Powerful and purposeful storytelling for business
This blog was first posted on the Brighton Summit website to promote the workshop being run by our Sam Knowles at this conference event on Friday 12 October 2018. — How we use numbers to tell stories – to convey meaning and to persuade others to hear and understand our point of view – has come into sharp focus in the […]
Speed read: “Narrative by Numbers”
Speed read: “Narrative by Numbers” This post originally appeared on WARC – the World Advertising Research Center database run by Ascential, the owners of the Cannes Lions. This review of “Narrative by Numbers: How to Tell Powerful & Purposeful Stories with Data” was written by Jem Fawcus, founder of the research agency Firefish. This is […]
Learning from those you train
It was my privilege last week to train a baker’s dozen of some the brightest and best in market research. A new client for me, a household name well beyond the industry, and in a sector I’m really only now just starting to explore. As I have before with market researchers, I found a very […]
Why it’s not cool to say “I’m no good at maths”
Back in the early 1980s, I was – as they say – “badly taught” maths, at the otherwise very good, Oxbridge factory, Aylesbury Grammar School. A linguist and an artist, STEM subjects held little joy or allure for me. I was streamed into the fourth or fifth set, where there were more animal noises than […]
Happy birthday, dad
My late father, Kenneth Guy Jack Charles Knowles, was born 110 years ago today. He tumbled into a privileged existence in early Edwardian England. He was the grandson of the original Polish builder, Julius Kino, who’d arrived penniless 40 years before, but then built Bayswater and left a small fortune to his four children. £1.6m […]
Blesséd are the speechmakers – A linguistic analysis of the Lord’s Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount
Before getting into the meat of this blog, I need to start with some spoilers and declarations of interest – and, indeed, lack of interest. First, neither this blog nor the analysis it reports are intended to make any kind of religious point. This is because second, I’m a godless man, a devout atheist, as […]
Big business not telling stories clearly
The biggest businesses in Britain consistently fail to get their message across clearly. They use language that is too complex on two of the best-read corporate texts: the About Us web page and the CEO’s review in the annual report. These are the findings of a new study we’ve just commissioned and published to mark […]
All hail the statistics of the year
The Royal Statistical Society is a splendid, august body. Founded early in Queen Victoria’s reign, the original stated aim of the Society was set out by its founding fathers – “statists” as they called themselves; as members still call themselves today – as “procuring, arranging and publishing facts to illustrate the condition and prospects of […]
On the power of story, empathy, and insight #PRCA2017
The glitterati of a corner of the communications industry mired in scandal gathered at BAFTA last Friday. Not coke-addled movie stars or angry young TV folk. Not even the shady moguls who earns millions from wonky programmatic algorithms misplacing ads on extremist, hate, and porn sites. No. The corner of the media industry that came […]
Back to the future or fast forward to a new normal?
News is neither a fixed nor a finite entity. There are some periods in history when it feels like there’s just more happening than at others. I’m not talking about the Dark Ages (which suffered a blackout from not just newscasters but also historiographers). I’m talking about periods in one’s life in the early 21st […]