In an era where consumer attention is increasingly fragmented and fleeting, marketing must pivot from persuasive monologues to precise behavioural interventions. At a recent India CMO Forum session in Delhi, Biju Dominic, Chief Evangelist at Fractal Analytics and a pioneer in applying neuroscience to consumer strategy, challenged conventional models of influence. Drawing on two decades of work with global brands and behavioural science labs, he argued that marketers must stop appealing to the rational mind and start designing for the unconscious brain. His message was unambiguous: the future of influence lies in milliseconds, not minutes—and ignoring this truth is costlier than we think.

The attached conclusions paper summarises these discussions, but in brief:

• Marketers continue to rely on outdated assumptions about human rationality, despite proof that decisions are largely unconscious and context-driven.
• The smartphone has become the primary medium of influence, but brands have not adjusted to its millisecond timescales or the fragmented nature of attention.
• MicroStimuli, fleeting but emotionally charged cues, offer a new way to drive behaviour at the point of decision-making.
• Anticipation and memory, not information input, drive most consumer responses; marketing should therefore trigger associations, not deliver full explanations.
• Neuroscience offers a better framework than psychology for understanding decision-making, impacting everything from brand campaigns to digital nudges.
• Marketers must treat each touchpoint as a behavioural intervention—especially in a post-click world where high cart abandonment, low CTRs and weak return rates indicate a loss of influence.
• B2B marketing, often assumed to be rational and linear, is equally shaped by emotion and intuition; MicroStimuli may offer a path to more effective engagement if empathy and experimentation are prioritised.