SPARX Podcast | Intergetik Marketing Solutions | Hosted by Rick Brewer Guest: Brandon Towl, founder of Words Have Impact and Human-Driven Understanding | Published September 2, 2026

In this episode of SPARX, host Rick Brewer sits down with Brandon Towl, founder of Words Have Impact and Human-Driven Understanding. Brandon came out of a philosophy and neuroscience program at Washington University, defended his dissertation weeks before the 2008 financial collapse, and built a B2B content strategy company out of a business card he designed in Microsoft Word the night before a BNI lunch.

Twenty years later, he uses that same background to answer the question most marketers skip: what is actually happening in a buyer's head, and which parts of a purchase should be effortless versus deliberate?

• Why "plan it, then execute it" is the wrong model for marketing, and what to do instead
• The autopilot principle: why Amazon removes every decision except the purchase decision
• What should stay conscious in your marketing, and why the best ads provoke an emotion
• Why there is no fixed rational-to-emotional ratio, and how to find yours (cars and custom pools versus Snickers bars and WordPress templates)
• Why B2B versus B2C does not predict how rational a purchase is
• The bridge metaphor: closing the gap between what a business wants to say and what customers actually care about
• Why "doctor-led" is a selling point to the dentist and a shrug to the patient
• Maslow in practice, and the mistake marketers make by staying in the basement of the hierarchy
• Where written content still wins in a video-first, AI-generated world
• "Throw the rope anyway," and how a stronger St. Louis marketing community lifts everyone in it

• Your website has about 20 seconds to convince someone you are worth calling
• Most service businesses need four pages, not forty
• Put the phone number and the lead form at the top, big, on every page
• Show proof from people who look like your buyer, because they need to feel like it is for them

• Intergetik Marketing Solutions
• Words Have Impact
• American Marketing Association St. Louis Chapter
• AMASTL Events

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