Uncle Monty and me

No, not that one. And it’s a lady, too.

Fernanda Monti. The lady who gave her name to the prize that my paper on the Herd applications for market research won at this year’s ESOMAR global conference.

“Best overall paper”. Very pleased and very flattered that such an established professional body should think it worth it. Proud as punch, in fact, while clear that while it was my paper, I was trying to articulate what those of us in the field are up to and why…

Here’s the citation:

”If ‘We’ not ‘I’…Then what? From Anglo-Saxon to global world views of human behaviour”
This paper describes the practical and theoretical implications for marketing research practitioners of a disruptive new, emerging collection of models of mass behaviour described by the author as “Herd theory”. The paper reviews methodological and theoretical innovations in this space and identifies further areas for innovation and rethinking that practitioners should now explore. This is a seminal piece of thinking that convincingly challenges the prevailing ‘individualistic’ model of how humans make decisions & therefore also of market research.

I like “seminal”. Will try to be and do more “seminal” stuff….

Not sure how or whether I can post it but let me know if you’re interested in having a read…