Sean Pillot de Chenecey

Why organisations work with Sean Pillot de Chenecey

• He turned the trust collapse into a working brand discipline. The Post-Truth Business, his Kogan Page bestseller, gives commercial leaders a concrete language for authenticity at a time when most marketing advice is still optimising for awareness.
• He sits inside formal futures-studies practice, not only commercial consulting. As UK Associate Partner at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, he runs the institute’s Foresight-Driven Innovation course, which he applies to client brand and innovation work.
• He holds office in the global futures-studies field. As Director of Public Affairs at the World Futures Studies Federation, the UNESCO-partnered global body for futures studies scholarship, he operates inside the same institutional network as the academics, policy specialists and foresight practitioners shaping how organisations think about long-range change.
• He has been doing trends and foresight long enough to know what holds. Co-founding The Future Laboratory in the 1990s, then operating his own consultancy Brand Positive, gives him three decades of pattern recognition across consumer, cultural and commercial cycles.
• His podcast, The New Abnormal, approaching 300,000 downloads, keeps him in continuous dialogue with academics, operators and activists shaping how organisations are perceived, which feeds directly into client work.

Biography highlights

• Author of The Post-Truth Business (Kogan Page), No. 1 Business Bestseller, on rebuilding brand authenticity in a distrusting world.
• Author of Influencers and Revolutionaries (Kogan Page), shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year Awards.
• UK Associate Partner, Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, leading the Foresight-Driven Innovation course.
• Director of Public Affairs, World Futures Studies Federation, the UNESCO-partnered global body for futures studies scholarship.
• Co-founder of trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory; founder of independent strategy consultancy Brand Positive.
• Host of The New Abnormal podcast, approaching 300,000 downloads.
• Agenda contributor to the World Economic Forum; visiting lecturer at University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins, London College of Fashion), the Royal College of Art, the University of Brighton and other leading creative and business schools for more than two decades.

Biography

Most brand thinkers stop at narrative. Most futurists stop at the macro picture. Sean Pillot de Chenecey works the join between the two, and that is where his commercial value sits. His Kogan Page bestseller The Post-Truth Business argued that brand authenticity, not louder advertising, is the operating answer to collapsing customer trust, and gave senior marketers a working framework rather than a critique.

His career put him in the right place to take that argument seriously. In the 1990s he co-founded The Future Laboratory, the trend forecasting agency, before running his own consultancy Brand Positive for clients across consumer, financial services and technology. The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies brought him in as UK Associate Partner, and he leads the institute’s Foresight-Driven Innovation course, used by organisations who want innovation work grounded in real scenario method rather than ideation theatre. He also serves as Director of Public Affairs at the World Futures Studies Federation, the UNESCO-partnered global peak body for futures studies scholarship.

His second book, Influencers and Revolutionaries, shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year Awards, mapped the founders, technologists and activists actually moving markets. The New Abnormal, his podcast, has crossed 250,000 downloads and now functions as a working research instrument; he is in continuous conversation with the academics, operators and cultural figures who shape how organisations are perceived.

He has lectured on strategy and innovation at Central Saint Martins, the Royal College of Art, Chelsea College of Art, LSBU Business School, Miami Ad School, OMNES/INSEEC and the University for the Creative Arts for more than twenty years, and contributes to the World Economic Forum’s agenda. The combination, three decades of trends practice plus a formal futures-studies foothold plus a published thesis on trust, is what brings him into rooms where the brief is brand authenticity, customer trust or innovation strategy under uncertainty.

Key speaking topics

• Brand authenticity and customer trust
• Foresight-driven innovation
• Megatrends and scenario planning
• Consumer behaviour in a post-truth environment
• Marketing strategy under uncertainty
• Anticipatory leadership
• Politics, philosophy and the future of business

Ideal for

• CMOs, brand directors and customer experience leaders rebuilding trust with sceptical audiences.
• Chief strategy officers and innovation leads who need foresight integrated into commercial planning.
• Boards and executive committees setting brand and reputation direction in a low-trust environment.
• Marketing, communications and insight teams refreshing their approach to consumer and cultural change.

Audience outcomes

• A working definition of brand authenticity that holds up against current consumer scepticism.
• A clearer view of which megatrends actually intersect with the audience’s commercial decisions, and which are noise.
• A method for moving from trend awareness to innovation choices that survive contact with the operating plan.
• Sharper questions about where customer trust is being earned, eroded or faked inside the organisation today.