Brands are not built in campaigns. They are built in minds.
A brand is a memory structure. A shortcut. A cluster of cues and associations that makes one option feel safer, smarter, and more “for me” than the rest.
That is why marketing has to be designed for how people decide, not how we wish they decided. If you are not shaping memory and reducing friction at the moment of choice, you are not building preference. You are renting attention.
This is Phil Barden's lane. Phil is the Managing Director of DECODE Marketing. He boasts more than 25 years of brand-side experience across Unilever, Diageo and T-Mobile; and is the author of Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy.
Mark Ritson, PhD in Marketing and founder of The MiniMBA, candidly sums up Phil's work:
“Marketing is fundamentally about behaviour change. And Phil Barden is the expert in this area. His work makes you a better marketer.”
Mark Ritson - Founder, The MiniMBA
In this exclusive interview with Step Change, Phil unpacks why customers do not read your strategy papers, why behaviour often changes before attitudes, and how to find the growth lever that actually moves the needle.
Watch the full interview above. Dive into our breakdown below to turn Phil’s frameworks into action.
The Step Change
Stop asking "How do we change attitudes?", and start asking:
- Which goal are we helping people achieve in this situation?
- Which cues will build memory so our brands come to mind first?
- How do we increase reward and reduce pain at the decision interface?
- How do we measure what people actually associate with us, not just what they say?
If you answer those questions, you stop "doing marketing", and start engineering choice.
The Science Behind Why We Buy
1) Marketing is Behaviour Change: Moving People from A to B
Phil's premise is simple and disruptive:
- People are at Point A (thinking, feeling, doing something now)
- You want them at Point B (thinking, feeling, doing something else)
- Marketing is the work of moving them
The uncomfortable bit: scientists have been studying behaviour for a long time, yet marketing still defaults to opinion, internal consensus, and post-rationalised consumer explanations.
Your audience only experiences what they can perceive in the real world: cues, packaging, interfaces, signals, context. Strategy works only when it becomes brain-friendly stimuli.
2) Autopilot vs Pilot: Most Choice Happens Without "Thinking"
Barden's work builds on dual-process decision-making:
- Autopilot (System 1): fast, intuitive, automatic
- Pilot (System 2): slow, deliberate, effortful
In busy lives, crowded shelves, and endless scrolling feeds, autopilot dominates. That means if your brand is the default in memory, people do not experience choice as a debate. They recognise something familiar, it fits the situation, they act.
The punchline from Phil's Unicorny interview says it all: a finance director built a spreadsheet to "rationally" choose a company car, then admitted the real reason. He wanted a BMW outside his house.
3) People Do Not Buy Products. They Buy Goal Fulfilment.
Motivation is goal-based, whether we are conscious of it or not.
Functional goals are the entry ticket. If the product does not work, nothing else matters.
But differentiation sits in higher-level goals:
- Social goals (status, belonging, signalling)
- Emotional goals (comfort, reassurance, escape)
- Psychological goals (control, competence, identity)
Your job is to identify which goal you can credibly own, then build cues and associations that make your brand feel like the best tool for the goal.
4) Category Entry Points: Context Triggers Goals, Goals Trigger Brands
Different contexts trigger different goals, and different goals trigger different brands shortlists.
Ice cream "for a kid's treat at the park" is not the same job as ice cream "for the couch during a movie". Context flips the goal. The goal changes the brand.
The is where challengers can win without trying to out-incumbent the incumbent. Own the occasions they do not dominate.
5) The Value Equation: Value = Reward - Pain
A purchase happens when perceived reward outweighs perceived pain.
This is not just a metaphor. Neuroimaging research has shown that product preference and price activate different neural systems, end excessive prices can trigger activity in regions associated with negative affect, supporting the idea of a "pain of paying".
Two levers, every time:
Increase Reward
Reward can be:
- Explicit: features, performance, outcomes
- Implicit: status, certainty, identity, control
Reduce Pain
Pain can be:
- Explicit: the price
- Implicit: friction, uncertainty, effort, fear of regret
Loss aversion is a useful warning here: Columbia Business School research shows that people often weight losses more heavily than equivalent gains, so small frictions can crush value if you let them.
6) Decision Interfaces: Behaviour Can Change Without Attitude Change
Context shapes behaviour. People often rationalise later.
The implication is practical: you can change outcomes by redesigning the interface, not by waiting for an attitude epiphany.
Strong decision interfaces make reward feel:
- Tangible: real, concrete, visible
- Immediate: now, not later
- Certain: lower perceived risk
7) Why Performance-Only Tactics Erode Brands
Brands live in memory structures, not just "media moments".
If you train the market to buy you only when you discount, you create a meaning: "cheap". That meaning is sticky. It reduces pricing power. It turns growth into a race to the bottom.
Performance is not the enemy. Meaningless performance is.
8) Motivation vs Emotion: the WHAT and the HOW
A sharper brief starts here:
- Motivation (the WHAT): What goal are we linking the brand to?
- Emotion (the HOW): How do we deliver the message so it gets processed and remembered?
Emotion can sharpen attention and encoding. But if you confuse emotion for the goal, you end up making ads people enjoy and ignore.
9) Asking Customers is a Trap: Why Self-Report Misleads
People are unreliable witnesses to their own behaviour. Memory is reconstructive. Social desirability edits responses. Introspection lies.
Purchase intention research also shows why stated intent is fragile as a predictor: predictive strength varies by category, product type, time horizon, and how the intention question is asked.
Phil recommends implicit methods (reaction time approaches) to measure what people actually associate with brands, not what they feel they should say.
10) AI and the Future of Influence
AI will not change human nature. Goals still drive choice. Value is still Reward - Pain.
What changes is speed and scale.
Phil discusses tools like Brain Suite as a way to reduce subjective creative debate and accelerate decision cycles.
Use AI to increase iteration velocity. Do not use it to outsource judgement.
Checklists For Your Next Review
Reward - Pain Audit
- Where can we increase implicit reward?
- Where can re remove implicit pain (friction, uncertainty, effort)?
- What anchors shape perceived value?
- Are we designing value by removing pain, not accidentally adding it?
The WHAT/HOW Brief
WHAT: What goal are we helping the audience achieve? What makes us the best solution?
HOW: What emotion carries the message? Are distinctive brand assets present? Is it easy to process?
The Bottom Line
The market is not rational. It is not patient. And it is not reading your strategy deck.
It is choosing fast.
Phil Barden gives leaders a commercial advantage: a disciplined way to design brands around goals, memory, rewards, and friction. That discipline scales. it reduces internal debate. It improves creative quality. It protects pricing power. It compounds over time.
In a world accelerating with AI, the fundamentals of human choice remain stable. The winners will not be the brands that shout the loudest. They will be the brands that are easiest to choose.
That is not art versus science.
That is science applied to growth.
Learn More from Phil Barden
If this thinking resonates, go to the source.
Phil Barden's Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy remains one of the most practical guides to applying behavioural science in marketing. It is not theory-heavy fluff. It is a field manual for building brands that get chosen.
Buy the book: The Science Behind Why We Buy (2nd Edition)
Explore DECODE Marketing: https://decodemarketing.com/
Get the latest from Phil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philbarden/
