The Emotion Experts Ignore
Something came up in my conversation with brand strategist Kevin Perlmutter that I haven't been able to shake.
He spent over 20 years working inside some of the world's largest ad agencies and brand consultancies. Two decades. High-stakes clients. Major campaigns.
And in all that time, one topic almost never came up in the room.
Emotion.
The smart people in those rooms had quietly decided it didn't belong there.
This issue is about why that's costing experts — maybe including you — more than they realize.
60 SEC INFLUENCE
The Emotion Mistake Most Experts Make
Here's the problem: most experts are trying to influence people with the wrong tool.
You have the expertise. You have the data. You know the benefits and features of your offer. You show up prepared. You lead with logic.
And people still don't seem to fully get what you do.
They nod. They say it sounds great. And then nothing happens. (Does this ever happen to you?)
Here's what's actually happening under the surface.
Every decision people make — who to trust, what to buy, which consultant to hire, which brand to stay loyal to — is driven first by emotion, then rationalized by logic. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio famously discovered that people with damage to the emotional centers of their brain couldn't make even the simplest decisions. The discovery was that it’s not just emotions affect decisions, it’s that decisions require emotions.
Kevin Perlmutter — brand strategist, behavioral science researcher, and author of Brand Desire — found something that backs this up with hard numbers. In a landmark study, his team discovered an 86% correlation between how something makes us feel at a subconscious level and our desire to have that experience again.
But here's where it gets interesting.
The emotion Kevin is talking about isn't sentimentality. It's not making people tear up or laugh or feel a sense of dread. That's not what this is.
It's something far more useful: understanding how people want to feel, so you can show up in a way that actually connects and get people to take action.
One question. That's the whole framework.
How do people want to feel?
Start there. Before the pitch deck. Before the messaging. Before the tagline. Ask that question first — and everything else gets easier
As promised, influence in 60 seconds.
INFLUENCE DEEP DIVE
The Thing Smart People Look Down Upon
Kevin had spent over 20 years in brand strategy — ad agencies, global consultancies, blue-chip clients — before he encountered a concept that should have been central to everything he was doing.
The limbic system. Emotional motivation. Subconscious decision-making.
"We stood in conference rooms," he told me, "and talked about supposed best practices from other brands and obvious information about customers and tried to make brand benefits out of them. We never talked about the limbic system, the subconscious, emotional motivations — the drivers of our decisions and our behaviors. This never came up."
Twenty years. Never came up.
And Kevin isn't describing a small boutique shop. He's talking about decades inside some of the largest brand organizations in the world.
So why does emotion keep getting left out of the room?
Because smart people have decided it doesn't belong there.
When Kevin started asking brand leaders why they thought emotion was undervalued, the answers were remarkably consistent. There's fear and discomfort. Serious people in serious rooms present hard data at board meetings — and the moment you start talking about how people feel, it sounds soft.
Woo-woo. Touchy-feely. Unscientific.
So professionals default to what feels safe: features, benefits, third-person corporate copy. We are proud to partner with organizations who…
Nobody is moved by that sentence.
But the deeper problem isn't that emotion gets ignored. It's that most people have the wrong definition of what emotion even means.
The Misconception That Keeps Experts Stuck
When most professionals hear "emotion," they picture advertising. Funny commercials. Tearjerker Super Bowl spots. Fear tactics. The knife-in-the-gut sales technique.
So they opt out entirely. "We don't want our clients to cry. We're not that kind of brand."
Kevin's reframe changes everything.
Emotional intelligence in branding — in communication, positioning, influence — means understanding the emotional state of the people you're trying to reach. Their frustrations. Their fears. Their unmet needs. The way they want to feel when they're working with someone like you. That's the work.
"The appropriate way to think about emotion," Kevin told me, "is not the brand being emotional. It's about understanding emotional insights about the people you're trying to reach so that brands can connect in relevant ways."
Relevant. That's the word.
Not manipulative. Not sentimental. Relevant.
And relevant only happens when you understand what's actually going on inside the person you're trying to reach.
The Sentence That Changed Everything
Here's a story from Kevin's work that illustrates exactly what this looks like in practice.
He was building the brand strategy for a B2B software company — an inventory management platform. Functional, technical, not exactly emotionally charged territory. Kevin insisted on talking directly to customers, even though the client thought they already knew what their customers cared about.
One interview changed everything.
A customer said: "Before this company, I used to get in trouble at work. Now I'm the hero."
That's it. That's the whole emotional truth of the brand.
Not features. Not uptime percentages. Not integration capabilities.
I used to get in trouble. Now I'm the hero.
That single sentence became the foundation for everything — a brand strategy built around the idea of being supply chain invincible. It spoke directly to the status anxiety, the professional fear, the deep desire to be competent and recognized — all the things their customers were feeling every single day that nobody had thought to ask about.
Think about what happens when the person across from you feels: they get me.
That's what Kevin calls a limbic spark — the moment emotional motivation meets brand desire. It doesn't happen from features. It happens from understanding.
This Applies to You
Whether you're building a brand, positioning yourself as a consultant, a fractional executive, a coach, or trying to communicate your expertise more clearly — the question isn't "what do I offer?"
The question is: how does the person across from me want to feel?
And then: what can I say or do that helps them feel that?
It's that simple. But it's not that easy. This is the question that separates the experts who connect deeply, from the experts who are still waiting for people to figure out whether they are worth connecting with.
Kevin's 3 Questions (Use These Anywhere)
Kevin calls it the Limbic Sparks mindset. You don't need a six-month research project to use it. Three questions. Any situation — a brand strategy, a sales conversation, a LinkedIn post, a cold email.
1. What are people dealing with? Their frustrations. Their unmet needs. The situation they're trying to get out of — or get into. What keeps them up at night, and what would make things better?
2. How do they want to feel? Not what they want logically. How do they want to feel? Confident. Recognized. Relieved. In control. Safe. Like the hero in the room. Like they belong.
3. What should you say and do to help them feel that way? This is where your expertise meets their emotional reality. What do you communicate, how do you say it, what experience do you create — all in service of helping them feel what they're trying to feel.
These three questions work at the brand level and at the human level. In a one-on-one conversation or in copy to ten thousand people.
Emotion isn't the thing you add at the end to make something feel warmer. It's the foundation you build everything on.
My reflection
I’ve worked with hundreds of experts over the years, and been in rooms with many others. Here’s the thing that breaks my heart: they are invisible. People who can receive their gifts can’t find them. Why?
The invisible expert problem.
Experts aren’t able to package their expertise and connect with people, because they continue to lead with logic and undervalue emotions. (Join my positioning sprint waitlist)
When Kevin asked every brand leader he interviewed the same question: why do you think emotion is undervalued in professional settings? The answer was almost always the same. It sounds unscientific. It sounds woo-woo. It won't land in a board meeting.
And yet — 86% of what drives the decision to come back to a brand is emotional.
How do you like woo-woo now?
I’ll see you next Sunday.
Change behavior, change lives 🤘🏽
Howie Chan
Creator of Influence Anyone
P.S. 24% of respondents say they will shift perspectives to calm emotions in a tense situation. What would you do? Join 801 other leaders who’ve uncovered their natural influence style profile: Take the free assessment.
Don’t miss:
The Influence Anyone Podcast
Why Most B2B Branding Fails: The 86% Correlation Most Brand Ignore
This week on Influence Anyone, I sat down with Kevin Perlmutter — brand strategist and author of Brand Desire — to unpack the hidden emotional forces shaping every decision your audience makes.
In the full episode, we get into:
Why "finding your why" is a half-baked brand strategy
The 86% correlation that changed how Kevin thinks about influence
How one sentence from a customer drove an entire B2B brand strategy
Why B2B companies are afraid of emotion and what it's quietly costing them
🎧 Listen to the full episode on Apple, Spotify, the web, or wherever you get your podcasts.