Roger Dooley

Why organisations work with Roger Dooley

• A 20-year published track record applying neuromarketing to commercial problems, not a recent rebrand into the topic.
• Friction gives commercial leaders a single operational lens for finding the small frictions that quietly suppress revenue, conversion, and loyalty.
• Brainfluence translates academic behavioural research into 100 specific tactics marketing and CX teams can deploy, which is why the book has been translated into eleven languages.
• The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026) gives buyers a published account of how AI is moving neuromarketing tools out of Fortune 500 research budgets and into reach of ordinary commercial teams, a shift most CX functions have not yet built a working view of.
• Forbes column and 400-plus episodes of the Brainfluence podcast keep him in active dialogue with the field’s leading researchers, from Robert Cialdini to Dan Ariely.

Biography highlights

• Author of Brainfluence (Wiley, 2011), translated into eleven languages.
• Author of Friction (McGraw Hill, 2019), named a Top 3 Management Book and Best Business Book of 2019 by PwC’s strategy+business.
• Author of The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026), on AI applied to behavioural science and neuromarketing.
• Forbes contributor on neuromarketing, customer experience and behavioural science.
• Host of the Brainfluence podcast, with guests including Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Dan Pink, Tom Peters, Rory Sutherland, Nir Eyal and BJ Fogg.
• Named a Top 50 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Customer Loyalty by Thinkers360.

Biography

Most marketing plans assume customers behave rationally. They do not. The gap between what a brand believes its customers are doing and what their brains are actually doing is where Roger Dooley has built his work for two decades.

His 2019 book Friction (McGraw Hill) argues that the small unnecessary frictions inside a buying journey, an employee process, or a product experience are usually more powerful than the bigger strategic levers leaders prefer to discuss. PwC’s strategy+business named it a Top 3 Management Book and Best Business Book of 2019. The earlier Brainfluence (Wiley, 2011) compresses academic behavioural research into 100 marketing-grade tactics, and has been translated into eleven languages.

That commercial frame is what separates Dooley from purely academic behavioural-economics voices. The Neuromarketing blog he started in 2005, his Forbes column, and 400-plus episodes of the Brainfluence podcast keep him in continuous dialogue with Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Rory Sutherland, BJ Fogg and Nir Eyal, then translated for marketing, CX, and growth teams who need to ship decisions on Monday.

The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026) turns to AI: how language models and behavioural analytics are pushing tools once held inside Fortune 500 research budgets into the hands of much smaller commercial teams, and the governance and customer-trust questions that follow.

Key speaking topics

• Neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience
• Friction in customer experience and operations
• Behavioural economics applied to marketing and sales
• AI-enabled behavioural science and persuasion
• Customer loyalty and brand trust
• Persuasion and decision architecture

Ideal for

• CMOs and marketing leadership teams redesigning customer journeys
• Heads of customer experience and digital product leaders working on conversion and retention
• Sales leaders rebuilding playbooks around buyer psychology
• Growth and innovation teams testing AI-enabled behavioural tools

Audience outcomes

• A working definition of where friction is suppressing revenue inside their own customer and employee journeys
• A vocabulary of behavioural mechanisms drawn from named research, not generic persuasion tropes
• A current read on how AI is changing the cost and access economics of behavioural research
• Specific, testable changes to marketing, sales or CX practice they can run inside their teams