Most marketers ignore the neuroscience behind why their presentations don't land - FREE POST
Discovery-driven thought leadership is less work for a bigger payoff.
Welcome everyone to this free sample of B2BTrustLab.
Take a look at this campaign, above. If this celebrated ad were created for the B2B market, it would’ve never seen the light of day.
“We need to be clearer,” a marketer would say, asking to add a logo somewhere to spell it out.
The difference between clarity and curiosity
That’s the difference between telling and letting them see it.
There are two ways to share the same idea:
Version A:
“Most brands are using AI to move faster, but speed isn’t the real advantage. The brands that win will be the ones using AI to think differently, to uncover insights and creative ideas that humans wouldn’t reach alone.”
Version B:
“Every brand is racing to use AI to make more ads, faster. But the campaigns people talk about? They don’t look faster. They look different.”
Version A is efficient.
Version B is effective.
So is the Tesco ad.
The difference is who does the thinking.
The pattern you’ve seen a hundred times
You walk into the conference room. The keynote is queued up. Here’s the agenda.
“Three Frameworks That Will Transform How Your Brand Will Succeed.
“Why Traditional Approaches Fail.”
“We’re the Research-Backed Alternative.”
We’ve been trained to create thought leadership like this:
Lead with the thesis. Support with evidence. Conclude by restating the argument.
It feels professional and respectful. One might even say it feels efficient.
But it’s actually terrible for how human brains work.
What your brain really wants
When you hit a problem that your brain can’t immediately solve, something fascinating happens:
You start scanning for patterns
You generate hypotheses
You test mental models
Then, click! The answer seems obvious.
Neuroscientists call this insight. We non-scientists call it the “Aha!” moment.
And when it happens, your brain’s reward system lights up. It releases dopamine, which is the same circuitry that fires when you eat, win, or experience any type of pleasure.
Your brain doesn’t want to stop there, though. So, it teaches you that solving things feels good. And your clients are craving this experience.
(Kounios & Beeman, 2009, showed that the work itself creates the reward.)
Why most presentations kill that reward
When you open with your thesis, you rob the audience of discovery.
Their brains never activate the pattern-recognition machinery.
No tension. No resolution.
Sure, they might agree with your logic. You may even see head nods.
But they’ll never feel the insight.
And without that dopamine hit, there’s no emotional engagement, and more importantly, no memory consolidation, and no lasting motivation to change how they work.
Get there faster with ChatB2B
Most AI tools are trained to be your cheerleader. They’ll tell you everything’s great while you’re standing there with a deck that sounds like every other deck out there.
Great narratives come from pressure testing.
ChatB2B.ai asks the hard questions and pushes the thinking behind your ideas.
Your ideas are bold, so why let AI make them sound beige?
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Research on experiential engagement shows this clearly: When people discover insights through guided exploration, advocacy and recall spike.
When they receive the same information passively, impact collapses.
When you remove subtext, you’re unintentionally blocking engagement by doing their thinking for them.
What it looks like to let them think
Letting your audience think means sequencing information so their brains can do what they evolved to do.
Instead of opening with:
“Return-to-office initiatives are broken because leaders confuse presence with productivity.”
Show the data.
Let them notice the pattern.
Let them ask why before you answer.
This feels slower.
It isn’t.
Version A front-loads all the conclusions and forces judgment before understanding.
Version B builds momentum as the pattern emerges.
Same time investment.
Completely different outcome.
The objection you’re already forming
I can already hear it: “Busy executives don’t have time for storytelling. They want actionable insights up front.”
And that’s why most busy executives forget most keynotes within 48 hours.
Audiences don’t just want to hear what you know.
They want to experience why it’s true.
Discovery-driven thought leadership gives them that, and bonus:
They do the cognitive work that makes the insight stick
You stop defending your thesis
You’re thinking with the audience, not presenting at them
When the room shifts
You can feel it.
The moment the room moves from delivery to discovery.
People lean forward instead of back.
They stop checking their phones.
That’s what happens when you let their brains do what they’re wired to do.
Stop doing the thinking for your audience.
Give them the pieces.
Let them assemble the pattern.
Then watch what happens when their brains reward them for figuring it out.
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