Sam Knowles

Founder & MD

Insight Agents was founded in 2013 by Sam Knowles, who is the Managing Director and Chief Data Storyteller.

Sam combines long and varied communications agency experience with a strategic planner’s facility for turning relevant data into campaigns and narratives that resonate and deliver. For a one-time (now reformed) PR man – with more than 25 years in corporate and consumer communications for global clients – he has unusually rich data and analytics experience.

Before creating Insight Agents, Sam was Group Director, Strategic Planning at WCG Europe, and immediately prior the UK MD of Echo Research, the earned media subsidiary of Ebiquity. He has also held strategic planning and business development leadership roles at Salt, Kaizo and Fleishman-Hillard.

Sam has a doctorate in Experimental Psychology, a source of both his understanding of human motivation and behaviour and his love of telling stories with data. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Professional Speaking Association, and a professional member of both the Market Research Society and the Public Relations & Communications Association. Check out his LinkedIn profile and Twitter feed and the Insight Agents’ feed. Sam is a member of the Advisory Council of the Harvard Business Review.

In April 2018, Routledge published his first book for business called Narrative by Numbers: How to Tell Powerful and Purposeful Stories with Data. More details – and some funky animations from our friends at Formplay – at www.narrativebynumbers.com and on Twitter. Routledge published the sequel, How To Be Insightful: Unlocking the Superpower that Drives Innovation in May 2020. The’ Using Data Better’ trilogy is completed in August 2022 with the arrival of Asking Smarter Questions.