
It's the combination of the two, but imagery and codes and cues and metaphors and symbols and names, all of those things have an outsized, outsized exponential impact on the subconscious brain. And so you're able to accelerate the growth of your brand versus going up against the conscious mind, which is going to just take a lot longer, and you're going to have all this resistance.
What about like social proof testimonials, you know, things like that? That would probably be subconscious, right?
Yeah, I think all of that's All of that's helpful. So we'll talk, you know, in a minute about what a brand really is, but influencers and all of that, that's part of what goes into a strong brand.
Cool. So I want to talk about an example. So I think you talk and write about the brand Connectum. Can you tell us a little bit, you know, what the backstory is there? What is it? What do they do? And why is it important that you That we talk about that?
Sure. So, I said a minute ago that brands form in our subconscious. Where do they live? They live in our memories. So, it turns out every brand has a network of associations that has gotten glued to the brand over time. And, since everybody in your audience is kind of on the technical side, I think I can say it this way. Imagine your brand is a central node, and connected to that central node is a bunch of branches that have gotten adhered to the brand over time. Each of those branches has physicality. It's not just a wispy— a brand is not a wispy thing that's rolling around in our brain. There's actual physicality there in that the central node is the brand, and these branches get glued to the brand through protein synthesis and ideas, associations, positive and negative associations, images, language, experiences, sounds. All of that gets glued to the brand over time and becomes an accumulation of memories that form an ecosystem or network around that central node. And that is what a brand connectome is. It's a hidden network of associations that lives in our subconscious, lives in our memories based on accumulated memories of the brand, and it dictates what you do. If your brand connectome is large and robust and has lots of positive associations, it is going to be your go-to brand, 'cause it's the largest one in your mind, the largest and most positive. Whereas, if the brand has fewer associations, it has a smaller brand connectome, less robust, it's weaker, it has less salience in your mind and less positivity, and then it's the brand you don't choose. So in every category, most people have their go-to brand, And then, they have other brands that they use less or not at all. And, it all is driven by your brand connectome. Your brand connectome dictates the brand that you choose that's your go-to brand that you use over and over and over again. And, the reason that that's so important is that is the holy grail of marketing, to have your brand— be the brand that's instinctively chosen, where you have instinctive brand preference in a category. You want to be the brand that has the dominant— that's the dominant instinctive choice in your category. So let's say I'm in the supermarket. Let's just move away from software for a minute.
Sure.
But let's say you're in the supermarket and you're in the orange juice aisle. And you're going to buy your orange juice today. Do you sit in the aisle and think about it and say, hey, should I buy this brand? Should I buy that brand? Well, this one has 5 benefits. No, this one has 7 features. Let me see which one. No, you don't do that. You just reach. And you reach over and over and over again for the same brand for the most part, as if you're on autopilot.
Right.
That moment, that is a moment of instinctive choice, and it's driven by the fact that you have a brand connectome for that brand that's large and robust and most salient in your mind. The brand that's most salient is the one that you choose. Salient, most salient, and most positive. It has to be both.
