Welcome to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING
Hello!
My name is Peter Spear.
I am an ethnographer & brand consultant living in Hudson, New York, and the principal of SPEAR, the brand listening company.
Every Friday morning, I share the most interesting links from the week at the intersection of human understanding, business and culture.
Every Monday and Wednesday mornings, I share a conversation with someone I want to get to know.
If you enjoy any of this, I’d love to have a conversation.
Peter
ON METAPHOR
“Metaphors We Live By” by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson (short video explainer)
“Imagination is Ancient” talk by Stephen Asma
“Adaptive Imagination: Towards a Mythopoetic Cognitive Science” by Stephen Asma
WHAT MY CLIENTS SAY
“It was an absolute pleasure working with Peter. He is professional, authentic, courteous, and kind. He is also an exceptionally skilled ethnographer! Peter's innate ability to be genuinely present and engaged with people helped us to gain insights into our current and potential consumers. Peter has a deep empathy for others that invites people to share real and meaningful feedback. His intuitive grasp of human behavior goes beyond surface-level observations, allowing him to uncover the underlying factors that drive consumer decisions. He also possesses an extraordinary ability to distill these complex motivations and mindsets into a simple and actionable framework. I highly recommend Peter to anyone looking to understand their consumers better and see where their brand fits with their consumers' needs.”””
—Maude Manoukian, Chief Community Officer, The Forager Project
Peter is a truly exceptional ethnographer. if you are looking for BREAKTHROUGH & DEEP CONSUMER UNDERSTANDING, not just the same ole same ole “consumers feel like a better mom when they.....”, then Peter is your man. he combines wicked intelligence with empathetic listening and a super power to get people to reflect and openly share......AND he links the consumer understanding with business insight. i will personally hire Peter for any project requiring deep consumer knowledge.”
— Suzanne Senglemann, Chief Growth Officer, Lundberg Family Farms
“Peter led us on a thoughtful and inspiring journey to develop The Palace Project brand for our new platform and initiative, highlighting libraries are Palaces for the People. We worked with Peter and his team over a 4 month period, and brought in an outside group of stakeholders to validate our path several times in the process. Peters leadership was steady, never wavering and always thoughtful. He was able to listen to multiple points of view, yet bring us all together on what key messages and impact we wanted for the field, which ultimately led to a great brand and logo. I would recommend him whole heartedly to lead your brand strategy.”
— Michele Kimpton, Senior Global Director of The Palace Project (a division of LYRASIS)
“Peter is scary good! The entire team was blown away by the depth of understanding of our domain he came to in just a couple of days. This is more so impressive given that we’re a deep tech product, catering to developers, founded by developers, and communicated very technically (to a fault), all the while being in the very new and dynamic blockchain space. Peter ran a clean and professional process and did an excellent job of listening to us ramble on and extracting a very elegant, coherent, and powerful message for the company.”
— Andrej Bencic, Co-Founder & CEO at Tenderly, a blockchain infrastructure company
MY THINKING
I was invited to kick off the Concept Bureau series of Talks. I went for it, and talked about my approach to qualitative and brand, myth and meaning.
I wrote about my collaboration with Theatre for One and OpenEndedGroup to adapt their digital space into an imaginative research tool, used in creating The Palace Project brand for The Digital Public Library of America in EPIC:
And, I wrote a short piece about asking questions, suggesting you Stop asking "Why?”
MY CONVERSATION SERIES
Anthropologist Grant McCracken on “Multiplicity & the Future of Culture.”
Inventor of the TrueMirror, John Walter on “Eye Contact & Authenticity”
Anthropologist, Kirsten Bell on “The Anthropology & the Everyday”
Brand Anthropologist, Richard Wise on “The Empathy & the Power of Gossip”
Namer, Anthony Shore on “Linguistics & Names”
Brand Mythologist, Ben Doepke on “Brand & Archetypes”
Brand Strategist, Zoe Scaman on “Empathy & the Outsider”
Brand Scientist, Ethan Decker on “Brand Science & Symbols”
Scholar, Jeffrey Kripal on “The Humanities & The Impossible”
Advisor & Teacher, Inaki Escudero on “Mentors & Heroes”
Founder of Synthetic Users, Hugo Alves on “Real & Synthetic Users”
Philosopher & Professor, Stephen Asma on “Monsters & Imagination”
Researcher & Strategist, Farrah Bostic on “Decisions & Change”
Researchers & Analysts, Helen & Dave Edwards on “AI & Complexity”
Journalist Colleen Hagerty on “Disasters & Listening”
Founder, Noah Brier on “Brand & AI”
Strategist, Eliza Yvette Esquivel on “Leadership & Protopia”
Researcher, Gunny Scarfo on “The Unknown & Unvalued”
Digital Ethnographer, Alessia Clusini on “People & Tribes”
Mythologist, Joshua Michael Schrei on “Myth & Meaning”
