LESLIE ZANE 
 Author * Brand Consultant * Instinct Marketing Pioneer * Keynote Speaker
TOPICS
Instinct Advantage
​Brand Growth
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TRAVELS FROM
The pioneer of “Instinct Marketing,” founder of the first female-led brand consultancy that still exists today, and author of the soon-to-be-published “Instinct Advantage,” Leslie Zane is a renegade.  She is revolutionizing how organizations shape consumer decision making by focusing them on changing instinctive behavior – the decisions that consumers make on autopilot. A Yale University and Harvard Business School graduate, Zane began her early career at top companies including Bain, P&G, and Johnson & Johnson, where she was surprised by the hit or miss performance of marketing initiatives. Zane’s perspective defies traditional thinking. She maintains that what consumers say is unreliable, that indirect cues are more effective than direct persuasion, and that successful ideas, brands, and political candidates have multiple associations, not just one defining identity trait.  But, like many unconventional thinkers, her ideas were dismissed for years.  With a chuckle, she admits, she’s had a 25-year head start practicing what behavioral science theorists are beginning to explore and consider today. 

From the “Real Food” strategy that turned McDonald’s around, to “Stop Hunger from Stopping You,” the Snickers strategy that produced the record-breaking Betty White ad campaign, Zane’s brand reinventions are legendary. Many brand positionings and symbols we take for granted today—from the purity and snow-capped mountains of Aquafina water to Colgate Total’s “Whole Mouth Health” and multi-colored swoosh — came from Zane’s Triggers work. And today, she is dedicated to effecting societal change by applying her proprietary methodology to vexing social issues.
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Her TEDx talk, The Hidden Link Between Success and the Subconscious, upended the marketing industry, leading to a book deal revealing how Zane’s counter-intuitive approach creates preference at the subconscious level. The Instinct Advantage will hit bookshelves in 2024: Hachette calls it a “BIG IDEA” book and the most important construct since Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” because it explains how the world works. In the publisher’s words, “Once you understand the construct, you can’t unsee it.”
Zane is a powerful orator and a TEDx speaker whose proprietary methodology has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Knowledge@Wharton, MIT Sloan Review, Forbes, Ad Age, CMO.com, Barron’s, Newsweek, Mediapost, Scientific American and more. A native New Yorker, Zane sits on two non-profit Boards: El Centro Hispano, dedicated to helping improve the lives of Hispanic immigrants, and CURATE 360, where she helps minority-owned companies improve their branding and scale their businesses. ​

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​"She’s the best in the business, and I predict she’ll soon be a household name."

--Michael Farmer | CEO, Farmer & Company,
Former Bain & Co Partner
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​TEDx
VIDEOS