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Charles Cantu isn’t here to play nice, nod politely, and collect a meaningless trophy from an ad tech conference where everyone just recycles the same tired ideas. No, Charles is deep in the crushing it phase—the kind where his company, Reset Digital, is rewriting the playbook on programmatic advertising, empathy-driven targeting, and what it means to actually deliver results. Triple-digit growth since inception? Done. Emotional intelligence embedded into ad targeting? Absolutely. A future where brands actually connect with humans rather than just throwing darts at audience segments? He’s making it happen.

Neuroprogrammatic—just the name alone sounds like something a TED Talk speaker would breathlessly overhype, or some underground hacker in a hoodie would be whispering about on the dark web. But in Charles Cantu’s hands, it’s neither. It’s not some sci-fi jargon meant to dazzle investors, nor is it a gimmicky AI-powered black box that spits out vague audience segments with no real insight. No, this is something far more dangerous (in the best way possible). It’s a cognitive marketing powerhouse, a system designed to decode the emotional DNA of both content and creative, then stitch them together with the precision of a neurosurgeon to elicit responses that actually matter.

Let’s be clear—this is not your standard “hey, you left this in your cart” stalker-ad nonsense. No more endless retargeting loops where an ad follows you across the internet like a needy ex. No more tone-deaf messaging that makes you question whether a brand has ever met a human being before. This is about why people react the way they do. Why certain words immediately establish trust while others make consumers recoil. Why some emotions make a campaign resonate, while others just feel like a glorified PowerPoint deck someone dumped money into.

Charles put it best: “So essentially what we're doing is we're looking at, well, the backstory is we’re looking at every word in the English language. And then we started tying those words into, you know, which ones have the most weight in regard to how they make us feel. And then we tied those to essentially 65 emotions.”

That’s right. Not five. Not ten. Sixty-five distinct emotions. And this isn’t just some lab experiment with questionable sample sizes and a whitepaper no one will ever read. This is real. It’s already working.

“A gentleman named Nate Raikwitz, who used to work for A&E, HBO, Interactive Games, had perfected these models. So we bought his company and folded that AI in, and it performs like gangbusters,” Charles added.

In short, Reset Digital didn’t just build an AI that crunches data. They bought emotional intelligence—and weaponized it for marketing.

And if that phrase makes you a little uncomfortable, good. Because this is the kind of disruption that makes industry insiders panic while real marketers start taking notes.

So what does this actually mean for performance? Because, let’s be real, ad tech is filled with a lot of grand promises and very little accountability. Well, Charles doesn’t deal in theoreticals. He deals in results.

“One case study that we shared with Publicis and Starbucks at the ANA Growth Runs earlier this year was a 200% lift in foot traffic, 600% lift in sales, and representation where we reached close to 85% diverse communities. Whether it was Black, Hispanic, Asian, Caucasian—it didn’t matter. We were actually being pretty close to the census, measured by Nielsen.”

Read that again. 600% lift in sales. In an era where most campaigns are happy with single-digit growth, Reset Digital isn’t playing in the margins. They’re flipping the script entirely.

This isn’t just about refining audience segments. It’s about redefining how brands communicate with humans. Because at the end of the day, that’s what great marketing should do—it should connect, not just convert. And Reset Digital is proving that when you understand emotions, you don’t need to manipulate people into engagement. You just need to meet them where they already are.

Reset Digital wasn’t designed as a “diversity-first” platform. It wasn’t built to ride the wave of performative corporate gestures, or to slap a rainbow or fist emoji onto a brand’s logo for a month and call it a strategy. But the demand found them.

In the wake of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, when brands suddenly realized that consumers were actually paying attention to where their money was going, there was a rush—a frantic scramble—to engage more authentically with underrepresented communities. The problem? Most of these brands had absolutely no clue how to do it beyond making vague DEI commitments in boardrooms. But Reset Digital? They weren’t scrambling. They already had the infrastructure, the tech, and the proof that this wasn’t just about good PR—it was good business.

“We weren’t in that category. We weren’t trying to shoot for that category,” Charles admitted. “And then, after, you know, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, there was a lot of demand for that. And so we saw a big growth there. Now, I think emotional targeting and cognitive messaging are a big deal.”

Translation: while brands were fumbling for a strategy that didn’t scream We just realized racism exists!, Reset Digital was already moving ad dollars to the right places and delivering actual results.

But here’s the dirty little secret about diversity in media buying—it’s still treated like a box-checking exercise. Even today, brands will make grand pledges about “supporting diverse voices” while continuing to pour billions into the same 10 platforms everyone loves to complain about.

Why? Excuses. So. Many. Excuses.

Charles has heard them all, but there’s one in particular that makes his blood boil.

“The thing that I hear a lot is, what do you have that's unique?” he said. “That’s a red herring that a lot of marketers will use to kind of give you the Heisman. The other thing that they'll say is, ‘Well, what else do you have?’ So if I say, I represent all the Black press, and I represent all the Black broadcasters—NABOB and NNPA—then they'll go, ‘And what else?’ As if it’s never enough.”

It’s the corporate equivalent of a job interview where the hiring manager looks at a stacked résumé and still asks, But do you have any real experience? The message is clear: We don’t actually want to change anything. We just want to look like we tried.

The reality? These brands need platforms like Reset Digital. But they’re so tangled up in outdated buying models and entrenched media relationships that they keep missing out on massive untapped audiences. And unlike the usual industry hype about “multicultural initiatives,” Reset Digital has the receipts to prove this isn’t about sentiment—it’s about profitability.

“So unlike most, I think, diverse or inclusive-focused media companies or ad tech companies, we solely focus on performance,” Charles explained. “A bad day for us is increasing brand lift or sales 15%. For any large brand, that's a massive lift in sales and/or brand preference.”

Let’s sit with that for a moment. A bad day at Reset Digital still means a 15% increase in brand lift or sales. Meanwhile, most brands are out here burning ad dollars on campaigns that barely register as background noise.

The truth is, diverse media buying isn’t a charity play. It’s not a moral obligation brands should begrudgingly meet. It’s a business opportunity they’re too lazy or too stubborn to capitalize on. And Reset Digital? They’re done waiting for the industry to wake up. They’re already delivering.

Now, let’s talk about the sci-fi side of things. The part where marketing stops being about pop-up banners and endless retargeting and starts looking like something straight out of Blade Runner—but hopefully without the existential dread and corporate dystopia.

Charles doesn’t buy into the panic about AI taking over the world. He doesn’t see a future where machines start making the ad buys and humans are left twiddling their thumbs. His vision? AI that makes ads feel less like a digital cattle prod shoving people toward checkout buttons and more like a seamless, intuitive, human experience.

“I don’t see AI as some sentient overlord coming to replace us,” Charles said. “I see it as a tool—one that helps us understand how people think and feel, and then uses that to create more meaningful advertising. If we do this right, ads won’t feel intrusive. They’ll feel natural. They’ll actually feel right.”

But here’s where things go full Minority Report—Charles doesn’t think AI is the biggest game-changer on the horizon. No, his boldest prediction for the future of advertising? Holograms.

“Well, I mean, if you look at the number of patents that both Microsoft and Apple have between the two, you’re talking about tens of thousands of patents in hologram technology,” he pointed out. “What that looks and feels like in my living room, I don’t know, but damn it, I can’t wait.”

And he’s not just talking about gimmicks. This isn’t about another clunky VR headset that no one actually wears outside of a CES demo floor. This is about ads that aren’t just seen but experienced.

Imagine walking into your living room and instead of staring at a screen, an ad appears in front of you—fully three-dimensional, interactive, tactile. Instead of just watching a Nike commercial, you can actually hold the sneakers in your hands, feel the texture of the fabric, turn them over and inspect every detail. Want to see how they look on your feet? Boom—holographic AR fitting room, no clunky headset required.

Reset Digital isn’t waiting for someone else to figure this out. They’re already laying the groundwork. Because the brands that get there first? They won’t just be selling products. They’ll be creating experiences people actually want to engage with.

Charles isn’t just playing the game—he’s flipping the board, rewriting the rules, and handing out a new playbook while everyone else is still stuck optimizing for yesterday’s ad tech. He’s been around long enough to see the hype cycles, the rise and fall of so-called disruptors, the empty promises of platforms that claim to revolutionize advertising but end up being just another middleman siphoning value. He knows that the winners aren’t the ones with the flashiest decks, the biggest buzzwords, or the most aggressive LinkedIn thought leadership posts.

The best tech doesn’t always win. The smartest people don’t always win. What does win? Understanding how humans actually think, react, and engage. The people who get that—who build real relationships, who treat advertising as more than just an arms race of algorithms—are the ones who reshape the entire industry.

Charles isn’t here to play nice with outdated media models. He’s here to build something that actually works. Something that delivers. Something that changes the way brands connect with people, not just pixels.

So if you’re still sitting on the sidelines, asking, “What else do you have?” Charles has a better question:

What are you waiting for?