SPEAR BRAND CONSULTANCY

An imaginative & ethnographic discovery studio

My name is Peter Spear.

I am an ethnographer & brand consultant with over 25 years experience helping teams understand the human experience of their organization.
I call this brand listening. It is imaginative & ethnographic face-to-face research designed to deliver foundational insights into the motivations & mindsets that drive behavior. Brand listening leads to more resonant product, brand and creative development.

Each week I publish a newsletter and conversation series about human understanding & business called THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING.

SELECTED CLIENTS

Traditional Medicinals, GoGo Squeeze, Gatorade, Digital Public Library of America, The Palace Project, American Greetings, Terminix, Discovery Channel, Knight Foundation, Coca-Cola + AMC, Lundberg Family Farms, Nutrabolt, MegaFood

What our clients are saying:

  • “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

  • “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 at Forager Project

  • “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

  • “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 a 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 impressed me with his approach, demeanor and obvious expertise. Witnessing his skills in action during one on one interviews his tactics led towards insights flowing almost instantaneously through his ability to build rapport and relationships with the recruits. From there Peter provide clear actionable insights into how we may best leverage the findings to speak relevantly allowing us to maximize the impact of our brand building efforts.”

    — John Herman, Chief Commercial Officer, Nutrabolt

  • “Peter served as a branding advisor and mentor for the teams that ran through Gannett’s internal product innovation incubator. He worked with each team to understand their product’s brand essence and used listening techniques to help them get establish a brand platform. Peter brought a highly strategic point of view that pushed these teams and moved them along the innovation process. They would not have developed such deep and engaging brands without him.”

    — Laura Ramos, was at Gannett, now UX at Stripe

  • “It takes a special person to navigate and uncover true insights while conducting qualitative research in someone’s home and Peter was masterful at this. His sense of empathy and understated confidence allowed him to hold meaningful conversations with people while getting them to open up about their needs, desires, and behaviors. Peter was organized, very professional, and a pleasure to work with. I would work with him again in a heartbeat.””

    — Mitchell Murphy, at the time VP Design & Creative, Leesa Sleep

  • “Peter was absolutely brilliant and extremely efficient. I had a feeling that the brand strategy was not something he was coming up with but was almost a natural extension of those conversations. As a result, the proposed strategy was both not surprising and counter intuitive for me because it all came along in an organic way but it also embodied some elements that were disrupting our daily way of communicating and telling our story. I would recommend Peter to anyone who’s looking to establish or relaunch a brand in a way that is both authentic and powerful.”

    — Adriano Farano, Founder at WatchUp and Pane Vivo

  • “Peter is an expert that builds immediate rapport with interviewees. It’s impressive how quickly he is able to form a sincere connection and surface insights that are relevant and actionable for brands. That translation from a consumer’s lived experience to organizational learning has been foundational for our business.”

    — T.J. Moore, Senior Category Manager, Nutrabolt

  • “Peter was a great partner to me during my time at GoGo squeeZ - helping me craft research that asked the right questions to inform critical strategic decisions. I really appreciated Peter’s ability to design, execute and interpret qualitative research that uncovered meaningful insights. I would not hesitate to work with Peter again.”

    — Jeannette Cornell, GoGoSqueeZ at the time

  • “We hired Peter to help us more clearly understand our consumer and their relationship with our brand. I’ve worked with several qualitative researchers, and by far, Peter’s unique approach is the most effective in getting deep into the emotions that drive the consumer experience. He’s highly creative in how he probes consumers to think about the brand, what it means to them and where it fits in their life. Based on his work, we are highly confident that we know what we need to do to move the brand forward. I look forward to working with Peter again on future projects!”

    — Annamarie de la Cruz, Senior Director, Insights, Weight Watchers

  • “Peter Spear is outstanding. He has a towering strength among qualitative researchers. Peter is naturally astute at getting underneath what drives and motivates consumers, uncovers it, describes it and synthesizes it into an action plan. I recommend Peter to find things that make a difference and are not found by standard focus groups or qualitative measures.”

    — James Alexander, Outdoor Channel at the time

How to Create a Brand Mythology

A Concept Bureau talk about both seeing and listening to your audience in a new way so that the mythology of your brand can do what myths are meant to do: give your people a sense of meaning and purpose.