About Me

I am a freelance researcher and consultant working on insight development, branding, NPD, and business strategy with a wide range of clients and agencies.

My work is varied and I am always looking for interesting new experiences - this eclectic attitude led to being able to claim to have invented the the world's first ethnographically inspired whisky (www.monkeyshoulder.com) and being part of the team that created the world's first social lending website (www.zopa.com).

I also enjoy the chance speak at conferences and write articles on issues of branding, technology, money and shopping - my presentation at the recent 'Digital Money Conference' at UCI, Irvine can be found here.

I am not a PhD anthropologist but a marketer and market researcher, who got fed up with deterministic ‘consumer needs’ and went looking for something meaningful – and through a chance employment with a colleague who is a ‘real’ anthropologist – got hooked on immersing myself in everyday life and applying it to creative processes – be it the creation of brands, businesses or policies.

This blog and the idea of this research is driven by a promise made to a good friend – Richard Duvall – that I would get off the fence and start writing the things which we talked about over a beer or an espresso. His sudden death from cancer was a massive loss to the world well beyond financial services, marketing or research as I was only one of hundreds of people who were inspired by his often satirical and but always well meaning ‘prods’ to action. This is my small contribution to the continuation of his philosophy and ‘carpe diem’ life.

I am interested in conversations and collaborations with anyone, who like me believes that the meaning of money is the missing link in many social, cultural and economic analyses.