Feb 02 - 04 2025
Once one of the most award-winning advertising writers in the country, Sally Hogshead is now a world-renowned brand consultant, bestselling author, and Hall of Fame® keynote speaker who helps organizations thrive by leaning into their differences.
Why are you captivated by some people, but not others? How do certain leaders convince you to change your opinion? The key is fascination. Fascination is the most intense state of focus. When you fascinate someone, they can’t stop thinking about you and your message.
In her engaging presentations, advertising icon and Hall of Fame® speaker Sally Hogshead helps world-class businesses develop messages that influence and persuade consumers, partners, and employees. Sally Hogshead is available to be booked for corporate and private events. Contact the Mollie Plotkin Group today to inquire about Sally Hogshead’s fees.
Contact the Mollie Plotkin Group at 215-510-6607 to book Sally Hogshead for corporate or private events, keynote speeches, workshops, fireside chats, motivational speaking, or virtual appearances. Our agency will work directly with your organization and our keynote speakers to create an unforgettable event.
The Mollie Plotkin Group is the leading keynote speakers agency and entertainment bureau bringing excitement to audiences, clients, and employees. We represent subject-matter experts in every possible field, so whether we’re your partner in creating a memorable meeting, or your meeting planner’s secret weapon in securing the perfect keynote speaker, we’re in this with you.
Growing up with the last name Hogshead would give anyone a quirky point of view. After graduating from Duke University, Sally Hogshead skyrocketed to the top of the advertising elite. At age 24, she was the most award-winning copywriter in the U.S. Her campaigns for brands such as MINI Cooper, Nike, Godiva, and Coca-Cola have fascinated millions of consumers. By 27, she’d opened her first ad agency in Los Angeles. At 30, her work was exhibited in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
Today, Sally Hogshead writes bestselling books on the science of fascination – why we’re impressed by certain people and brands. Her two most recent books, Fascinate and How The World Sees You, were both New York Times bestsellers.
She has been named the #1 Global Brand Guru twice, and appears in national media, including NBC’s Today, CBS, Inc., ABC, MSNBC, and The New York Times. The press describes her as a “superstar” and “force of nature” who “changed the face of North American advertising.”
Drawing upon her branding expertise, Sally created a method to identify how each person can captivate their listeners. The Fascination Advantage® is the first communication assessment built on branding principles. The test measures how others perceive you and pinpoints your most valuable differentiating traits. When you know how others see you, you’re more likely to win the client, close the deal, grow your business, overdeliver, outthink, and outperform.
More than one million professionals have taken her test, including leaders in companies such as Facebook, Porsche, NASA, and Twitter. This science of fascination is based on Sally’s decade of research with dozens of Fortune 500 teams, hundreds of small businesses, and over a thousand C-level executives.
Find out how to hire Sally Hogshead to appear at your next event. Contact the Mollie Plotkin Group to inquire about Sally Hogshead’s availability and cost. When booking Sally Hogshead for an event, we need to know the type of venue and location the event will take place. Sally Hogshead is a popular choice for corporate events, private events, and virtual events. So, you can click the Check Availability button or contact us and an MPG Sally Hogshead booking agent will get back to you within 48 hours.
How much to book Sally Hogshead depends on the type of event. So, the cost to hire Sally Hogshead for corporate or private events is available by contacting a Mollie Plotkin Group Agent. Notably, Sally Hogshead is available for conferences, festivals, private parties and events. Just contact the Mollie Plotkin Group and tell the booking agent the proposed date, time, and location.
Our speakers are in high demand! View their upcoming events.
Sally Hoshead has shared the stage with Richard Branson, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, JP Sears, and Gary Vaynerchuck. She is also one of only 189 professional living speakers to be inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame® – the industry’s highest award for professional excellence. In her programs, she weaves together neurology, economics, branding, history, biology, personal development, and pop culture. Her energetic style and research-based content instantly command an audience’s attention.
The best part? Sally handcrafts each and every keynote, carefully curating the perfect content for your group, your event, and your goals. Her presentations are never repeated and never replicated.
Sally is best suited for main-stage keynotes and events that demand a powerful, authoritative, and passionate speaker. All audience members receive access to the Fascination Advantage Assessment in advance and she reveals the group results,as part of each customized presentation. If you would like to discuss tailoring Sally’s keynote to your event, schedule a Zoom call with Sally and the MPG team.
What separates certain professionals from the rest of the pack? Is it skill or knowledge? Expertise or seniority? Or is it simply charisma? Turns out, it’s none of the above.
In her decade of research inside hundreds of companies, Sally Hogshead discovered a new trend. High-performers communicate differently and the most valued professionals consciously decide to over-deliver in select ways.
As a result, they become difficult to replace because they emphasize their natural traits. They earn advocates in the workplace and customer base, becoming irreplaceable. In the case of entrepreneurs, they remain in demand even after raising fees and prices. Just as the most successful brands differentiate themselves, so do the most successful people. According to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, 85% of financial success is due to your personality, ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15% is due to technical knowledge. Increased competition and decreased attention spans make it harder than ever to stand out and win. It’s not enough to be the best if nobody knows you’re there. But when you apply your most authentic and naturally fascinating traits, the world sees you at your best andyou’re recognized for your accomplishments.
Fascination is the single most powerful means of persuading and influencing behavior. You can make any brand or message impossible to resist…once you unlock the formula.
Sally’s extensive market research reveals just how much fascination drives emotions and behavior. For example, when fascinated by a product, 80% of consumers experience a faster heart rate and other physical responses; 46% talk about it to others; and more than 1/3 do in-depth research on the product.
Once you fascinate customers, they’ll become intensely focused on you ⎯ your products, your services, and yourmarketing. They’re more likely to believe, care about, and retell your message – as well as buy your products. Today, it’snot enough to just interest customers. You need to fascinate them.
What if you had a tangible way to show every single member of your team how they can perform at a higher level? It comes down to helping your employees tap into their natural communication style.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “50% of the difference between low-performing and high-performing teams is the quality of communication.”
Think of your team members. What is each person’s most valuable quality? How could they communicate most effectively? How can you and your co-workers bring out the best of everyone’s natural abilities?
Each of us already has built-in differentiators. They don’t have to be brash and flamboyant. In fact, subtle personalities can often have the most distinguishing features. No matter what your natural approach is, you must learn how it’s being perceived by others.
Great teams are built on differences, rather than similarities. Differences create diversity and make a company stronger as a whole. Diversity strengthens a team and makes it more multifaceted, as long as each person understands and develops his or her communication style. In her decade of research, Sally found that the best way to build a culture of involved and energized employees is to inspire them with a vibrant culture of optimism. Measure what people are already doing right, and they’ll do more of it. Sally measures communication advantages within teams to uncover gems of potential. When team members are deeply engaged with their work, they feel differently and perform differently. They literally earn more,for themselves and their company.
You have a choice: either have the biggest budget or be the most fascinating. Must be nice if you have a bigger budget than any of your competitors…but few of us do. What if you’re a small business with a frugal budget or competing in an intensely crowded space? Then you must fascinate.
Until now, branding required years of study or a team of experts, but in her decade of working inside world-renowned brands, Sally Hogshead discovered the algorithm behind it all. By combining science with branding principles, she unlocked the formula for fascination and, once you can identify the patterns, you can make any message more memorable. In this keynote, based on her 2016 New York Times bestseller Fascinate, Sally reveals the formula for fascinating anyone.
Most personal branding techniques give generic, one-size-fits-all tips about how to make a good first impression. Yet, the whole point is to stand out and rise above the competition with your authentic traits.
David Ogilvy, one of the smartest branding minds in history, said this: “Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.”When you know the truth of who you are at your best, you can be both authentic and fascinating.
Your customers and co-workers don’t want the plastic version of you. Nobody wants to talk with a fake cardboard cut-out. Your personal brand is NOT the same thing as your marketing or resume. It’s not your business card, your blog, or the color of your website. Are you focusing so much on the other person (your customer, your client, your manager) that you’re losing your you-ness? Don’t focus so much on what you think someone else wants, that you lose who you actually are. Identify who you are at your best and the advantages that highlight your greatest value. Build your brand around those core qualities and you’ll never feel like a manufactured persona. Everything falls into place when you have a clear focal point for your communication. You can stop struggling and start doing more of what you’re already doing right.
The greatest way to empower a woman is to help her see her own highest value. With engaging
research, touching anecdotes, and a defined plan of attack, Sally’s program ensures every participant leaves energized and focused, knowing how to stand out and make a difference in the world by empowering the women in their community.
“Outstanding… Sally’s insights into how to be fascinating and represent a fascinating product will pay dividends for many months and years to come. Our sales force walked out excited and with new ideas on how to do their jobs better.” – Wall Street Journal
“Sally was phenomenal – she just knocked it out of the park. We loved that she participated for a bit before and after her speech. Not a lot of keynote speakers do that and it was valuable for our attendees to interact with her. Finding out the email open rates averaged 60%, when it’s unusual to get more than 28%, tells us this is something they want more of. Sally also gave us two new ideas: to collect and catalog our members’ stories (she even offered to help us do that) and to transcribe our videos to create quick content for our members to reflect on. The analytics also provide insight into our leadership team’s personalities, how to best communicate with them, and structuring diverse volunteer teams. We learned that fascination makes you confident, confidence drives performance, and performance drives results.” – Patti Phillips, CEO, Women Leaders in College Sports
“Sally was tremendous. Her presentation was well received and I believe will help us make a difference in our efforts. Everyone, including those who came in with doubts, was very impressed. We hope that sales coaches and marketing program managers can continue to build on it and drive the message home with our team.” – Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation
“I had well over 100 people come up and thank me for bringing in Sally as the opening keynote for Content Marketing World. She set the bar high indeed. She is a true inspiration to me, as well as my team.” – Content Marketing World
Why is Jägermeister the most popular brand nobody likes? Why do women pay more to be fascinating than they spend on food and clothes? What raises the price of gummy worms by 1000%?
And then there’s the most important question of all: How can your brand become impossible to resist? Master marketer Sally Hogshead reveals the surprising answers, providing readers with a framework to fascinating anyone.
The word “fascinate” comes from the Latin word fascinare, meaning “to bewitch or hold captive so others are powerless to resist.” Fascination is the most powerful force of attraction, drawing customers into a state of intense focus.
This extensively revised and updated edition includes Hogshead’s latest research on the science of fascination. Combining original case studies with award-winning copywriting experience, she gives you the exact words you need to capture the attention of a distracted world.
Whether you realize it or not, your brand is already applying one of the seven Advantages Hogshead describes here: Innovation, Passion, Power, Prestige, Mystique, Alert, or Trust. The question is, how can you apply these core Advantages to stand out in a crowded and distracted world? Hundreds of large corporations, small businesses, and universities—including Twitter, IBM, Porsche, and New York University—use the Fascinate system to captivate their customers. Why? The answers are in this book.
Dive into the science of fascination and learn how to:
