The New Abnormal Sean Pillot de Chenecey

Series Four

This episode of 'The New Abnormal' podcast features Adam Chmielowski, co-founder at the specialist cultural insight and brand strategy practice, Starling Strategy, who work for clients including Google, Nike, PepsiCo, Pan Macmillan and the National Trust.

Adam has worked in the insight and brand strategy industry for nearly 25 years, during which his interests have shifted towards using cultural rather than psychological / individualist approaches, as well as systems and sociological thinking, historical perspectives and a journalistic instinct for storytelling. No one project is the same, but all invariably involve helping brands see alternative paths to the future.

He’s also a lecturer on cultural strategy at the University of Bristol’s School of Management, focusing on how the theory translates into practice. 

We discuss all of the above during the interview, along with his latest undertaking – an MRes at the Cabot Institute, exploring how brands construct sustainability campaigns as cultural strategies, using myth, promoting ideologies, reconfiguring systems and more.

 So…enjoy the episode!

Series Three

This episode of The New Abnormal podcast features Tom Johnson, MD at the consumer insights and futures consultancy, Trajectory. He's a researcher, trends analyser and forecaster with  a mass of experience leading complex insight and foresight projects for clients including Vodafone, British Council, Department for International Trade, General Medical Council, McCann and many more.  Trajectory help clients understand how customers, markets and the world around them is changing - and how they can benefit from that change. Trajectory's proprietary international data  - Global Foresight - draws on 100,000 consumer interviews and has been running for a decade. Their monthly 'Optimism Index' monitor tracks consumer sentiment in the UK each month, gaining viewpoints from 1500 adults re: issues such as confidence, personal choice & control, social trust, opportunities in tech, optimism and their place in the world. We discuss all of the above and more, so I hope you enjoy the conversation!

Series One

In this episode, I spoke with Nicole Fall, the CEO of the renowned strategic research, innovation consultancy and forecasting agency Asian Consumer Intelligence. 

She's spent 20 years in Asia working with leading brands in countries inc China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. 

In the interview, we discuss her expert views on decoding cultural/social trends in Asia, and the implications for business strategy and brand marketing.  

Series Four

This episode of 'The New Abnormal' podcast features the futures thinker and leadership advisor Eric Korsvik Ostergaard, who specialises in exploring and evaluating possible and preferable futures of work. He's also the author of 'The Responsive Leader' which described the paradigm shift towards future organisations, and 'Teal Dots in an Orange World'  which addressed how to create an appropriately dynamic internal structure. His next book - which focuses on Anticipatory Leadership - will be published in late 2024. So, we discuss all of the above, and I hope you agree that Erik delivers a masterclass in how to reinvent organisations for positive effect.

Series Two

This episode of 'The New Abnormal' features Brooklyn-based John Seabrook, a staff writer at The New Yorker since the 90's as well as being the author of a range of superb books including 'The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory' / 'Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing—The Marketing of Culture' / 'Deeper: My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace / 'Flash of Genius, and Other True Stories of Invention' . 

In the interview we discuss his views on all of the above, along with a range of his other recent articles for the New Yorker. 

Therefore, his viewpoints take us on a fascinating path as we discuss issues inc artificial intelligence & smart composition, counter-surveillance strategies & fashion innovation, a robopop perspective on the record label of the future, social hierarchies in a commercialised culture, and social fragmentation in the post-digital / post-Covid age. 

Plus, of course, his take on 'Hope  / Community / Resilience' which link all of #TheNewAbnormal podcasts...

Series Two

In this episode of 'The New Abnormal' I interview Sara Wheeler,  a prize-winning non-fiction writer noted for her accounts of the polar regions. Her books include the international bestseller Terra Incognita, which tells the story of a seven-month journey in Antarctica.

The Daily Telegraph reviewer wrote of it, ‘I do not think there will ever be a better book written about the Antarctic.’ In it, she mentioned sleeping in the captain's bunk in Scott's Hut.

Whilst in Antarctica she read 'The Worst Journey in the World', an account of the Terra Nova Expedition, and she later wrote a biography of its author Apsley Cherry-Garrard. 

For years she travelled frequently to Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Canada, and North Norway to write her book The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle (winner of the Banff Adventure Travel Prize).

She later wrote 'O My America!: Second Acts in a New World' which records the lives of women who travelled to America in the first half of the 19th Century, and the authors's travels in pursuit of them. 

Sara’s latest book, Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age, came out just prior to the pandemic.
Sara is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature,  a Contributing Editor of The Literary Review, a Trustee of  The London Library and former chair of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award. 

She contributes to a wide range of publications in the UK and US and broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio. 

Sara's the most extraordinary person and I really enjoyed hearing her fascinating stories and perspectives.