NatWest Group

Research Consultant

Noggin The Brain People

🧠 Noggin The Brain People 🧠

Sainsbury's Bank

Head of Research, Planning & Brand

Head of Propositions & Innovation

Head of Customer Insight & Innovation

The Marketing Society Scotland

Chair Of Marketing Society Scotland

Heineken UK

Head Of CMI (Consumer & Market Intelligence)

Category Insights Controller

PepsiCo Intl

Consumer Insights For All PepsiCo Portfolio Of Beverage Brands across Western & Eastern Europe

European Consumer & Market Insights Director

PepsiCo

Worked on creating new International Trademarks for PepsiCo to play in exciting growing Asian beverage categories e.g. Healthy Whites (RTD Soymilk/Drinking Yoghurts) in China, India, Vietnam & Thailand.

Asia Regional Innovation Insights Manager

Quorn Foods

Consumer & market insights for the Quorn brand.

Consumer Insight Manager

Procter & Gamble

Consumer & Product Researcher Working In Skin Beauty Care (Oil Of Olay).

Products Research

🧠 Noggin - helping improve the cognitive health of the nation 🧠 | P&G | PepsiCo | Heineken | Sainsbury's |

I have over 25 years of insight, marketing, and innovation leadership experience in FMCG and FS sectors, I know, I don't look THAT old.

I've enjoyed working for some of the world's leading brands in various categories (health & beauty, food & beverages & financial services) and regions, delivering impactful consumer and market intelligence, brand strategy, and product innovation. My time spent working on Oil Of Olay made me my mum's favourite son.

Currently, I'm a research consultant at NatWest Group, where I'm supporting the bank's customer, technology and data-driven approach to enhancing its products and services. 

I'm a co-founder at Noggin The Brain People, on a mission to improve the cognitive health of the nation & founding investor in Gutzy Organic which makes having a healthy, happy gut, fun and easy. Active investor in the technology & health & wellness arena.

I'm a former chair and current fellow of the Marketing Society in Scotland.

Mick Doran

'What we fail to notice quietly shapes what we fail to do.'


My latest What I Underlined book review The Marketing Society Scotland

https://lnkd.in/e8UKwjqZ

#discovery #useyournoggin #marketing

We need to anticipate better.



It was Drucker who said "The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic"

And if we're honest, lots of us are doing just this. 

I have an ask / request .... 

What's shaped your thinking on this?

Books, courses, people to follow, tools you actually use for strategic foresight?

Drop them below. I'll compile everything and share it back.

Thank you in advance, please share as I'd like to get a diverse viewpoint. 🙏🏽


#StrategicForesight #FuturesThinking #UsingYourNoggin

Credibility is overrated. Seriously. 

#nofluff #training #2026goals

If work feels exhausting, it’s probably not because you’re working too hard.


But it might be because your brain never gets to switch off.

Most corporate work doesn’t tire people out with effort.

It tires them out with constant cognition. Think about it ....

Notifications.

Messages.

Decisions that feel almost too small to matter, but never stop coming.

We’ve seem to have built jobs that demand continuous attention without recovery, and then act surprised when people feel drained by mid-afternoon.

Our noggins didn’t evolve for that.

They work best in bursts .... focus, effort, rest, and ready to go again.

Work used to have more boundaries, but now it just leaks into everything.

Somewhere along the way, most also confused being busy with doing good thinking.

Fast replies.

Full calendars.

Visible responsiveness.

But clarity comes from giving the appropriate space to THINKING.

Many organisational systems are optimised for efficiency and scale. Not a bad thing mind.

However, let's not forget that human brains need context, meaning and recovery.

When those don’t line up, the system might keep running but the people absorb the cost.

Which is why so many well intentioned fixes fall flat.

We tell people to be more resilient.

We add wellbeing initiatives on top of overloaded days.

We introduce new tools that promise efficiency and quietly add another layer of 'mental noise'.

The organisations doing better are taking a different approach.

They’re reducing unnecessary decisions.

Protecting thinking time.

Simplifying priorities.

Rewarding clarity, not constant availability.

Because recovery shouldn't be an afterthought.

It’s a performance input really.

so this year, remember this ....

Burnout isn’t normally a failure of people, it’s a failure of systems....

and Tony Schwartz puts it's brilliantly

The no.1 enemy of performance is not stress. It’s the absence of recovery.

Look after your noggin, so it can look after you.

#productivity #useyournoggin #brainhealth #cognition

The Curiosity Experiment

Sustainable Futures Marketing and Insight Consultant. Applied Curiosity Consulting and Training to reimagine and redesign more sustainable futures.

Sustainable Futures Consultant

Global Curiosity Institute 

Curiosity masterclass creation and delivery with the Global Curiosity Institute.

Curiosity Coach

Unilever

Freelance Strategy and Insight Manager: Climate & Nature Fund (Oct-Feb 23)
Freelance Strategy and Insight Manager: Clean Future (Sustainability Insights) Feb 23-current.

Freelance Consultant

University of the West of Scotland

Associate lecturer in compassion as part of the MSC programme in mindfulness and compassion.

Associate Lecturer

University of East London

Research into work-related flow state, wellbeing and productivity.

Researcher

William Grant & Sons

- Lead global insight manager for the WGS scotch portfolio (Glenfiddich and Balvenie) covering ethnography, semiotics, qualitative research, marketing effectiveness, comms research and audience strategy work.
 - Responsible for WGS 'New Normal' strategy work and scenario planning.
 - Launched and embedded a number of new curiosity-driven insight tools.
 - Wellbeing community-builder: leading an employee wellbeing programme with annual wellness measures and programme of initiatives (talks, mindfulness training, conference), creating an internal community to champion employee health and wellbeing.

Senior Global Strategy & Insight Manager (& Wellbeing Champion)

Sainsbury's

Team responsibility for consumer and marketing insight programmes including the 'living well index', a study looking at what drives wellbeing nationally and exploring behaviour change initiatives to improve the wellbeing of the nation. 
Wellbeing champion - training and event organiser as part of the internal marketing academy.

Senior Marketing Insights Manager (Head of Marketing Insight) 

New Look

-Team responsibility for all consumer, market and brand insight. 
- Implemented culture change programme to ensure consumers were at the heart of decision making.
- Rolled out brand strategy process, new brand positioning, consumer listening tool, and China market and consumer understanding.

Senior Group Insight Manager (Head of Insight)

McDonald's

- Responsible for helping transition the organisation from a research led team to an insight driven business, ensuring the consumer is at the heart of all key business decisions.
-  Initiated and launched a number of new insight based tools to create efficiencies within the business and deliver superior customer insight. 
-  Responsible for delivering a significant annual research plan and managing two direct reports.
-  Graduated in the top 10% of the class at WHMU (Hamburger University) in 2012.
-  Completed McDonald's Women's Leadership Development programme in 2013 (internal talent management programme).

Senior Consumer Insight Manager

Nestlé

-Responsible for determining the strategic direction of the Nestle Professional beverage portfolio and managing all ad hoc qualitative and quantitative studies for the Nestle Professional Beverage team.
-Additional specific achievements include defining and driving a high profile, strategic insight project with a key customer to help unlock hot beverage growth in the UK. Project rolled out globally.
- Awarded strategy award in 2011 for hot beverage growth project. 
- Responsible for significant investment plan and management of direct reports.

Strategic Beverage Planner

Human Curiosity & Insight Consultant

Insatiably curious, always experimenting and sometimes insightful. :-)

Human insights professional now also working in academia, researching, and developing workplace curiosity interventions and exploring flow-state. Alongside consumer insight, I teach mindfulness and yoga and have recently completed an MSC in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching.

I'm fascinated by human behaviour and what really makes people tick and have explored this for a range of blue-chip organisations over the past 20 years, both client and agency-side. I’m now looking to continue this quest to better understand human behaviour both through consumer insight work and applied psychological research.

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