🍟 The 28% sales hack (that no one wants to admit is really just about stereotypes...)

Every few months, both Twitter and LinkedIn randomly discover something mind-blowing about marketing: “The best marketers don’t sell products, they sell emotions.”

And everyone claps, and reposts, and maybe adds a thought like “👏🔥💯 so true!”
But then marketers go right back to A/B-testing hooks and wondering why conversions are down…😅

There is hope, however.

Because even the big brands are waking up to the fact that we have waaaaay less control over customers than we like to believe…and that the key to unlocking growth might just come down to something much more important.

Take Porsche for example.

Porsche quietly boosted sales by 28% in one of their toughest markets by changing what their salespeople believed about who their buyers were.

Here’s the story… and why this is critical for you as a brand.

The Bias Nobody Talks About

When Porsche ran a behavioral audit on their showrooms, they discovered something that was kind of horrifying…but oddly not surprising.

The people selling luxury cars didn’t actually believe everyone walking in could buy one. 😅

This bias makes perfect sense if you’ve been selling luxury cars long enough. Porsche had a mental template of the “real” Porsche customer:

1. They’re probably middle-aged.

2. They’re probably wearing a crisp polo.

3. They definitely have a watch with a name you can’t pronounce.

4. They come with a faint smell of generational wealth.

This hidden bias was so strong within their sales floor managers, that when a customer showed up in anything other than this stereotype (say they had the audacity to shop in a hoodie and sneakers) the sales energy dropped 20 degrees within seconds.

Smiles got shorter.
Questions got faster.

The entire vibe in the room screamed, “Let’s hurry this up, I need to make time for serious buyers…”

And customers could feel it because belief leaks.

It’s that quiet transfer of “you’re not the one” energy that happens before words are even spoken (the micro-expressions, the tone shifts, the invisible sneer) that communicates something called “expectancy bias”:

So people (customers) walked out. Not because they couldn’t afford the car…but because they suddenly felt like they weren’t “good enough” to have it.

Expectancy bias (the phenomenon where what we expect to happen subtly changes our behavior until it does) is absolutely fascinating to me because it’s one of the biggest self-fulfilling prophecies in marketing — we don’t just predict performance, we create it.

Great examples of this:

• If a teacher expects a student to excel…that student often does (also called the “Pygmalion Effect”).

• If a doctor expects a patient to recover, they communicate with more optimism, assurance, and calm…and recovery odds do actually improve.

• And if a salesperson expects you can’t afford to buy a $200K car…their micro-behaviors confirm it until you don’t.

This happens so much in business, brands, and marketing, it’s embarrassing. 😅

You can’t fake belief. Your output (whether it’s your energy, your copy, or your entire business) will give you away. Humans are such expert emotional mirrors that within 200 milliseconds of a facial cue, we’ve already begun subconsciously matching the other person’s affect.

So when you, your creative team, your brand strategist, or ad buyer starts a campaign with,

“This probably won’t work, but let’s test it anyway,”

You might as well be telling your customers: “Go away. We don’t want your money.”

That’s the quiet danger of belief…it seeps into your creative before the audience even sees it. And that invisible current shapes everything from how you write headlines to how people feel when they see them…

The Porsche Reframe

Now before you click out of this email thinking: “Alright Sarah, that’s a little too crystals-and-moonlight for me, I don’t buy into that ‘manifest your destiny’ nonsense…” hear me out:

Porsche literally tested this.

They wanted to know if shifting how their salespeople saw customers could change how those customers behaved. (They didn’t change the pitch or the product…just their sales team’s belief.)

They retrained their salespeople to see every visitor as a legitimate buyer.

Not in a fake “everyone’s rich” way, but in a psychologically safe way their salespeople could align with. They trained their team to suspend judgment, hold curiosity, and project belonging instead of evaluation. They spent weeks reconstructing the way their team saw people by affirming what was already true:

Customers can come from anywhere, and will be accepted just as they are.

They shifted how their team thought about customers…and saw a 28% lift in sales within just a few weeks. 🤯

The real shift wasn’t external, it was internal. Because once the sales team believed more people could belong, the customers started believing (and behaving) like it too.

That’s the secret no ad agency wants to put in their deck: sometimes the conversion problem isn’t in your messaging…it’s in your micro-beliefs.

Here’s how to change that:

Changing How You See Customers

Let’s zoom out of the showroom and into your Slack channel for a minute…

If you’re building a brand (whether you’re the founder, media buyer, head of ops, or just the guy who gets the coffee…) your team’s default language probably sounds like:

“Let’s see if this one doesn’t tank,” or “The client probably won’t approve that anyway,” or “let’s just run more ads this week and see what sticks.”

If that’s the case, you’ve already primed your creative output with all sorts of sour doubt. 🍋

That doubt shows up as:

• Timid visuals, and same-same designs.

• Over-explained copy and way-too-long landers.

• A brand tone that hedges on safe instead of leading with conviction.

Audiences can feel when you’re holding back (this is something I need to work on myself😅). When you’re apologizing for your own creativity before they’ve even scrolled past the first frame, you’ve communicated strongly that your customer doesn’t belong with you.

I’ll say it again: Porsche’s 28% wasn’t a “sales trick.” It was a human correction.

A reminder that confidence — real, grounded confidence — is the most contagious force in marketing there is.

How to Build Confidence into the Creative Process

Three questions I now make every team ask before a campaign goes live:

1. Do we actually believe this message is true?
   Or are we hedging behind data because we’re scared of being wrong?

2. Do we sound like we trust our audience?
   Or are we writing to the lowest denominator — the skeptic, the easy sale, or the imaginary Reddit commenter who always “has a point”?

3. Do our visuals invite or intimidate?
   Remember: prestige without permission is just a performance.

TLDR: Porsche didn’t try and sell more cars that year…they worked on selling more inclusion, and it worked. They trained their sales people to see themselves differently, and see the customer differently. Not as impostors peeking through glass walls, but as rightful participants in a story of precision, design, and desire…regardless of what they wore or how they spoke.

That’s what great creative work does too.

It gives people permission to step into a better version of themselves —
and gives you permission to believe you’re capable of building it.

But you can’t change what you believe about your customers… if you don’t actually know them.

Every assumption you make — who they are, what they value, what they fear — quietly shapes how you talk, design, and sell. That’s why I built the Core Identity Map (CIM) to help brands see customers clearly enough to believe in them again.

Because when you build from data that shows the deeper human truths, your creative output will follow.

So if you’re ready to stop projecting old biases onto new audiences — and start uncovering the hidden emotions driving your buyers, 👉 book a call with our team. We’ll walk you through how the CIM reveals the belief gap that’s quietly costing you conversions.

Remember: Porsche didn’t just change their pitch.

They changed what they believed about the person on the other side of the glass…and the numbers followed.

Until next week,

🦕 Sarah

🚨 Dex’s Trend Alert: “Good Morning Sistas” & The Rise of Collective Positivity

Searches for “Good Morning Sistas” are up 700% month-over-month — outpacing every other “good morning” keyword on Pinterest.

At first glance, it looks like another inspirational quote trend.
But look closer at the imagery — and you’ll see something deeper happening.

📈 The Signal: The Internet’s New Morning Ritual

Across Pinterest, “good morning” content splits cleanly in two directions:

→ “Good Morning Sistas” — Afrocentric portraits, scripture, group shots, language of sisterhood and faith.
→ “Funny/Unique Good Morning Quotes” — pastel mugs, cartoon suns, puns, and one-liners.

Same time of day, different emotional jobs.

One says: “Let’s remind each other who we are.”
The other says: “Let me make myself feel okay today.”

🧠 The Diagnosis: Belonging > Mood

“Good Morning Sistas” isn’t about positivity—it’s about protection.
Each post functions like a digital morning circle—a ritual of affirmation before facing the world.

→ Visual language: community, beauty, scripture.
→ Emotional payload: grounding, unity, resilience.
→ Psychological function: identity reinforcement through repetition.

Meanwhile, the “funny” and “silly” morning content operates in a totally different mode: self-soothing, apolitical, individually consumable.

The difference?
Culture vs. content.
We → me.

🧩 The Cultural Split

One scroll is a mirror; the other is a circle.
And right now, the circle is winning.

💬 Why It Works

• Ritual = safety. The same message daily lowers cognitive load and creates emotional consistency.

• Belonging = trust. Shared cultural language (visual or verbal) bonds faster than novelty ever could.

• Repetition = identity. The more often a message is seen, the more it becomes part of self-perception.

This isn’t just content — it’s communal regulation disguised as positivity.

🛍️ How to Capitalize

For DTC Brands

→ Build ritualized content, not “motivational” content.
→ Anchor your morning posts in a repeated identity phrase (“Good Morning Runners,” “Hey Team Coffee”).
→ Create visual consistency so it feels like a place, not a post.
→ Encourage call-and-response (“Drop an ✨ if you’re in today’s circle”).

For Creators & Media Buyers

→ Schedule ritual content around moments of transition — morning, pre-commute, unwind.
→ Design loops people want to come back to, not just scroll past.
→ Optimize for “return cadence,” not just engagement spikes.

For Strategists

→ Track language of belonging (“we,” “our,” “sistas”) as a KPI — it’s the emotional currency of retention.
→ Don’t universalize cultural rituals; co-create with communities who own them.
→ Remember: Cultural honesty scales faster than borrowed aesthetics.

💡 Pro Move: Build a “Ritual Stack”

1. Anchor Phrase: Your version of “Good Morning Sistas.”

2. Visual Template: Same tone, color, or typography each day.

3. Emotional Cue: Sound, gesture, or mantra that cues belonging.

4. Loop Timing: Daily, weekly, or campaign-based rhythm.

Once it’s ritualized, your audience will repeat it for you.

TL;DR:
“Good Morning Sistas” isn’t about quotes.
It’s proof that people crave collective emotion in an era of isolated self-care.

They’re not just saying “good morning.”
They’re saying, “I see you — and we’re in this together.”

🦖 Dex