AND I’ll admit, i’m a huge sucker for A CLASSIC detective nOVEL.
Seeing the likes of Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe crack a case wide open using only headstrong street smarts and an affinity for human behaviour really tickled me. And it fit. When I was a college boy–younger and more reserved and more inclined to lean against the wall at parties than I am now–I became fascinated by the way people behaved. There was so much going on around us that seemed to have so many subtle influences on how we went about our days that, at times, I was overwhelmed. In the bustle of everyday living, I began to channel my inner private-eye.
Before too long, patterns started cropping up. Ticks, biases, snap judgments and idiosyncrasies formed the very foundation of our daily routines and personal relationships, and so many of them seemed to operate below the threshold of conscious awareness. It became a drive to discover new ways to observe, break down, and analyse the patterns that define our decisions and make us who we are. I was a behavioural sleuth assigned to the greatest mystery of all time. That’s why I’m funnelling my six years of psychology, behavioural geekery, and marketing experience into the Actor Observer project. With a little help from Raymond Chandler and higher education I’ve learnt to distil the scientific jargon and advertising mumbo jumbo down into something simple and real. And with so much confusion around big data, consumer analytics, media strategy, and digital reach out there at the moment, I believe that putting the human element back into marketing is essential.NOW LET’S DO SOME SLEUTHING.
