Keith Quesenberry

Beyond the Binary: Your Narrative Brain vs. AI’s Rear-View Mirror

~ K. Quesenberry ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been forcing myself to regularly read physical books again.

Not articles. Not threads. Not AI summaries. Actual books. Cover to cover. It’s my way of reclaiming an attention span fragmented by years of algorithmic feeds designed to keep me scrolling on shallow tidbits.

If AI can consume a library of data in seconds, maybe my competitive advantage is going slower and deeper.

Two books that have been sitting on my shelf are S.I. Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action and Angus Fletcher’s Primal Intelligence. The first was written in 1939 and the second 2025. As I read them over several weeks, something clicked.

My brain, the neural synapses Fletcher writes about, made a connection no algorithm would have surfaced: Hayakawa’s framework for “sane” thinking during WWII and Fletcher’s research on how human brains “imagine” new paths or plans in the future.

S. I Hayakawa Language in Thought and Action and Angus Fletcher Primal Intelligence.
No AI would have picked up these two books and made a connection to imagine a new path forward.

Our Narrative Brain

This is what your Narrative Brain does. It makes imaginative leaps across disparate ideas. It asks “What if these two things connect?” A semantics book and neuroscience book written 86 years apart. No dataset, predictive analytics, or AI could have made this creative leap.

It’s a unique capability we risk losing if we don’t understand how to partner with AI correctly.

Many conversations about AI in business and marketing position it as an all or nothing proposition. AI will and should replace employees or (because of this threat) we should avoid using AI at all.

In AI lessons from 2025, I shared how I explored AI partnership versus replacement last year. But I still didn’t understand the core biological barriers and benefits.

Hayakawa and Fletcher gave me the answer. Fletcher explained the fundamental difference between how AI processes information and how our brain works. Hayakawa helped me understand the challenges in AI adoption. Both are key to staying sane (and essential) as a knowledge worker in the AI revolution.

Light Switch vs. Dimmer

Hayakawa described two ways of looking at the world. A Two-Value Orientation is like a light switch. It’s binary: people are all evil or all good. Knowledge work should be all human or all AI. When we approach business, marketing or communications this way, we ask “Should we use AI?” and expect a simple Yes or No.

A Multi-Value Orientation, however, is like a dimmer switch. It recognizes that reality exists on a scale. Instead of automatically labeling people as good or evil, we consider nuance like perspective, circumstance, and intent. Instead of asking “If” we should use AI, we ask, “To what degree and in what context is AI appropriate for each task?”

Key Insight: Two-value thinking creates conflict. Multi-value thinking creates a roadmap for collaboration.

Light Switch vs Dimmer AI Integration
Let’s consider a more nuanced approach to AI integration.

Your Biological Advantage

In his book Primal Intelligence, Angus Fletcher points out a biological truth that changes how we may view AI.

AI runs on transistors that perform Correlation. Its logic is A = B. It looks at massive datasets of the past to see what usually happens. Given A, there’s a 95% chance that B comes next.

If you ask AI for a business or marketing idea, it calculates the statistical probability of which words usually go together. It is, effectively, a high-speed rear-view mirror. It can tell you where the market has been.

Your brain, however, runs on neural synapses that perform Conjecture. Your logic is A → B. You don’t just see two things are typically related. You can imagine a potential causal link. You can look at a set of facts and ask, “What if we did the opposite?” or “Why can’t these go together?”

You can also see possible ways forward when faced with missing, incomplete, or unexpected information. Whereas AI is prone to hallucinations when faced with a lack of data.

For example, AI looks at the data and says: “90% of successful luxury brands use minimalist black-and-white logos.” That’s correlation. But a human looks at a crowded, monochrome market and asks: “What if we used neon yellow to signal a different kind of rebellion?” AI follows the trend to be safe. You break the trend to be noticed.

When correlation said people wanted better keyboards on their phones, Steve Jobs used conjecture to imagine a different story: a single piece of glass that could hold the internet. That strategy drove Apple to fill in the gaps to make that “improbable” narrative happen. AI could not have “imagined” that possibility based on previous data.

AI is a map of the past (Correlation). You are the driver of the future (Conjecture).

The Abstraction Ladder

Hayakawa also taught us about the Ladder of Abstraction. For business and marketing the top would be the “Map” with vague labels like “Customer Satisfaction.” At the bottom is the “Territory” such as the actual, concrete facts and interactions with real people.

AI is great at the top of the ladder. It can summarize the Map of “General Trends” all day. But because it lacks a physical body and lived experience (what Fletcher calls “Embodied Intelligence”), it can’t feel the Territory. Stepping into a customer’s perspective to understand their motives is a human act. AI can track a click, but it can’t feel a wince.

It is why your human empathy can’t be outsourced to AI.

Example: AI can tell you “Gen Z engagement is down 15%.” That’s a top of the ladder abstraction. You climb down to the Territory by observing and talking to Gen Z customers. By understanding their lived experience, you sense an erosion in trust or a shift in culture that doesn’t hit a data log. Territory AI can’t access without embodied experience.

A multi-value approach uses AI to handle the high-level abstractions, which frees up your human brain to climb down the ladder to the real lived experience. We use our Narrative Brain to find the specific, human story, the A → B sequence, that makes a brand feel real.

In a world where AI levels the data playing field, competitive advantage returns to the humans companies employ. Your edge is no longer who has the most data. You’ll need people who can look at a spreadsheet and still see the human story.

Instead of acting in the past you’ll begin imagining new futures and designing marketing actions to make them happen.

5 Levels of AI Integration

To help us navigate this, I created a 5-level scale of AI Integration based on multi-value orientation and our biological advantage. Not every task deserves Level 5 automation. As a professional you’ll know when to turn the dimmer switch up or down based on the human value required.

5 levels of AI integration with a multi-value orientation that leverages our brain’s primal intelligence advantage. Click image to download a PDF.

Now It’s Your Turn

If you’ve been avoiding AI, start at Level 1. This week, ask it to proofread an email you’ve already written. That’s it. You’re still the author. You’re still making all the decisions. Notice how it feels, what it catches and misses.

Then try Level 2. Or if you’re doing that try higher. Try deep research, brainstorming, outlining, drafting, feedback or variations with a reasoning model. Don’t know how? Ask AI.

The goal isn’t to become a better prompt engineer. It’s to become a better thinker.

Become someone who knows when to leverage speed and when to trust your human ability to imagine what doesn’t exist yet. Leverage AI to speed up low value tasks to free up more time for your unique human contribution.

This is why I’m back to physical books. Reading deeply is training for your Narrative Brain. It builds the stamina to stay “low on the ladder” and follow complex stories in the market, in your life and in our world. Real life is not black and white, one’s and zeros.

It ensures that when you step into a meeting, you aren’t just looking at the rear-view mirror of data. You’re the one who can internalize the customer’s perspective and imagine a future the data hasn’t seen for true innovation.

Two Books on a Shelf

Remember those two books on my shelf? No AI would have recommended I read them together. No algorithm would have surfaced their connection. But my Narrative Brain, the same you use every day in your work, made an imaginative leap that created this framework.

That’s what makes you irreplaceable: the ability to make connections that don’t exist in any dataset. Only a human can see the gray areas where the next big idea usually hides.

AI can tell you the most likely next word, but only you can imagine the most meaningful next chapter.

Moving from a two-value “Either/Or” mindset to a multi-value “Degrees-of” mindset, enables you to start imagining and start creating a better future with your narrative brain.

About This Post’s Creation

This was developed in partnership with Google Gemini 3.0 and Claude Sonnet 4.5. Both helped organize and refine. The connection of General Semantics and Narrative Science is my own. One that came from the kind of deep, sustained reading and cross-pollination of ideas that only a human narrative brain can produce.

Stop Managing Marketing. Start Designing It.

~ K. Quesenberry ~ 1 Comment

We’ve been told the wrong story about marketing. A story of rigid funnels and siloed departments, where “strategy” is a slide deck of data while “design” is the final task of making things look good.

In practice, this model is flawed.

Management implies control, but in marketing, the factors out of your control far outnumber the ones you can manage. This narrative of control traps us in a product-oriented mindset that Theodore Levitt called Marketing Myopia. You’re so focused on current products, you don’t see the market changing and can’t imagine new futures.

You forget Philip Kotler’s sage advice: “Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.”

The wrong story is marketing just sells things. The better story is great marketing designs solutions. It’s not a sales pitch to a faceless target demographic. It’s a well-crafted narrative to a persona that solves real human needs, what Clayton Christensen calls Jobs to Be Done (JTBD).

As copywriter Howard Gossage said, “People don’t read ads. They read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.”

I believe design thinking is the best approach to keep this perspective. The most successful marketing follows more of a design process.

IDEO CEO Tim Brown explained, “Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes—and even strategy.”

My Journey to a Design Approach.

I didn’t learn this in a textbook. I learned it through experience.

My dream was to design cars, but two semesters into an engineering degree, I realized it was all math and no magic. I didn’t know “industrial designer” was a job, so I searched. I tried business, but didn’t find much creativity there. I even snuck into an advanced poetry class, looking for a home.

I finally found it in an advertising copywriting class—the intersection of art and commerce. But when I graduated, I hit a wall. My program was siloed. The art department didn’t integrate with the ad department. I was a writer trained without design collaborators. My portfolio wasn’t good enough for Madison Avenue.

The solution was portfolio school. At Portfolio Center (Now Miami Ad School) the magic was built on an iterative process, imagination, and integration. As a writer, I was paired with art directors, designers, and strategists.

We solved marketing problems through consumer empathy, defining problems, creating ideas, sketching out concepts and testing them. By designing solutions and crafting engaging stories I landed my dream job at BBDO.

For 17 years as a copywriter and creative director I worked with top marketing managers and CMOs at startups to Fortune 500s. What I learned is the best marketing is born from deep human insight. A creative leap that does more than follow data, but leaps ahead to lead the market. Something we obtained best through a design process.

I’m excited to now be a part of the Markets, Innovation, & Design (MiDE) program at Bucknell University’s Freeman College of Management. It’s the culmination of my career—an innovative integration of business, marketing, creative, and design.

With the increase in AI, a human-centered design mindset is more important than ever. There’s an increase in jobs requiring design thinking and salaries for marketing managers with design thinking skills are higher. There’s also been a doubling of job listings seeking the skill of  “storyteller.” A needed antidote to AI slop that lacks genuine human connection.

A New Map for Marketing.

To stop managing marketing programs and start designing consumer solutions we need a new map. I created the visual framework below to teach my Marketing Principles students this unique perspective.

A visual marketing strategy process from a design thinking perspective.
I’m not against textbooks. I’ve written two! I use Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing for this class, but I tease out and layer in the design perspective that aligns well with Kolter’s original intent for the practice of marketing. Click on the image above to download a PDF.

This map isn’t a rigid set of steps. It’s a process that helps ensure every part of your strategy is grounded in a deep human insight by:

  • Inserting Empathy. Understand the human in the market as you analyze data from the market to inspire new solutions. Use tools like observation, empathy interviews, journey maps, bug lists, and POV framing.
  • Pivoting on Key Insight. Synthesize research into an “Aha!” moment that defines the problem in a human-centered way. The “job” they’re hiring the product to do (JTBD), or a cultural shift the brand can tap into as the plot for your plan.
  • Making a Creative Leap. Find inspiration. Ideate to undercover a Big Idea—the magnetic theme that makes your brand matter. Prototype, test for feedback, and iterate quickly. Share in an engaging Story.
  • Treating your Integrated Marketing Mix (4 Ps) as a System. Your product, price, store, and ads are not tactics. They’re all opportunities to live out the big idea and are chapters in your Brand Storytelling.

A Real-Life Example: The Airport Challenge.

What’s this look like in action? We were once tasked to fill seats on a new flight at a regional airport. The brief was simple: “Sell tickets.”

The problem? Consumers always looked for the lowest price and ended up driving hours to bigger, cheaper airports. A traditional, product-first approach would have been a losing battle.

Instead, we started with empathy. A cross-disciplinary team went to the airport and just observed. We noticed how easy it was. We parked across the street. Security took ten minutes. People were calm, not stressed.

Our key insight was that people weren’t hiring an airport just to get on a plane. They were hiring it to begin their journey. The value of that “job” was more than just the ticket price.

This led to our Big Idea, which came from our agency operations manager! The local airport code was MDT. She said, “It stands for the Money, Distance, and Time you save.”

That Big Idea became the core of our Story. Our digital team put a calculator on the website that showed the true cost of driving to the other airport. Our ad, PR and social teams created an engaging “MDT Challenge.”

Two local DJs raced to Chicago for a scavenger hunt—one from our airport, one from the big city competitor. Every live social media and on air update was a mini-story of hassle vs. convenience.

The result? Ticket sales on the new flight increased and overall ridership at the airport soared to its highest levels ever. We didn’t just sell tickets. We redesigned the way people thought about the value of their local airport. We led the conversation in the market to a new narrative versus following competitors into a price war we’d always lose.

Now It’s Your Turn.

The next time you’re tasked with a marketing challenge or opportunity, open a spreadsheet, but don’t forget a whiteboard to image new narratives. Marketing’s greatest power isn’t in the managing, but in the making.

Your work becomes infinitely more interesting when you stop asking “How do we sell this?” and start asking “What are we solving?” Instead of acting in the past you’ll begin imagining new futures and designing marketing actions to make them happen.

Your strategy will be better for it. Your career will be better for it. And the humans you’re designing for? They’ll thank you for it. For insights on how AI can help you in this process see my post “AI for Professionals: Deepen Your Expertise With AI, Don’t Outsource It.”

This Was 90% Human Generated Content! 

The initial ideas were my own, and so were all the life experiences and stories! I used regular Grammarly for proofing, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro Thinking and Anthrophic Claude Sonnet 4.5 for feedback – kind of like an idea partner and an editor. I created the graphic myself.