Get ready. We're doing it again.
May 19, 2022
Last year's event was a great experience, and well-reviewed by both attendees and the speakers themselves. We’ll let you know details about this year when they're available.
Kristen Berman
Behavioral Scientist, Co-Founder, Irrational Labs, San Francisco
Robin Hanson, PhD.
Assoc. Professor of Economics, George Mason University, Author of The Elephant in the Brain
Tali Sharot, PhD.
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Author of The Influential Mind
Dan Hill, PhD.
Facial Coding Expert, Sensory Logic, Minneapolis, Author of Emotionomics
Monica Wadhwa
Associate Professor of Marketing, Fox School of Business at Temple University
David Linden, PhD.
Professor of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Author of Compass of Pleasure
Kathleen Vohs, PhD.
Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Land O’Lakes Chair in Marketing, University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management
Peter McGraw, PhD.
Professor of Marketing and Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder, Author of The Humor Code
Russ Klein
CEO of the American Marketing Association (Former CMO of Burger King)
Kristen Berman studies how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if they were completely rational. In 2013, she and Dan Arielly co-founded Irrational Labs to help companies and nonprofits understand and leverage behavioral economics to increase the health, wealth and happiness of their users.
She also co-founded Common Cents Lab, a Duke University initiative dedicated to improving the financial well-being for low to middle-income Americans. Kristen’s work has been featured in The Stanford Innovation Review, TechCrunch , and Scientific American.
Kristen was on the founding team for the behavioral economics group at Google, and hosted one of the top behavioral change conferences globally, StartupOnomics. She co-authored a series of workbooks for business strategy and design work called Hacking Human Nature for Good: A practical guide to changing behavior, with Dan Ariely.
Kristen began her career as a Senior Product Manager at Intuit and startup, Lytro. She built product management and marketing systems for small businesses and consumers, for domestic and international markets. The core thread throughout this all is a deep passion for understanding why people behave the way they do and then building solutions that make their lives better.
Robin Hanson, Ph.D., is associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a doctorate in social science from California Institute of Technology, master's degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago, and nine years’ experience as a research programmer at Lockheed and NASA.
Dr. Hanson has 4126 citations in over ninety academic publications and has diverse research interests, with papers on spatial product competition, health incentive contracts, group insurance, product bans, evolutionary psychology and bioethics of health care, voter information incentives, incentives to fake expertise, Bayesian classification, agreeing to disagree, self-deception in disagreement, probability elicitation, wiretaps, image reconstruction, the history of science prizes, reversible computation, the origin of life, the survival of humanity, very long term economic growth, growth given machine intelligence, and interstellar colonization.
Oxford University Press published his books The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth in June 2016, and The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, co-authored with Kevin Simler, in January, 2018. Professor Hanson has 900 media mentions, given 350 invited talks, and his blog OvercomingBias.com has had eight million visits.
Tali Sharot, Ph.D. is a Professor of cognitive Neuroscience at University College London where she directs the Affective Brain Lab and a visiting Professor at MIT. She combines research in psychology, behavioural economics and neuroscience to reveal the forces that shape our decisions and beliefs.
Dr. Sharot is the author of “The Influential Mind” and “The Optimism Bias”. Both of which received the British Psychological Society Book award. Her papers have been published in top scientific journals including Nature, Science and Nature Neuroscience. This work has been the subject of features in many outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, the BBC and others. She has also written essays for Time, The New York Times, and The Guardian among others. She was a speaker at TED’s annual conference 2012 and received fellowships from the British Academy and Wellcome Trust. She received her Ph.D. from New York University.
Dan Hill, Ph.D. is an expert on emotions captured and quantified through the facial coding tool made famous in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink and Fox’s prime time hit series, “Lie to Me.” As the founder and president of Sensory Logic, Dan originated the use of facial coding in market research beginning in 1998, is the recipient of 10 U.S. patents, and has worked for over half of the world’s top 100 B2C companies.
In recent years, Dan has expanded his use of facial coding to legal applications and professional sports, culminating in front-page coverage in The New York Times. Among his eight books is Emotionomics, chosen by Advertising Age as one of the top 10 must-read books of 2009.
Dan has appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Al Jazeera, Bloomberg TV, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC’s “The Today Show,” PBS, The Tennis Channel, the BBC and NPR’s “Marketplace.” Since his education at St. Olaf College, Oxford University, Brown University, and Rutgers University, Dan has given speeches and led workshops in over 20 countries.
Dr. Monica Wadhwa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. She has received a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to her career in business academia, she worked in the industry as a management consultant.
Dr. Wadhwa’s research focuses on understanding the motivational and affective determinants of consumer decision making and has presented her work at various international marketing conferences and events, like TedX. Monica’s work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Consumer Research.
Her work on customer motivation has received a Citation of Excellence award from the Emerald Management Reviews as the top 50 management articles that are known for their novelty, inter-disciplinary interest and current managerial relevance. Popular accounts of her work have been featured in numerous international media outlets including NPR, Harvard Business Review, Le Monde, Chicago Tribune, Daily Mail UK, Sydney Morning Herald, ANI News, Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, and The Atlantic. Prior to joining Fox School, she was a faculty at INSEAD, where she taught in the full-time MBA and Executive education programs. Additionally, she developed and taught PhD courses on Consumer Behavior and Decision Neuroscience.
David J. Linden, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His laboratory has worked for many years on the cellular basis of memory storage, recovery of function after brain injury and a few other topics.
He has a longstanding interest in scientific communication and served for many years as the Chief Editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology. He is the author of three bestselling books on the biology of behavior for a general audience, including The Accidental Mind (2007), The Compass of Pleasure (2011), and Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind (2015) which, to date, have been translated into 19 languages.
Most recently, he edited a collection of short essays on brain function written for a general audience: Think Tank: Forty Neuroscientists Explore the Biological Roots of Human Experience (2018). His has appeared on the TED Radio Hour, Fresh Air with Terry Gross and many other media outlets.
He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kathleen Vohs is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Land O'Lakes Chair in Marketing at University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. She has authored more than 250 scholarly publications and served as the editor of 9 books, and she has written extensively on decision making, self-control, interpersonal relationships, self-esteem, meaning in life, lie detection, and sex. Vohs has received several awards and honors. In 2012, she became the Honorary Chair in Experimental Consumer Research at Groningen University (Netherlands). In 2014, she won the Anneliese Maier Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation, a competition across all sciences, humanities, law, and economics, and that same year was named a 'Best Business School Professors Under 40.’ She is a Highly Cited Researcher, a distinction given to the top 1% of scholars worldwide based on citations. In 2018, Vohs was named one of the world’s Top 25 Behavioral Economists by thebestschools.org. The graduating class of MBA students voted her Faculty of the Year in 2016, 2018, and 2019.
Dr. Peter McGraw is a behavioral scientist, professional speaker, and expert on the scientific study of humor. A marketing and psychology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, he investigates the interplay of emotions and behavioral economics. His research has been covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, BBC, TIME, CNN, Wired, and Harvard Business Review.
McGraw teaches graduate courses in behavioral economics for the University of Colorado and marketing management for London Business School, UC San Diego’s Rady School, and University of Colorado. He speaks at Fortune 500 companies, public events, and universities around the world.
As the director of the Humor Research Lab (aka HuRL), McGraw has spent ten years examining the antecedents and consequences of humor. In 2014, he co-authored The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. He hosts I’M NOT JOKING, a podcast that looks at the lives of funny people from entertainment, business, science, and the arts. He also hosts Funny or True?, a live comedy gameshow that pits comedians against scientists to see who has the best blend of brains and funny bone.
Russ Klein has quarterbacked teams for many of the world’s foremost brands—holding top marketing and advertising posts at Dr Pepper/7UP Companies, Gatorade, 7-Eleven Corporation, Burger King Corporation, and Arby’s Restaurant Group—as well as Leo Burnett and FC&B advertising agencies.
Klein’s work at Burger King, where he served as President, was recognized by ADWEEK as “The Advertiser of the Decade” for the 2000’s. The 2017 Cannes ad festival recognized Russ as a seminal influence behind Burger King’s campaigns like: “Subservient Chicken,” named the Digital Ad of the Decade by the Wall Street Journal; and “Whopper Freakout,” the highest recalled ad campaign ever measured by Nielsen’s IAG Research.
As CEO for the American Marketing Association, Russ is charged with the historic transformation of the AMA to become the essential community for marketers. Klein was nicknamed “Flamethrower” by an industry publication for his risk-taking and provocative advertising. He now aspires to be the torch bearer for all marketers.
Klein is also architect of the seminal theory, Brand = ExperienceStory aimed at advancing the discipline of Experience Design for businesses. He is a graduate of The Ohio State University and Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program.
Today many marketing leaders and CEOs continue to cling to the misguided notion that their customers are mostly rational beings—and that their buying decisions are based more on reason than emotion. More logic and less gut. More need and less want.
This misunderstanding is understandable because we humans are all somewhat fooled by our own sense of rationality. But, an abundance of research over the past thirty years has revealed that we all actually behave “unreasonably,” often basing decisions on factors we’re not even aware of. This event is a window into this important work, and will hopefully convince you to think very differently about how to communicate with and study consumers and their behavior.
President & Chief Strategy Officer
Young & Laramore
Whatever your role in marketing—developing it, improving it, approving it—this conference will provide challenging but useful thinking from experts in behavioral psychology, economics, brand strategy and neuroscience. At this conference you’ll be encouraged to think differently about how you study and market to your customers.
Unreasonable will help you find new thoughts, new perspectives, and new ways of dealing with the non-rational decision-making of human beings.
Anybody who deals with marketing will find something useful during Unreasonable, including researchers, designers and decision-makers in the C-suite. The implications could affect decisions on everything from research and brand strategy to internal communication, media choices and creative execution.
To learn more about Young & Laramore, contact Brad Bobenmoyer, Vice President, Marketing, at bbobenmoyer@yandl.com
Tom Denari is the President & Chief Strategy Officer of Young & Laramore, an independent, creatively-driven advertising agency based in Indianapolis. Tom has spent his career studying what makes people buy, exploring non-rational motivations to uncover why consumers do what they do. And, as a hands-on strategist, he continues to engage with consumers on a regular basis, leading Y&L’s consumer immersion and brand strategy processes.
Across his thirty-year career, Tom has led the brand strategy development for a wide variety of brands, including: Brizo: Delta Faucet's premium faucet brand, KraftMaid Cabinetry, Farm Bureau Insurance, Angie's List, Goodwill Retail Stores, Stanley Steemer and Steak n Shake restaurants, to name a few.
Continually questioning the conventional wisdom of traditional communications practices, Tom studies how non-rational influences affect consumers’ buying decisions. His writings on consumer behavior and brand strategy have been regularly featured in Advertising Age, AdWeek, Forbes and Inc.
Tom has an M.B.A in Marketing from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University-Bloomington, and a B.A. in Economics from Wabash College.
Newfields: A Place for Nature and the Arts, has 152 acres of forests, waterways, gardens, and venues ranging from the Indianapolis Museum of Art to the Toby Theater, a 530-seat auditorium that Indianapolis Monthly magazine recently declared “the best screening room in Indianapolis.”
Having led the brand strategy and launch of Newfields in 2017, Young & Laramore is especially glad to be hosting Unreasonable in the Toby. Learn more about Y&L’s partnership with Newfields here.
Installation view of Samuel Levi Jones: Left of Center, March 15–September 1, 2019. Artworks © Samuel Levi Jones.
Installation view of Winterlights in front of the Lilly House at Newfields.
Studio Drift, Meadow (detail), 2018. Commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. © Studio Drift, Amsterdam
Whatever your role in marketing—developing it, improving it, approving it—this conference will provide challenging but useful thinking from experts from a wide variety of backgrounds. All of us whose jobs is to persuade customers to act are constantly discovering that “the old ways” of reaching people become less effective over time. Unreasonable will help us all find new thoughts, new perspectives, and new ways of dealing with the essential non-rational decision-making of human beings.
There are. When you register you’ll see the rates, but the price per ticket goes down for larger groups. Get in touch with Mason Thomas at mthomas@yandl.com if you experience any issues during registration.
Your registration covers all-day access to Unreasonable, breakfast, lunch and a happy hour to follow the event.
The conference will be held at Newfields, located at 38th Street and Michigan Road, Indianapolis, Indiana. There are two entrances, including one on 38th Street and the other on Michigan Road.
Yes. It’s free to park in the underground garage or the large surface lot.
Business casual will do just fine, however you interpret that.
Yes, there will be a continental breakfast in the morning, catered lunch, and a happy hour (wine and beer provided) featuring hors d'oeuvres at the conclusion of the event.
All sales are final, but if plans change, tickets are transferable. Email Mason at mthomas@yandl.com and he’ll get things squared away.
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are available.