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October 22, 2009

All Hail the Chubby Welshman

 Dylan-thomas
BIG PROPS to both the IPA and it President Rory Sutherland for two big initiatives in recent weeks which show a previously staid, establishment organisation taking big steps into the present.

First, the IPA social initiative (which I've discussed here before) which a. acknowledged a problem with their previous attempts to engage with the issue b. opened itself up to the community to provide a correction c. embraced the recommendations of the community to engage in d. a conversational format for the session.

While Rory wasn't directly involved here, his presence elsewhere is one of the reasons why Nigel, Patrick, Pippa, Felicity and co all felt able to go in the direction we pointed them (more on this anon, btw).

Then, yesterday I attended the public reveal of Rory's big Behavioural Economics initiative at the RSA. The fabulous Matt Grist talked about the Social Brain Project we've been working on, the brilliant Nick Chater revealed some of his great work on decision-making and the lovely Nick Southgate did a great piece on beginning to work out some of the implications for adfolk of these new insights into human behaviour.

For me, this is a landmark initiative, a public recognition that the embedded models of human behaviour in the industry's practices are not the be-all and end-all; that might even be wrong...and that we need to do something about them, pronto

Regular readers will know that I've long championed the science that points to other models than either rational choice or the standard social science ones which have dominated our thinking for generations - indeed, that's really the HERD gig, tbh. To turn this into action, they've set up a series of seminars/training events next month for different disciplines in IPA member agencies.

The IPA & their self-proclaimed Chubby Welshman are on the move. Well done both.

So here's Rory and his lookilikee for you (or is it the other way round?)

Posted at 03:16 PM in behaviour change, Science |

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WHO IS HERD?

Originally, HERD was just me, Mark Earls, recovering account planner and all-round opinionator. But increasingly, as I’ve discovered more and (importantly), learned from others, the community has grown.

Working with a range of collaborators and clients, we developed tools to give these HERD ideas practical application. Collaborating with likeminded folk such as Dr. Alex Bentley (deputy Director of the Leverhulme Tipping Points grant at Durham University) and Grant McCracken (anthropologist and author of Chief Culture Officer), we’ve attacked differents kinds of problem and found different kinds of solution, thanks to the power of the social perspective on humanity.

We’ve also worked with some fantastic partners – Anomaly London, Brainjuicer, Modernista!, Naked , Protein, People Ideas & Culture and Hide & Seek to adapt our thinking to specific client problems. We’ve advised large corporations (such as Unilever, Bacardi-Martini, Channel 4 Television, The Edrington Group, Sony), UK government departments (HM Department of Health and Central Office of Information) and not-for-profits such as the Gates Foundation, Greenpeace & The School of Life.

WHAT IS HERD?

HERD started as a label for everything social about human behaviour - a research “bucket” if you like - for the “hidden truths“* of fundamentally social nature of our curious species and the fundamentally social context that shapes our behaviour.

In essence, HERD is a synthesis of the work of social scientists in a number of different fields (primatology, anthropology, archaeology, network theory, sociology, economics & cultural evolution) mixed together with management and marketing science and my own professional experience of more than two decades, trying to understand and shape mass behaviour.

I first used the term HERD publically in March 2003 in an award-winning conference paper which challenged many of the core assumptions of advertising, marketing and market research professionals way of seeing the world and proposed a realignment of these disciplines around the idea of humans being fundamentally social creatures.

Soon enough, HERD was a book (John Wiley & Sons 2007/2009) which a lot of people read (and many said nice things about) then more articles, more speeches and more prizes. But in the last few years, it has become both a consulting business and a mainstream way of thinking about human behaviour for many marketing, advertising and research professionals as well as for those working in politics, public policy and security.

HERD started in the pre-Facebook world (Mark Zuckerberg was still in High School) but has only become more relevant in our attempts to make sense of the human behaviour in the modern post-Facebook world.

*well, not so hidden, more ignored really.

Recent Posts

How to work with HERD

There are three main ways in which clients tend to engage us

  • Speeches , workshops and seminars
    In the last year, we’ve spoken at many major events in the UK, continental Europe, China and North America.
  • Better Marketing Strategy
    We’ve developed a range of specific analytic tools (with Dr Alex Bentley) that help you understand whether social influence drives your market or not and how to shape strategies that are appropriate.
  • Change management programmes
    We’ve also been led significant C-level change programmes using both our knowledge of human behaviour (and its social roots) and current landscape for business. We often find in this context that the idea of purpose (as discussed in HERD) is a powerful lever for generating change.

About Me

I am a recovering advertising and marketing professional who has held Senior posts at big comms agencies (Ogilvy) and radical ones (St Luke’s) on some of the trickiest strategy challenges in behaviour change. I have long been committed to the industry bodies (I’m a Business Leader of the Marketing Society & I’ve sat on committees for the APG & IPA in the UK and taught for both these and the AAAA in the US) and society in general (I’ve helped organisations such as Arts & Business and The School of Life). I am a longstanding Fellow of the RSA.

The path to HERD is not hard to trace. Ironically, for someone who now preaches the ubiquity of social learning rather than independent choice, I was taught (at home, at school, at uni, at everywhere) to "think it through": in other words, not to accept what others told me to accept but to challenge everything until a more compelling, better-evidenced and more workable descriptions of how things work emerges.

It doesn’t always you popular or terribly rich but it is the most exciting thing – as my friend Russell Davies put it, standing at the front of the train with the wind in your hair, it’s such a thrill!

WHAT ARE WE READING

HERD: Mark Earls
How to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature
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