Ben Moorsom

Engage or fade.

There is immense and complex competition at the gateway to the human mind.

Most of what organizations say never gets in.

Not ignored. Never registered.

The brain decides in seconds what earns a place.

That decision can be designed.

Ben Moorsom

Speaker · Author · Researcher · Founder, Debut Group

Behavioral engagement science for leaders who need audiences to act.

Thirty years understanding the behaviors behind engagement, and what makes any audience act on them.

Start a conversation Watch Ben speak

Ben Moorsom

Engage or fade.

Behavioral engagement science for leaders who need audiences to act, not just attend.

Start a conversation Watch Ben speak
Ben Moorsom on a large stage, the screens behind him reading: there is immense competition at the gateway to the mind
The opening line of this site, on the screens behind him.Burning Brain, keynote

Ben Moorsom

Thirty years asking one question. Why does engagement keep failing?

Most of what companies spend to be heard is waste. Ben set out to end it.

Ben founded Debut Group in 1997 and recognized early, before the industry had language for it, that most engagement work was not changing behavior. Applause was not action. He went looking for the reason and found it in the brain: attention is finite, the gateway to the mind is contested, and most programs lose the contest without knowing it.

He has spent every year since turning that insight into method. He assembled the first PhD team dedicated to the neuroscience of engagement, created Neuroscaping® and the Behavioral Experience Audit™, and built AffectCX™ to read affect at scale. Every framework carries the same intent: change the trajectory of how companies engage, and stop the waste. Wasted budget. Wasted hours. And the cognitive waste of audiences asked to attend and given nothing they can hold.

He still runs the audits himself, and works directly with leadership teams through his advisory practice at behavioralengage.com.

The problem

The metrics say engaged. The behavior says otherwise.

Clicks, dwell time, applause, survey scores. Every program reports them. Almost none of them tie back to what people did next. That is not a measurement problem. It is a design problem. Attention was won for a moment and lost before it turned into behavior. Ben has spent his career on that gap, because everything spent on the wrong side of it is waste: budget, hours, and the finite attention of the people in the room.

0 to 0%

of expo attendees leave the floor early to recover from it.

0 seconds

of silence brings a large venue to attention. Loud music makes it compete.

Every surface

branded teaches an audience to stop looking.

Findings from live audits

Adverse engagement. Tactics that produce the opposite of their intent.

Ben has run hundreds of live experience audits alongside behavioral researchers. The same pattern keeps surfacing: the industry's favorite tactics quietly work against it.

  1. Loud pre-show music makes audiences compete with the room.Silence wins the room.
  2. Visually stimulating environments spend the audience's cognitive currency before the message arrives.They need counterbalance.
  3. Trade shows cut restorative space as non-revenue.Attendees cut their visit short to find it anyway.

None of this is intuition. All of it is measured.

Ben Moorsom in a broadcast studio in front of a slide titled The Levels of Engagement, from Adverse to Affecting
The levels of engagement, from adverse to affecting

The method

Cognitive design. Ben's research, proven in the room.

More than fifteen years ago Ben assembled the first PhD team dedicated to the neuroscience of engagement. The frameworks below are his, built from that work, and every one of them is still measured against behavior, not applause.

Ben Moorsom presenting Neuroscaping in front of a large screen showing a brain
Neuroscaping®, on stage
  1. Neuroscaping®Designing environments and experiences for how the brain actually processes them.
  2. Behavioral Experience Audit™A diagnostic of how an organization engages across every vehicle it uses.
  3. Cognitive Resonance™Attentional economics, strategic mood induction and value internalization, in that order.
  4. Audience Priming Effect™What the audience is set up to feel before the first word decides what the words can do.
  5. ALIGN System™The strategic frame that keeps a program pointed at one behavior.
  6. Inner Voice Experience™A tested format that changed attitudes in a randomized trial.
  7. AffectCX™AI-powered behavioral intelligence, reading affect at scale.

Proof

Behavior changed. Competitors copied it.

Highlight reel arriving here
Bristol Myers Squibb

Ben doubled attendance and time spent by attracting attention instead of competing for it. Competitors copied the approach.

Salesforce

Eight years investigating and affecting behavioral design factors for event systems.

Google

Ben led audience diversity work across Google's event systems.

Behavioral change-makers

SalesforceGoogleAmgenBristol Myers SquibbEli LillyNissanBMWBayerRocheRoyal BankOpenText

What leaders say

Read by the people who hire him.

  1. Engagement is key to business success. But now more than ever, companies are struggling to define it. Ben Moorsom dives into the science of engagement and presents revolutionary, effective, and highly-applicable strategies to drive meaningful engagement across your organization. An indispensable resource for any senior leader or entrepreneur.
    Brian Tracy
    Best Selling Author & Business Development Specialist
  2. Ben Moorsom is an expert in engagement. He's opened my eyes to possibilities that lie on the other side of traditional practices; the places we can go when we start putting ourselves in our customer's shoes. The Debut Group team has helped us transform conference experiences throughout our organization and we've seen highly improved customer engagement after implementing Ben's design insights.
    Denise Dalton
    Executive Director, Engagement Planning, Bristol Myers Squibb
  3. On the journey that Ben and I have been on, I've seen his relentless quest for finding novel ways to enhance the human experience, whether live, online, or even interpersonal interactions. Over the years, my companies, brands, and teams have benefited from Debut Group's amazing thought leadership and execution.
    Murdo Gordon
    EVP Global Commercial Operations, Amgen

Keynotes and leadership sessions

Two talks. One outcome: audiences that act.

Engage or Fade

Why cognitive design is the future of how organizations communicate. What the brain admits, what it discards, and the small design decisions that decide which.

Engagement: Decoded

The science behind the book. The myths of engagement, the barriers hiding inside your own programs, and how to see them.

Pre-session call with Ben.
Live session, tailored to your audience. Q&A.
Available for leadership offsites, congresses and internal summits.

Beyond the stage, Ben advises leadership teams directly at behavioralengage.com and through Debut Group, the consultancy he founded in 1997.

Ben Moorsom speaking on stage
An audience member filming Ben on stage at Burning Brain
Ben on stage at BEAW in Porto beside a slide reading compelling creative gets you most of the way, science gets you further
Ben on stage in front of a slide reading know the mind
Ben speaking from within the audience at a conference
Engagement: Decoded, Second Edition, by Ben Moorsom. Stone busts dissolving into dust.

The book

Engagement: Decoded.

Second Edition

Why Disengagement Is Accelerating and the Behavioral Design Leaders Need to Reverse It

Ben's account of why audiences disengage faster every year, and the behavioral design that turns it around. Written for the leaders who own the outcome.

Get the book

Before you write

Questions leaders ask first.

Is this only about events?

No. Events are where the work started and where behavior is easiest to measure. The same science applies to communications, environments, customer experience and internal change.

Will the session be tailored to our audience?

Every one. The pre-session call exists to learn your audience's real barriers, and the talk is built around them.

How is this different from an engagement agency?

Agencies report interaction. Ben measures what people did afterward, and brings the research that explains why.

What does a keynote or session cost?

It depends on format, audience and location. Start a conversation and you will have a clear answer within a day.

Start a conversation

Tell me what your audience needs to do.

One short note. Ben reads every one.

Or email info@benmoorsom.com
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