Growth teams are trapped in an expensive addiction. They keep throwing money at acquisition while ignoring the only thing that actually creates sustainable growth.

In 2026, funnel tweaks will not save you. AI optimizations will not save you. No amount of automation can manufacture true loyalty if your brand has no soul.

In this session, Deb Gabor blows up the myth that users stay because of features. They stay because of how your brand makes them feel about themselves.

Deb introduces the Irrational Loyalty Flywheel, a system that forces leaders to get brutally honest about why anyone should love their brand in the first place. She reveals how to make a promise bold enough to matter, how to deliver it with surgical consistency, and how to create the kind of emotional micro-moments that keep users hooked for years.

Attendees will walk away with a clear mandate. Stop optimizing for transactions. Start engineering obsession.

Because the companies people love irrationally are the ones that win when everything else becomes a commodity.

Takeaways:

• A method to uncover the customer’s deeper emotional need
• How to identify the real psychological role your brand plays in a user’s life and use it to guide product and marketing decisions.
  A blueprint for the Irrational Loyalty Flywheel
• The five steps leaders can use to build a self-reinforcing system that drives retention, advocacy, and category authority.
  How to craft a customer promise that is bold enough to cut through noise
• A simple framework for defining a promise that elevates the user and becomes the center of your roadmap.
  The micro-moment technique
• How to intentionally design small, emotionally charged interactions inside the product that create attachment and decrease churn.