Selbey Labs
Selbey Labs

Helping you to win the future

The world is increasingly complex, and Selbey Labs helps make sense of it with practical, useful and effective strategies to adapt, evolve and thrive.

We bring together research, foresight, innovation and consulting to inform future brand and business strategies, create or evolve products and services and crucially understand the audiences you serve and those you'd like to serve. Our aim in everything we do is to ensure we help our clients remain resilient and successful. Using a dynamic blend of data, behavioural science and research, Selbey Labs delivers a deep identification and understanding of emerging opportunities and threats, giving clients more time to prepare and/or react.

Ultimately, our goal is to bring clarity to inform future strategies, campaigns, products and services, ensuring that our clients remain resilient and successful.

We regularly publish reports and research as well as hosting events that focus on macro-trends, key socio-economic drivers, sector-trends, audience trends and wider cultural shifts.

Our approach is always to help our clients make sense of emerging trends and gain useful, relevant and actionable insights and ideas that can drive growth and value.

Services

Management

  • Gerry Hopkinson
    Gerry HopkinsonCEO

    Following a successful career in communications, including co-founding award-winning agency Unity (now part of the Selbey Anderson Group), Gerry set up Selbey Labs in April 2022. Through his work at Unity over the past two decades he has developed a perspective on the role of brands in culture, the importance of observation and benefits of testing and learning.

  • Sean Pillot de Chenecey
    Sean Pillot de CheneceyHead of Foresight & Strategy

    Sean is a strategist, author and speaker. Fascinated by the catalysts of social & cultural change, he has a deep level of knowledge re: ‘Now/Next/Why’. As a public speaker, he focuses on trust (re: his book The Post-Truth Business) and/or innovation (re: his book Influencers & Revolutionaries). His talks also link to his podcast #TheNewAbnormal.

  • Helen Pillot de Chenecey
    Helen Pillot de CheneceyInsights & Trends Researcher

    Helen has worked both agency and client-side in trend forecasting and qualitative research roles, bringing her extensive knowledge of consumer attitudes/behaviour and product/service innovation, across numerous sectors and territories. Her attention to detail is born out of a passion and strong background in visual research and product development.

Partners and Faculty

  • Carsten Beck
    Carsten BeckFuturist Lead

    Carsten has been working with trend analysis and scenario processes at The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (CIFS) for more than 30 years, in more than 30 countries. The themes Carsten has been working with all relate to how trends shape the future for organisations, companies, and societies. Carsten has done scenario processes in retail, HR, finance, business-to-business, governments and NGOs. His key priority is how to drive processes that enable clients to prepare for the future. These clients include organisations in global retail, governments, industrial conglomerates, cultural organisations, rock festivals, tourist organisations, the transport industry, IT and more.

  • Dr Elizabeth Stephens
    Dr Elizabeth StephensGeopolitical Risk Advisory Lead

    Dr Elizabeth Stephens is an investment and country risk advisor and Managing Director of Geopolitical Risk Advisory, a geopolitical tech company. Elizabeth works with commercial and philanthropic clients in the development of corporate strategy and planning across a range of sectors and geographies, to effectively manage and mitigate risk. Her specialist knowledge encompasses the drivers of geopolitics change, including cryptocurrencies, the decentralisation of financial institutions and the geopolitics of decarbonisation.

  • Dr Rachel Lawes
    Dr Rachel LawesSocial Psychology Lead

    Dr Rachel Lawes is a futurist, a social psychologist and one of the original founders of British commercial semiotics. She supplies brand and marketing strategy to businesses such as Unilever, P&G, Kraft, Nike and Diageo, as well as clients in specialised sectors such as pharmaceuticals and finance. A regular international conference speaker, she is the author of two landmark books; "Using Semiotics in Marketing" (2020) and "Using Semiotics in Retail" (2022), both published by Kogan Page. Based in London, UK, she is a Fellow of the Market Research Society. Her company, Lawes Consulting Ltd, marks its 20th anniversary in 2022.

  • Georgina Lee
    Georgina LeeInnovation Lead

    Georgina Lee combines expertise in design, innovation and ageing. She believes cross-generational innovation is central to social and economic impact. Following a highly successful career in design, where she co-founded the ground-breaking design studio This Is Real Art, she has been leading thought and action in the areas of age bias, age diversity and the development of future strategies, products and services to enable us all to live longer, healthier and happier lives. She sits on the BSI working group looking into age inclusive standards, the ISO working group on inter-generational workforces and is a Trustee of the Do It Foundation, a social enterprise whose technology helps people to do good and feel healthier and happier.

  • Alan McCulloch
    Alan McCullochDigital Innovation Lead

    Following a successful career in advertising (creative and media), which included building the digital operations of the some of the world’s largest agencies, including Saatchi and Saatchi, Grey Advertising and McCann, Alan held the position as Chairman of the IPA Digital Committee for three years where his white paper ‘How The West Was Won’ was instrumental in brokering the model for trading digital media between advertising, publishers, and agencies. A model that is still in place today. After a period building offshore creative delivery as Chief Digital Officer for Ninestars and 2adpro in India, he returned to the UK as ESET’s Marketing Director. Alan joined Orckid in 2022 and is focussed on guiding and advising clients on digital business transformation.

  • James Sandrini
    James SandriniBusiness Transformation & Growth Lead

    James is a highly experienced strategist, advisor & NED for rapidly-scaling businesses. His experience includes leadership roles in product, service, people, brand and marketing. He bridges strategy and execution as well as culture and commercial thinking. For more than a decade, James has been aligning people behind a clear vision and differentiated position in the market. He founded and exited a challenger creative agency and has worked with category-defining brands including LEON, Gozney and Soho House.

  • Chiedza Gonyora
    Chiedza GonyoraBusiness Anthropologist

    Chiedza is a trained Anthropologist, who is highly skilled in ethnographic and qualitative research and human insights. She has extensive experience working with B2B brands and businesses, helping them identify new customers and markets through her analyses of human behaviour and data. Chiedza is passionate about filling in the gaps in marketing by explaining (to whoever will listen) why humans act the way they do and what influences their buying decisions.

  • Claire Denham-Dyson
    Claire Denham-DysonEthnographic Research Lead

    Claire is Head of Anthropology at Selbey Anderson Partner Network agency Demographica and has worked in advertising and market research throughout her career. With expertise in numerous sectors, She specialises in ethnographic and immersive qualitative research and human insights. She holds her Honours in Anthropology from the University of Cape Town and her Masters in Organisational and Business Psychology from the University of Liverpool.She is passionate about using human insights to tell more compelling, authentic stories. Claire is a bibliophile and lives in Johannesburg, South Africa with her partner and too many plants.

  • Sophy Norris
    Sophy NorrisGroup Client Director

    Sophy has an impressive track record in PR and communications and most recently was MD of Selbey Anderson agency Unity.  Across her career she has worked with some of the world's best brands including Eurotunnel, Amadeus, AT&T, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Global Recycling Day, trivago and Builder.ai. Her focus is on strategic and creative planning, and she brings excitement, innovation and rigour to the award winning campaigns she works on. Now, as Group Client Director for Selbey Anderson, Sophy will be taking a strategic and client-first approach to the expanding Group portfolio and opportunities.  

  • Dr Jillian Ney
    Dr Jillian NeySocial Insight Lead

    Dr Jillian Ney is a digital anthropologist, entrepreneur, author, and keynote speaker who specialises in the analysis of Internet culture. She’s also known as the UK’s first “Dr. of Social Media.” Jillian has spent her career examining how technology is changing people’s behaviour online and offline, and creating methodologies to help businesses uncover the hidden triggers driving human behaviour at scale. Jillian is also the founder of a global community for professional social and internet data analysts - The Social Intelligence Lab - that is working to advance the value of Internet data as a source of insight. This community has grown rapidly since it launch, bringing together professionals from over 40 countries to learn, network, and share new ideas. As part of this she has worked with some of the world’s biggest companies, including Mondelez International, The HENIKEN Company, Warner Brothers, The Coca-Cola Company, and Puig. Jillian’s first co-authored book, Advanced Marketing Management (Kogan Page) is an update to traditional marketing paradigm through data and neuro-marketing. She is a sought-out speaker and commentator on internet culture and social listening and has presented her work at SXSW, PR Week, Festival or Marketing, Social Media Week, IIEX, and NATO. Jillian’s a two time TEDx’er and has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Glamour Magazine, and Cosmopolitan.

  • Huw Davis
    Huw DavisData Science & Analytics Lead

    Huw is a recognized leader in global digital transformation, data science and measurement delivery. He specialises in 1st party data and maximizing its strategic use within organisations. In the past 30+ years his career has taken him from the actuarial department of BUPA Health Insurance to a range of agencies and consultancies, including Ogilvy, Havas and most recently J Walter Thompson in APAC. He has worked with a range of major brands across the globe and spent nearly seventeen years in APAC building up analytic and insight teams for major corporates. He now splits his time between clients in Asia and Europe. As an educationalist, he spends part of his time lecturing at a range of educational institutions and at present he is the Visiting Industrial lecturer for the French University INSEEC at their London Campus, providing tutoring on machine learning and analytics for the MA in Digital Marketing Strategy and Branding. Huw is a key lecturer on the UK IDM Direct Marketing Diploma course and a regular global conference speaker. Along with his Honorary Life Fellowship, Huw was named the IDM’s Educator of the Year in 2004 In 2013 he was awarded Data Professional of the Year by his peers at the Data Strategy Awards in Europe. .

Latest from Labs

Coming soon from Labs

'Making sense of...' reports

We’re publishing a series of reports under the title ‘Making Sense of…’ which are intended to act as an introduction to our thinking and approach. The first report looked into Innovation and Catalytic Thinkers and can be viewed here, whilst the second will focus on Trust, Truth and Authenticity.

Pulse Checks

Later this year, we will be launching a new pulse check offering which will provide clients with a rapid deep-dive understanding of niche audience needs, hopes, desires and attitudes with rich ethnographic and cartographic outputs and actionable insights.

Signal Strength

We shall soon be launching our very own Selbey Labs podcast exploring emerging threats and opportunities for complex and fast forward brands.

Mailing List

If you would like to receive our 'Signal Strength' newsletter and hear about upcoming events, please click HERE and we will add you to our mailing list.

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