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About Me
- John Bunyard
- After a nice liberal education at Oxford, I decided to become one of the 'hidden persuaders' in the advertising industry. Despite persisting for 15 years, I never really got it. Apart from striking me as a generally inefficent way of selling things, it used to consist in selecting slightly misleading product 'truths' in an attempt to persuade, and nowadays aims to create these things called 'brands' that by definition are at one step from reality. This basically mendacious approach seemed to me to be at odds with human nature: even if adept liars, we dislike being lied to. In 1992, I proposed an alternative model based on the principle of telling the absolute truth and, critically, getting people to verify it for themselves. The tool I used to do this on a large scale, called 'Fast marketing', was hugely successful and yielded reams of comparative evidence. This in turn brought me into contact with plenty of neuroscientific literature and expertise that bears out the importance of demonstrable honesty. In 2005 I co-founded the Newcomen Group of scientists and business professionals that aims to explore such ideas and propagate their use in business and public life.