The New Abnormal

Series Four
This episode of The New Abnormal podcast features Falk Fuhrmann, Executive Director at Shanghai HuiLue Business Consulting Co, and Visiting Professor teaching International Brand Communication & Innovation, Consumer Behaviour & Insights, at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.
He also is an award-winning creative strategist with more than 20 years of experience, who led the strategic planning department of TBWA when they opened their Berlin office. Later as head of strategy with DDB, he developed & championed the agency’s philosophy of creative business solutions. For nearly a decade, Falk led strategy development for P&G in CEMEA, APAC & Greater China.
So, we discuss all of the above in this fascinating discussion, which naturally takes in Daoism and Confucianism. Re: the former (and perhaps the latter) we had to struggle our way through some loud building activity in the background during some of this recording, so please channel your inner-harmony at those stages!

Series Four
This episode of 'The New Abnormal' podcast features Hilary Sutcliffe, Director of SocietyInside, who bring together people and ideas to help tech and its governance earn the trust of society.
The name #SocietyInside is a riff off the famous brand ‘IntelInside’ and aims to encapsulate their aspiration that we reverse-engineer innovation from the needs of society rather than just create technologies which are in an eternal search for a home.
Hilary explores the purpose, risks, ethics, stakeholder involvement and governance of these technologies through research, writing and stakeholder involvement as well as acting as a sounding board & critical friend. She also believes that 'innovation is society in the making'.
We therefore discuss all of the above, and in particular, the issues of inclusion, respect, openness and integrity in policy, regulation and organisational culture. She also explains why "trust is not an outcome - not a message, not a slogan. It's the result of someone's belief in your trustworthiness. Focus then on being trustworthy and providing evidence of your trustworthiness".

Series Four
This episode of 'The New Abnormal' podcast features Colin Strong, who is Head of Behavioural Science at Ipsos, and a Professor at Nottingham University Business School.
He works with a wide range of organisations (both private and public sector) to design and deliver behavioural change through the use of behavioural science.
His new book 'Out of Time: the revolution underway in beliefs about being human' is out now. In it, he seeks to make sense of our current state of liminality, and questions what we wish humans to become from this state.
So, we discuss all of the above and along the way, Nietzsche, Descartes, the CIA and the late, great Daniel Kahneman all get a mention, along with many others.
I hope you'll enjoy listening to Colin as much as I did!

This isn’t actually the latest episode of #TheNewAbnormal at all…but as it’s my podcast series (with over 60,000 downloads), I’m taking the outrageous liberty of linking to a separate one that features me - as opposed to my guests, who usually come from the worlds of activism / psychology / philosophy / journalism / research etc . 

The 'Speaker Show' podcast is run by Speakers Associates, the renowned speaker-bureau. By an extraordinary coincidence, they just happen to be my agents, and for whom I set up their own podcast back in pre-Covid days. I handed over the hosting of that show to the utterly brilliant Maria Franzoni a while ago, and she in turn interviewed me for their Christmas ‘21 / New Year ‘22 episode. 

In the interview, we discuss some of the key trends impacting culture / society / brands etc and of how those issues connect to my books ‘The Post-Truth Business’ and ‘Influencers & Revolutionaries’. (Both were shortlisted for the ‘Business Book of the Year Awards’ in 2019 and 2021 respectively.) The themes that I mention in the interview also link to the wide range of fascinating guests I’ve interviewed for ‘The New Abnormal’ podcasts, since the pandemic began.  Hence we discuss topics inc:

·       Authenticity & Ethics

·       Trends & Innovation  

·       Resilience & Leadership 

Finally, I attempt to absorb all of the above into highlighting what I talk about in my speeches, and also how I see the business-events sector adapting in 2022, in order to make future sessions as dynamic as possible.

You can listen to the full episode (the intro here only lasts a minute) via this link: https://apple.co/3e6yI7N

So, I hope you enjoy the podcast!

In this episode of #TheNewAbnormal podcast, I interview Lucie Greene, who is a forecaster, strategist and author specialising in cultural trends, consumer insights and brand innovation. Having relocated to NYC from L.A. she set up her futures practice 'Light Years' having previously led JWT's global futures think tank JWT Intelligence. She also launched their renowned 'Future 100' annual trends report, which is now translated into ten languages. Her book 'Silicon States: the power and politics of BigTech and what it means for our future' is absolutely excellent. In this episode we discuss a wide range of issues including the increasing exposure of a lack of faith in Government, the privatisation of the C19 pandemic inc surveillance capitalism, the need for 'Solve & Dissolve' teams re: the Future of Work, brand responses to the climate & ecological emergency, and the impact on our social fabric of hyper-individualisation.