“It’s all about engaging consumers where they are rather than where you want them to be.”

This consumer-focused perspective helps create practical solutions for marketing teams, agencies and clients that cut through the digital noise, break out of media silos and  deliver meaningful and measurable results, whilst respecting highly personalised data origins.

With more than 35 years of design, marketing and digital experience, Dean is a recognised expert at navigating through the maze of emerging media. He tells numerous stories to help simplify digital complexities and illustrates how digital has shifted consumer behaviour; moving from direct mail to app-driven social, through mobile and contactless NFC / RFID interactivity and converging into screen-neutral media (including ACR enabled Dual Screens, streaming OTT / CTV).

He challenges people to re-look at the permeation of all advertising channels, including out-of-home, inCar or inStore by exploring how digital crept across the media landscape from fixed digital billboards in New York City’s Time Square to as far east as floating eSignage on Shanghai’s Huangpu River, all powered by AI-driven insights and algorithms driving retargeting though media exchanges.

Yet to Dean, all this is simply a precursor to the next wave of genetically-targeted brand engagement – facilitated by the BioTech gold-rush into healthcare interfaces – and how location-based advertising will shift to genetic profiling and bring a new brand relevance to consumers. Balancing such advancements and remaining composed on the concerns surrounding user profiling requires us to ask if BlockChain holds the answer to finally turn the consumer’s shift of power?

Dean believes the future of healthcare is the biggest challenge facing (and yet opportunity for) humanity.

Focussed on tackling the ethics of shaping the future of addressable advertising using Near Field Communication (NFC) and Genetics – fuelled by the rise of personalised healthcare tracking – Dean is an active vocalist on moral obligations and privacy concerns in light of tracking via technology or biology as we approach GenoMedia. He seeks to ensure the continued commercialisation of content across a fragmented range of viewing devices – with targeting based on people’s own DNA – is balanced against a consumer who is truly in control, lest we concede defeat to AI.

Dean’s investigation into privacy concerns surrounding proximity based advertising earned him a Masters degree from the UK’s leading research and innovation centre based at Bournemouth University, and led to him advising European Ministers on the effects of media convergence on future EU policy. His genetic profiling research led him to complete a CRISPR: Gene-editing Applications course with Harvard, and he is also an active RSA Fellow.

His latest international partnership project, Kaleidoko, is a change agency working with global brands, agency networks, industry bodies, charities and governments – from start-ups to Fortune 500;

• Helping with the difficult but necessary journey of realignment; empowering organisations to transform by realising their true potential to grow into market leaders.
• Filtering a futuristic outlook through a consumer-focused lens and infuse it with grounded research to provoke all stakeholders to rethink ways that can impact their bottom line and overall ROI.
• Optimising an organisations’ brand strategy and position them with the best possible advantage to embrace new technology, offering creative and innovative product and marketing solutions that drive actual and measurable business change.
• Taking responsibility for driving vision and articulating a structured approach to rollout, adoption and implementation, working closely with necessary teams to bring ideas to fruition.

Dean has published multiple articles and frequently serves as an industry source for leading business and advertising trade publications including AdAge, Adweek, Adotas, Bloomberg, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, OMMA Magazine, Media Post, ClickZ, iMedia and Revolution among others. He also serves on the video, measurement and mobile councils at the IAB, consulting frequently for leading brands across the globe about new ways to measure and integrate offline and online channels. An engaging public speaker and powerful creative storyteller, he has delivered presentations at over 250 industry events across more than 35 countries from the Americas through out Europe to across Asia. Recent speaking engagements include PromaxBDA, EGTA, ScreenForce, iMedia, OMMA, AdTech, IAB, JDPA, ClickZ, dmexco, i-Com Global, SIME as well as MSN Roadshows, DG’s Inspire Series and MediaMind’s Digital Experience Days.

Dean has also led research in personalised programmatic connected television with VR; BioTech / IoT / M2M and connected devices, loyalty programmes and contactless payments; the relationships between AR and AI or proximity and privacy; genetic data profiling and hyper psychometric personalisation for DNA targeted intelligence via the plethora of healthcare interfaces (GenoMedia).

And when he’s not living out of a suitcase, Dean ‘sometimes’ resides on the Sussex Coast.

A copy of my current resume is available to download from here.

NB. The opinions and stances expressed here are entirely personal and as such may not reflect those of any client/employer.