Behavioral science: A marketer’s secret weapon

As appeared in Fast Company in March 2025:

When it comes to persuasion, whether it’s convincing customers to buy a bottle of whiskey or changing hearts and minds in an election, nothing beats the power of behavioral science.

XenoPsi founder MichaelAaron Flicker was originally exposed to the work of behavioral scientist BJ Fogg at the Stanford Behavior Design Lab. While working for AstraZeneca in the mid-2010s, he was able to put what he learned into practice. He used behavioral science techniques to help people take the medicine they needed.

Since founding XenoPsi Ventures, Flicker and his team have used behavioral science principles to drive success for portfolio businesses, which range in sectors of their owned-and-operated brands to clients of their professional services companies.

“It doesn’t matter if you are marketing bourbon, socks or even politicking, understanding the science behind consumer behavior is a marketer’s best secret weapon,” Flicker says. “We take academically rigorous, double-blind studies and apply them to everything we do. Behavioral science is at the center of all the brands we launch, the consulting/advertising/marketing we do, and the way we are growing our company.”

LIGHTNING BOLT IDEAS ARE A LIE

Watching “Mad Men” makes it seem like industry-busting, creative ideas strike Don Draper in the middle of the night, but that’s not the most reliable way to get results in the real world. Human beings, as unpredictable as they seem, actually act in rather predictable ways. The fundamentals of behavioral science outline the many ways humans behave in different scenarios, which informs how smart businesses connect with customers and influence them to take action.

“Using behavioral science gives us a leg up because it makes everything we do more likely to be successful,” Flicker says. “You can have confidence in what we do because it’s backed by science.”

WELLOW: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

When Flicker was dating his now-wife in a cross-country romance between San Diego and New York, it wasn’t time zones that were killing his vibe. It was swollen legs from all those hours in the air. When he discovered that the compression socks available at the time were famously ugly and uncomfortable, he knew could do better, and his compression sock company Wellow was born.

Designing the perfect compression sock that would be cute, comfortable and do the job of preventing painful swelling in customers’ legs was one thing. But what to call it? Science stepped in to help.

Flicker and his team worked with the principles of the bouba-kiki effect to craft a name for his new invention. The bouba-kiki effect refers to the human tendency to assign attributes to certain sounds, seemingly without explanation. This is why the word “kiki” sounds spiky but the word “bouba” sounds round. First demonstrated by Wolfgang Köhler in 1929, the sound symbolism apparent in the bouba-kiki effect holds true with different ages, languages and cultures.

Flicker and his team experimented with sound symbolism until they found a name that evokes a soft, cozy mood with wellness at its center: Wellow.

“You hear the name and it’s evocative,” Flicker says. “It feels mellow, relaxing, comfortable, and that’s rooted in deep insight.”

BOTTLE BEHAVIOR

When Elijah Craig Whiskey was suffering from a sales slump, Method1, a XenoPsi company, reinvented the brand from base to cork after diving into the science behind why customers weren’t buying.

“It started with actually going to the shelf with consumers and asking them why they buy what they buy and what they’re thinking about when they choose a bottle,” Flicker says.

“What we discovered, among other things, was that customers were skipping right over Elijah Craig because the way the bottle was shaped, it was ‘reading’ like a rum bottle: with a squat shape and a large paper label. Customers were overlooking Elijah Craig before they even had a chance to taste it. So we elongated the neck and made the cork more visible so it would feel more like a whiskey bottle.”

After a complete rebrand that included reimagining the bottle shape, product formulation, pricing strategy and brand positioning, Elijah Craig has seen a seven-fold sales increase.

START HERE FOR SCIENTIFIC SUCCESS

“Behavioral science is not an academic ivory tower,” Flicker says. “It’s really accessible to each and every one of us. We just have to find the right ways to plug it into our brands.”

From following researchers and thought leaders on social media to sourcing studies from universities and research labs, there is no shortage of ways to learn more about behavioral science, including Flicker’s Behavioral Science for Brands Podcast. In addition to posting weekly about behavioral science trends in marketing, Flicker and his co-host Richard Shotton are publishing a book on the topic later this year called Hacking The Human Mind: The Behavioral Science Secrets Behind 17 of the World’s Best Brands.

“Using behavioral science in your sales and marketing isn’t foolproof, but it will give your brand a big leg up when you’re trying to connect with customers,” Flicker says.