Audience Connection

Oliver Atkinson continues his conversation with Sandra Gaudenzi to ask a tougher question: once a story moves someone, how do you turn that moment into real change without slipping into manipulation?

Sandra reframes impact storytelling as intentional storytelling, mapping every layer from who makes the work and how the interface is designed to the conversations, communities, and campaigns that follow release. Her metaphors land hard: a single story is just one fish in an ocean of narrative change, and a brand chasing short-term persuasion is like a parent ending a supermarket tantrum through force, effective now, costly later. She also argues that behavior change needs repetition, belonging, and values that are lived consistently, not just performed in the ad.

For marketers, brand leaders, filmmakers, and strategists, this episode is a sharp guide to behavior change, long-term trust, and the kind of storytelling that shapes culture instead of merely chasing attention.

Learn more about Sandra:

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Oliver Atkinson sits down with interactive documentary pioneer Sandra Gaudenzi to explore why stories become more powerful when audiences stop being spectators and start becoming participants.

From the childhood moment a speck of dust made her realize perception is constructed, Sandra traces how language, culture, and media shape reality. She breaks down interactivity from branching paths to participatory spaces, then makes it tangible with a locative storytelling project that asks cyclists to record why they love a corner of London and leaves a “cloud of stories” for strangers to discover. She also shows how subtle interaction can deepen empathy, whether that means choosing when to look away in Alma or feeling another life inside Notes on Blindness.

In a world of passive scrolling and fractured attention, this episode gives marketers, filmmakers, experience designers, and communication leaders a practical lens on agency, embodiment, and why stories stick when people do more than watch.

Learn more about Sandra:

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Lydia Chan is joined by Sabrina Talma, CEO and Co-Founder of Human Made Machine, a creative intelligence platform that helps global brands test and refine creative work before it goes to market. With clients spanning Google, the NBA, and The North Face, Sabrina brings a rare, data-backed perspective on what actually resonates with audiences — and what quietly falls flat.

Sabrina shares why most brand campaigns miss the mark from the start, and how marketers are often too close to their own work to judge it objectively. She walks through a real campaign example where two nearly identical ads targeting Gen Z in the US and China landed in completely opposite ways — and what it revealed about the danger of treating global audiences as one. She also weighs in on whether higher production value actually drives better performance, and what regional differences her team is seeing in the data.

The conversation digs into AI-generated creative, including results from a real Puma head-to-head test comparing AI and human-made ads, and why AI tends to converge on average rather than differentiate. Learn why AI personas for creative testing are not ready for prime time, drawing on both her own experiments and a Stanford and Google DeepMind study on digital twins.

If you're a marketer, creative director, or brand strategist trying to understand what makes audiences truly connect with content, this episode is packed with insights you can bring back to the team.

To mark Neurodiversity Celebration Week, Oliver Atkinson sits down with Oliver Markeson,  CEO and Co-Founder of Neurohaus, to explore why neuroinclusive design is not a niche fix but a smarter way to build calmer, clearer audience experiences that work better for everyone.

Oliver's starting point is personal. A late diagnosis made him look differently at the world around him, at the way people shop, work, and move through spaces, and ask why so much of it feels unnecessarily hard. That question became Neurohaus, and a body of work with brands like Pandora and Versace that proves neuroinclusive design isn't a niche fix. It's just a smarter design.

In this episode, he gets specific. He talks about the "triggers" that create overload, the queue barriers that send autistic shoppers turning right to avoid them, and the "glimmers" that do the opposite: small, sensory moments so well-considered they can make an airport feel genuinely playful. His core argument is disarmingly simple: reduce friction, simplify information, and stop making people raise their hand just to get a better experience.

With one in five people neurodivergent, this isn't a niche conversation. It's a commercial one. Fewer abandoned journeys, stronger retention, brands people actually trust, the business case and the human case turn out to be the same case.

If you work in marketing, design, retail, or internal comms, this one's worth your full attention.

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00:00 Introduction

04:12 One in Five Consumers Are Wired Differently

08:21 Feel It, Don't Just Learn It

21:17 Designing for the 20% Improves It for Everyone

29:39 Triggers vs. Glimmers

50:51 Avoid Othering at All Costs

Learn more about Neurohaus:

🌐 www.neurohaus.co

📸 @_neurohaus

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Oliver Atkinson sits down with behavioural science researcher Will Leach, founder of MindState Group and author of Marketing to MindStates, to reveal how “hot states” (MindStates) shape decisions, and how targeting the moment can lift your B2B messaging. 

Will maps his MindState model, goals, motivations, regulatory fit, and triggers, showing how nine core motivations and 21 decision shortcuts can turn a fuzzy persona into a usable brief.

Hear how a hotel CMO flipped from trashing a campaign to championing it once it was framed as social proof, and why brands should be the utility belt, not Batman.

With audiences making around 35,000 decisions a day, the default response to complex messaging is to swipe past and “think about it later.” If you pitch, launch, or sell inside crowded categories and buying committees, this is your guide for measurable lift, without gimmicks. 

Plus, Oliver and Will dig into the AI angle, including Bevy (behavioural intelligence), emotionally intelligent customer personas you can “ask” in meetings, and where AI helps most (and where to be careful).

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00:00 Introduction

03:22 – Mind States Over Personas

14:40 – Be the Utility Belt, Not Batman

15:45 – More Information, Less Persuasion

24:21 – The Two-Why Ladder

47:32 – Motivation vs. Manipulation

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This podcast episode features Michael Sternoff, Global Creative Director at Amazon Leo (Amazon's low-Earth orbit satellite network). Michael shares his diverse background, spanning Emmy-winning filmmaking and video game trailers, highlighting how these experiences shaped his approach to making technical concepts feel human and authentic. The discussion centers on the launch of Amazon Leo's brand film, "Countdown," which uses right-brain storytelling to showcase real-world impacts of connectivity, emphasizing authenticity through casting and rooted use cases. Michael also offers insights into brand building, prioritizing audience connection and consistent storytelling over short-term analytics, and the importance of creative resilience in a dynamic environment. 

Amazon Leo: A new era of internet is coming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPN4ik8_t0g

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Subscribe now and join the conversation about creating content that truly resonates, backed by behaviour science. 

Season 2 opens with hosts Lydia Chan and Oliver Atkinson looking back at the biggest lessons from Season 1 - how behavioral science and culture shaped their understanding of why certain stories connect. What began as a response to the AI wave became a deeper exploration into cultural specificity, “audience of one” thinking, and why brands are finally investing in storytellers as they move from traditional marketing into broadcasting.

They revisit insights from guests like Christine Sanders, Dr. Imran Rashid, Richard Shotton, and Dr. Paul Zak, who revealed how oxytocin, dopamine, narrative arcs, and psychographic targeting influence attention and retention. Data and science may help inform the brief, but vulnerability, emotional truth, and trusted creative execution still determine whether a story resonates.

This season levels up with new and deeper conversations on interactive content, brand communities, creativity at scale, and the science behind why stories work. Whether you're building a brand, shaping culture, or simply obsessed with great storytelling, you won’t want to miss what’s coming. Follow and join us as we unpack the craft, the science, and the future of audience connection. 

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Lydia Chan speaks with Kristen Souders, Senior Director of Global Brand and Content Studio at Hitachi Vantara, to explore what it really takes to create standout storytelling in B2B tech. Kristen breaks down the evolving IT audience landscape, explaining why data leaders and IT professionals are allergic to fluff but still crave compelling narratives that make them feel seen rather than sold to. This insight challenges common assumptions about technical audiences and their relationship with emotional storytelling.

The conversation takes a compelling turn into creative taste and AI-generated content. Kristen argues that taste is empathy with standards, built through exposure, lived experiences, and crucially, failure. Discover why she believes the beauty and memory is always in the mistakes, and why those unexpected moments are what AI cannot replicate. While algorithms can show us patterns, they cannot replace the human perspective that comes from authentic storytelling and collaboration.

Kristen also shares how she builds effective creative teams by creating psychological safety and carving out weekly time for creative reviews where she asks why decisions were made rather than just correcting work. She discusses navigating conversations with leadership by focusing on goals and objectives, knowing when to hold your ground and when to problem-solve your way out of a corner. Her parting advice is powerful: algorithms can replicate patterns but not perspective, so respect your audience, protect your taste, and above all, stay curious.

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Lydia Chan sits down with Angela Siddall, Global Lead for Culture, Employer Brand and Experience at Veeam, to explore what tech professionals really want from employers today. Drawing from over 20 years of global experience, Angela shares her perspective on what drives technical talent, revealing that impact, cutting-edge technology, continuous learning, and autonomy matter more than traditional corporate perks. She emphasizes the importance of authentic storytelling and explains her view on why tech-to-tech communication often resonates more effectively than polished corporate messaging.

Discover the unconventional engagement strategies Angela has seen work for remote tech teams, including surprising examples where arcade games and virtual reality replaced traditional town halls. Learn why she believes crowdsourcing ideas directly from tech talent leads to better results than any corporate playbook could provide. Angela also shares her multi-pronged content approach for keeping different audiences engaged, from junior talent hungry for detailed guidance to senior executives who demand strategic insights delivered in seconds.

Angela offers bold predictions about how AI will reshape the talent landscape in just one to two years, not three to five. Find out why she thinks building diverse skill sets matters more than deep specialization, what the shift toward project-based work really means for employers, and how brands can demonstrate the authentic purpose that top technical talent craves in an increasingly uncertain future.

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Oliver Atkinson sits down with Dr. Gemma Calvert, Professor of Consumer Neuroscience, Nanyang Technological University and Co-Founder of Split Second Research, to decode how always-on dopamine loops, “digital amnesia,” and story structure shape attention, memory, and action, so your content sticks and drives behaviour.

Calvert maps three rewired systems, attention, memory, emotional regulation, and shows how constant interruptions (and our own self-interruptions) splinter focus, why the “Google effect” shifts recall from the head to the handset, and how teens speak more candidly to an AI interviewer than to adults. Her hooks playbook starts with movement, novelty, and ambiguity, think chimeric images that stop the brain, then earns permission for longer stories that embed in long-term memory. And her best metaphor? The shift isn’t reversible, the train has left the station, but brands can fit seatbelts: design for responsible scrolls, cue reminders, and build human, two-way relationships.

In a world where feeds deliver micro-rewards all day and single exposures rarely encode, long-form isn’t dead, it partners with snackable teasers to deepen immersion. Marketers, creatives, and leaders will leave with neuromarketing tools (eye-tracking, facial decoding, implicit tests) and a practical framework to architect recall ethically.

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