In this, the second official episode of the Smallish Circle, I speak with Lauren Schellenbach. Lauren is, among other things, a lesbian who sometimes lapses into a "heavy metal voice." As fate would have it, this tendency has not (yet) prevented her from singing in the Vox Femina choruse and even rising to the position of chair on the chorus' board of directors. (If you'd like to hear the chorus in action, you may do so here.)

Lauren had mentioned to me several times that her mother was a "red diaper baby." I took the opportunity of our conversation to ask what that meant. The ensuing discussion took us from the nature of communism to the essence of Americanism to her mother's lingering resentment towards the Dodgers for having moved from New York to Los Angeles.

Since Lauren too moved from one coast to the next, I asked her to name the biggest difference between NYC and LA. Her answer was "food." Go figure.

Please enjoy my conversation with Lauren, and if you happen to be in LA, look her up. She'd love to see you.

Here's the first official installment of Matthew T. Grant's Smallish Circle Podcast. In this episode, I tell of the time in 1993 went I visited Timothy Leary in his home in Los Angeles.

I had presented a paper on Leary's work at a conference at Cornell that spring and brought a copy with me to give to him. I hadn't really thought this through and was surprised when he started reading the paper out loud and making fun of it. I was then embarrassed when I realized how critical and even mocking it was. It really got me thinking about the way I treated people - real, living human beings, after all - in my academic work.

Things took a sort of comical turn when Leary said that he had work to do but that he had some videos of himself that my friend Alexandra and I could watch. He popped in the videos and disappeared for about an hour. Strange.

So: fame, philosophy, and a sunny afternoon drinking white wine with a living legend. Enjoy.

Originally broadcast on March 17, 2008.

In Part 1 of our podcast interview with Dr. James Intriligator, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Wales in Bangor, we talked about branding, loyalty, and consumer psychology.

In Part 2, we discuss personae and customer motivation, different neuormarketing approaches, and how understanding the brain can help us make more effective commercials (among other things, of course).

A few highlights of the interview can be found at the following time coordinates:

01:50 - How to Get the Most out of Focus Groups
03:52 - Aunt Sally and the Straw Man
05:03 - Customer Motivation: Dreams and Aspirations (not just Fears, Uncertainties, and Doubts)
09:59 - Marketing and Branding from a Strategic, Artistic Perspective
11:55 - "There are a lot of good things you can do with marketing"
13:39 - Defining "Neuromarketing"
15:16 - Pros and Cons of Different Neuromarketing Approaches
17:15 - "If someone wants to pursue marketing from a neuromarketing perspective..."
20:44 - The Classic Mistake that Most Ads Make
21:58 - Another Classic Mistake
24:16 - Segment the Emotional and Attentional Aspects of Your Campaigns

The other day an SEM specialist told me, "Marketing is a hard science."

She said it, at least in part, ironically. "Marketing? A science? Come on! What's next? Fishing?"

Marketing may not yet be a hard, or even soft, science. Nevertheless, scientists are indeed taking a hard look at marketing and beginning to paint a very interesting picture of how and why marketing actually works IN THE BRAIN.

Dr. James Intriligator is one such scientist. Having received his doctorate in psychology from Harvard for work on "attention," James did a stint as a consultant to the automotive industry, among others, before assuming a post in the Center for Neuroscience and Consumer Psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor.

I've known James for many years and decided to call him up when I wanted to get a handle this "neuromarketing" thing. He was kind enough to walk me through this emerging field as well as his own findings regarding brand loyalty (Hint: It kind of makes you act like a crazy person!), segmentation, and literally getting inside the customer's brain.

I invite you to listen in on our conversation. I think you'll find the discussion illuminating and, at times, even entertaining. (Where else will you hear people talk about "brand build-up," "brand flossing," and "brandectomies"?) I had a lot of questions for James and he had a lot of answers. For this reason, I've split the interview into two parts.

A few highlights of the interview can be found at the following time coordinates:

02:35 - How Brands Build Up in Brains
04:06 - Ways to Quantify Brand Loyalty
05:06 - Brand Loyalty, Brand Familiarity, and the Attentional Blink
06:45 - Dealing with Excess Brand Build-Up
08:13 - How to Forge a Robust Representation of the Brand (in the Brain)
10:27 - What Counts as an "Experience" in "Experiential Marketing"?
11:40 - Problems with Product Placement
13:23 - Brand Loyalty and Brain Damage
17:43 - A Brand Is the Net Sum of All Experiences You've Had with a Product/Company
19:22 - The Web as a Branding Medium
23:09 - Segmenting the Brand
26:09 - The One Rule that Fits All Branding and Marketing Activity